China has good agenda for global growth

For most of the past 35 years, China's policymakers have set their focus on the domestic economy. Though they had to be increasingly aware of their country's growing impact on the global economy, they had no strategy to ensure that China's neighbors gained from its economic transformation.

But now China does have such a strategy, or at least is rapidly developing one: it extends well beyond Asia, embracing Eastern Europe and the east coast of Africa. A key element of China's strategy is the recently established Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and to some extent the BRICS' New Development Bank, established last year. Both banks are obvious alternatives to the Western-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Also vital to the new strategy are the prospective Silk Road Economic Belt through Central Asia to the Black Sea, and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road from the South China Sea, through the Strait of Malacca, across the Indian Ocean to the eastern Mediterranean via the Red Sea.