It’s a common trick to make yourself look bigger than you are to win a fight. Rather rarer is for one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies frantically and consistently to try to hide its size. China, the 500kg panda in the global economic room, is trying an increasingly unconvincing tactic of squeezing itself into a corner and hoping no-one notices it is there.

Whether China’s GDP really is now surpassing America’s, as the International Comparison Program reported last week, is a matter for statistical debate – intense but inevitably inconclusive, given the uncertainties involved. What is clear is that China would prefer to take silver rather than gold in this particular event, an outcome for which Beijing lobbied hard during the assessment.

China has repeatedly refrained from accepting that it is a leading power in the world economy with responsibilities to match. Yet a close examination of Beijing’s actions in a variety of different arenas shows not that China wishes to punch below its weight all the way down the fight card, but that it is choosing its bouts with great precision.