China herself will not forget. It is this heritage of humiliation this makes her touchy about being pushed around, including on the environment.

This year, for the first time, she was the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, but when she says that she has been growing for a mere 30 years, whereas the West has been polluting for two centuries, China has a point.

No-one is going to feel good when the music is stopped just when they join the dance, especially if they have only just taken up dancing.

As a further caution against expecting to see China clamber onto the international stage like some amiable giant panda, it is worth posing a simple question: what modern example is there of a newly powerful nation, or in China's case an old one re-born, failing to assert itself in a forceful way, especially if it had colonial and cultural scores to settle, as China does?

When it comes to having regard to the susceptibilities of other nations, why should a newly- confident China behave in a more restrained manner than the Romans, the Turks, or the British and Americans in their heydays?

I am not speaking of wars of conquest, but of more modern ways of imposing one's will in the world. Moreover, China is emerging into a world in an unprecedented state of flux: globalisation, the environment and terrorism are just three factors. Its re-entry has been at speed, and turbulence is inevitable.

On the plus side, I admit to surprise at the extent of the loosening-up that is happening internally at present – a reflection I believe not so much of the tolerance of the state as the tendency of people to take some matters into their own hands and get away with it.

In the Maoist years, an absolute ban on pretty much everything was easier to police; now that there is a modicum of freedom, even China's repressive apparatus appears to be stretched, as well as being more corrupt and inefficient than in the past.

I do not exclude the possibility that as the atmosphere softens year by year it becomes conceivable that a reformist revolution may sweep the country in the shorter rather than the longer term, and prove reasonably successful.

Yet my lack of optimism in this area remains undimmed, and for me, one of the least attractive futures for the country seems the most plausible.

I can picture a China run by the Chinese Communist Party, or something very like it, that with some first aid and one or two surgical interventions by the government along the way, could endure and prosper for decades.

Interventions could become necessary if the régime wobbles: currently a growing cloud is taking shape over the country in the form of an American slowdown and consequent drop in exports, increased food prices and an inflated stock exchange.

The fundamentals of the régime would be the same two ingredients that are keeping President Putin aloft in the polls in Russia: money and the motherland. Economically, it would be more of a roller-coaster than Russia, though the eventual rewards could be greater. Politically, it would remain an authoritarian régime, though adept at avoiding confrontation by giving some leeway here and there.

There seems likely to be a good deal of lurching about, as the CCP attempts to push the country forward while holding its people back – willing the horse onwards while keeping a tight grip on the reins. Yet the horse may prove unruly.

An impression has formed in the West of the Chinese as an endlessly disciplined people, but as one writer has remarked, this is a radical misunderstanding of its people: under Mao "China was not in essence disciplined, but temporarily terrorised".

A particular eye should be kept on the huge output of students, only 50 per cent of whom were finding satisfactory jobs on graduation in 2005. If it hits trouble, the CCP will have only itself to blame: it is, after all, the Communist Party which, in its first 27 years in power, accustomed the country to the rule of violence in politics.

Another source of tension will be between the government's wish to encourage entrepreneurial capitalism while inclining social policy to the left. As the Seventeenth Party Congress, in 2007, showed, a kind of politics is already operating within the CCP in this regard.

Most notable was a new law of contracts to give workers more stability of employment. At the same time, firing procedures have been made less easy and compensation increased. The new law came into force in January 2007, amid rumours of a cataclysm in the Chinese economy. So far it hasn't happened, but we should never underestimate the built-in volatility of the situation.

As post-Maoist China struggles to form an identity, its politics is like some gigantic jelly that has yet to set.

The same must also be true of its foreign policy.


China: A Wolf In The World?, is published by Gibson Square, price £14.99. To order a copy from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing is £2.75.

George Walden is a former MP and was a Minister in the Thatcher Government who had previously worked in Communist China and Soviet Russia. This is an edited extract from his new book China: A Wolf In The World?