When historians cast around for 21st-century hinge points they will settle on two events during the late summer and early autumn of 2008.
At the Beijing Olympics in August of that year China laid out its claim to be counted one of the world’s great powers. Weeks later, the west’s assumption of global hegemony was laid low by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Just as China began to push on the gates to power, the west threw them open.
Fast forward a decade and the geopolitical map has been redrawn. The lavish spectacle of the Beijing games has slipped from memory amid anniversary ruminations on the causes and consequences of the financial crash. Yet the coincidence was pivotal; the west’s lost decade became China’s march to power.
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