My book-shelves in London groan with titles such as Eclipse: Living In the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance and When China Rules the World. But travel to China itself, and you will find plenty of people who are sceptical about the notion that the country is a rising superpower.

The sceptics are not just jaundiced western expats or frustrated Chinese liberals. Wen Jiabao, the country’s prime minister, does a pretty good job of talking down the Chinese miracle. He has called the country’s economic growth “unbalanced and unsustainable”. Last week, he warned that if China does not push ahead with political reform, it is vulnerable to another “cultural revolution” that could sweep away its economic gains.

Mr Wen’s comments were swiftly followed by the fall from grace of Bo Xilai, the controversial Communist party boss in Chongqing. This outbreak of high-level political infighting has been seized upon by China-sceptics as further evidence that the country’s much-vaunted stability is a myth.