The world will be watching the body language at this week’s US-China summit. If Barack Obama and Xi Jinping can establish a friendly rapport, they will challenge the fatalistic notion that China and the US are doomed to confrontation. That pessimistic view is underpinned by an economic shift that the Americans find uncomfortable: by 2016, Mr Obama’s last year in office, China’s economy is likely to be larger than that of the US.

This prediction – made by both the International Monetary Fund and the OECD, the club of industrialised nations – is so sensitive that simply to state it invites howls of denial in the US. So, yes, it is true that these projections are flattered by adjusting for the cost-of-living in both countries. But if you use real exchange rates, the date when China might become number one is pushed back only a little – until 2018, according to The Economist. (Those extra two years are such a comfort.)

It is true that, even after China becomes the world’s largest economy, the average American will be far richer than the average Chinese. It is also true that the US military has a sophistication that China is not yet close to matching. The air is also cleaner in Washington than Beijing – and the burgers are tastier, too.