Deng Xiaoping would have never stood for this sort of publicity. The architect of modern China warned his disciples always to "keep a cool head and maintain a low profile". The Politburo has forgotten his advice.
With the Olympics approaching, China has never had a higher profile on the world stage. Barely a day passes without some startling and barely plausible fact: apparently a town the "size of London" is appearing on the Pearl River Delta every year.
Publishers have been unable to contain themselves over this sudden frenzy of information about how China is transforming the world. The piles of books about China seem to be growing at the same pace as those new megalopolises.
Most of these books pronounce that the future belongs to the Middle Kingdom. After all, even the World Bank has predicted that China will overtake America as the world's pre-eminent economy in less than two decades. It is worth remembering, however, that there were plenty of similar books about Japan's imminent global domination in the 1980s.
Rivals points out that behind the "smile diplomacy" of Asia, a power struggle between the three could undermine their mutual success.
Taro Aso, Japan's foreign minister, tells him: "China and India have hated each other for a thousand years. Why should things be different now?"
This political distrust has given birth to an arms race, with all three countries rushing to build larger navies.
Chinese submarines have sneaked into Japan's waters, while India has bought two aircraft carriers from Europe and is building a third. Emmott notes that China increased its defence spending by almost 18 per cent last year, to £23 billion; the government is keen to keep the plump generals of the People's Liberation Army on side with new toys.
With obvious flashpoints becoming ever more apparent in Tibet, Taiwan and North Korea, Emmott worries that the channels of communication between the countries and the West are poor. There were better communication links "between America and the Soviet Union during the Cold War".
Japan is also trying to offset China's increasing dominance in the region by helping to strengthen India, which is now its largest recipient of overseas aid. Japan financed the building of the New Delhi Metro and is now paying for a freight route connecting Calcutta, Delhi and Bombay.
In turn, China is imposing itself in the Indian Ocean, where it needs to secure safe routes for its tankers to bring in oil and metals from Africa and take its cheap trinkets to Europe.
The news that the country's president, Hu Jintao, regularly tours Latin America, Africa and even the Seychelles rarely makes the papers, but it helps to illuminate China's strategy of grabbing resources wherever it can.
