Its leaders dare to celebrate their new will

For once, it is not the reading of the Chinese press, always orders, who regaled in the aftermath of the Summit of the G20, the Communist power in Beijing, but rather one of several major Western media which have retained the London meeting, the spectacular emergence of "superpower" Chinese. The country became less than thirty years the third largest economy in the world, would be now decided to weigh the fate of the world.

It is true that Chinese postures have changed. Just twenty years ago, after the brutal suppression of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, Deng Xiaoping ordered the country to be very careful on the international scene. China should be low profile, hide his abilities and wait for his time, was the former strongman of the regime. Long, the Beijing authorities themselves are severed behind this sentence to justify the lack of involvement of their "nation still developing" in the management of the Affairs of the world.

But since the beginning of the 21st century and the escalation of China's GDP, this diplomatic shyness dissipates. The brutal economic crisis has even accelerated, these past months, the surge of confidence in the country. Convinced that the traditional powers, and particularly the United States, have shown, with the collapse of their growth, the boundaries of their model of development, China has its own success and the likely maintenance of the increase in GDP over the 6 in 2009. Its leaders dare to celebrate their new will. Last February, at Cambridge, Wen Jiabao made shiver foreign diplomats speaking of his country as a "great power". A few days later, Xi Jinping, Vice President, has him, away against "aliens who, after having fulfilled their stomachs have nothing else to do than to point their fingers to what we do."

Even beyond the speeches, Beijing began to harden his actions. Sickened by the meeting between Nicolas Sarkozy and the Dalai Lama, the Chinese Government did not hesitate to cancel the Summit was held in France with the countries of the European Union, yet its first commercial partners last December. The United States, too, recently felt the resurgence of China insurance. Early March, Chinese boats, who usually avoid any friction with foreign fleets, "harassed" an American vessel patrolling in the South China Sea. Just before the G20 Summit, Washington had also to respond to the offensive of Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor of the Central Bank, which has accused the dollar too weighed on the functioning of the international monetary system and suggested replacing it by a "supranational reserve currency." But once the surprise of the announcement passed, most observers provided that this "unrealistic" project was that the expression of the concerns of Beijing for the value of its 1,000 billion in assets. London, Hu Jintao has also completely overshadowed it to focus on other issues considered crucial for his country.

Because if the attitude of Beijing has actually changed, the country is always reluctant to exceed, on the international scene, the defence of its own interests. Last week, Chinese President, whose country is the biggest polluter on the planet, and especially worked to limit the environmentalists of the G20 ambitions and scuttled the projects of Gordon Brown, who wanted to force its partners to commit to spend more for "green projects". While affirming support a strengthening of the financial regulation, Hu Jintao has also struggled against the inclusion of Macau and Hong Kong in a list of tax havens to be punished.

In all the major international institutions, China is more and more his voice but still refuses to confront global problems, to which all "responsible stakeholder" of the world should know answer. Buttressed with its rigid conception of respect for national sovereignty, it is reluctant to fight against nuclear proliferation, genocide or civil wars. Repeatedly, she helped "friendly" dictatorships of the Zimbabwe, Sudan or North Korea to escape severe sanctions.

Yesterday, while the international community as a whole condemned the Pyongyang missile firing, Beijing moved to call the parties to exercise restraint, to the risk of being in turn criticized the narrowness of its strategy and its inability to assume the responsibilities of a real "superpower."