As China rises, conflict with West rises too

These days, China is no longer emerging. It has emerged–sooner and more assertively than had been expected before the wrenching global financial crisis, which badly damaged all the established industrial powers, from the United States to Europe and Japan. Its currency, the renminbi, is frozen at an undervalued level, and Internet controls are stricter than ever–even as Google, one of America's most prominent companies, threatens to leave. The severe recession has fast-forwarded history, catapulting an unprepared world into a period of uneasy cohabitation between the United States, the No. 1 economy, and its eventual successor. "China is the West's greatest hope and greatest fear," said Kristin Forbes, a former member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and one of hundreds of top officials and executives flocking to this winter resort for the annual World Economic Forum, which is taking place Wednesday through Sunday.