In The Hundred-Year Marathon Michael Pillsbury states that “China . . . regularly hacks into foreign commercial entities . . . making [it] the world’s largest perpetrator of IP theft. This allows the Chinese to cheat their way up the technology ladder.”

Pillsbury is one of the most influential American thinkers on US-China relations. The book is more than a call to recognise reality: it is a call to arms. On one central point Mr Pillsbury is certainly right: China’s rise is the great political event of our times. Getting the response right is crucial. It is so easy to get it wrong. Today, I fear, the US is getting it frighteningly wrong.