Within the first year of Xi Jinping’s elevation to the presidency, China has moved further ahead on its path to achieving primacy in the world. In the last week of November 2013, Beijing imposed an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the conflicted Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, much to the consternation of its feuding neighbours such as Japan and South Korea. Their howls of protest found expression in the US attempt to challenge China to promulgate what it has done in deed.

When the Berlin Wall was brought down in 1989, followed by the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union, one is unsure whether Francis Fukuyama was actually singing a ditty with the ‘End of History’ as the tag line (to the tune of ‘We Are the World …’, the famous Michael Jackson song). Fukuyama celebrated his ‘free at last!’ moment by writing a book called End of History, for which he has had to apologise a few times since.