The world's attention is moving eastwards. China - for so long a more or less rural country with an economy based mostly on agriculture and a peasant workforce - is joining the first world with a vengeance. In the twenty-first century she will most likely be the only serious contender to the United States on the world stage in terms of culture and military might.
But China isn't - yet - a cultural contender for the US to face up to. Chinese movies don't dominate the world; there is no Chinese equivalent of the American Coke machine in every city from Lima to Sverdlovsk. The languages of China can't compete with English as an international medium of communication. In the cultural field, China lags behind because of its years of relative backwardness and insularity. The States, with no restrictions on free enterprise, has exported its culture all over the world. This has caused problems of its own, but the power of US culture is undeniable.
Will China ever compete in the cultural field? Well, maybe - at least in the eastern hemisphere. The western world already has an increased appetite for eastern media because of the popularity of, for example, Japanese animation and Bollywood movies from India. The event that might push China on to the world stage culturally is fast-approaching: the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The Chinese government is looking on the forthcoming Olympics as its chance to really make its mark on the popular consciousness of the western world and massively boost tourism to China. You can bet your bottom Yen that the old days of marching soldiers and communist propaganda will be long gone: there will be a massive effort to portray China as a modern, developed and maybe even - who knows - cool place to visit. The China brand will be built as never before.
And, to an extent, the brand building will be legitimate. China is a more prosperous place than it was, and, although problems remain in areas like Tibet, a less repressive regime. The drab communist state of just a couple of decades ago is long gone: a new China is here, and it's tired of punching below its weight.