None other than Zbigniew Brzezinski, eminent United States foreign policy guru and the man who gave the former Soviet Union "its Vietnam", thundered via the New York Times that the current summit between presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao is "the most important top-level United States-Chinese encounter since Deng Xiaoping's historic trip more than 30 years ago".
Dr Zbig could have extended his hyperbole to the cosmic geopolitical shifts operating these past 30 years, not to mention 40 years, if one considers the historic meeting between Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon and the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong in 1972 in Beijing.
And that brings us to the current Google-GM summit. Yes, for the toiling global masses, this is what it's all about. China is like Google. You just can't live without it. If you're searching for something, anything, you hit Google. The US is like General Motors. With so much to offer on show, from the practical (Hyundai) to the glamorous (Aston Martin), who in his right mind wants to buy a car from GM? (OK, successful entrepreneurs in Chengdu do buy made-in-China Buicks, but that's another story.)
Nothing paints the overall picture so starkly as the mad scrambling that has been going on for weeks by every single Wall Street CEO to assure a seat at the - imperial - White House state dinner in homage to Hu. It's already one of the defining marks of the young century - sturdy Anglo Saxon advocates of laissez faire transformed into ardent defenders of Chinese-style authoritarian capitalism. What else? After all, China saved Western turbo-capitalism - fulfilling the Little Helmsman's plans to the letter. Not to mention China controls 21% - and counting - of all US Treasury debt, and the Chinese central bank is swimming in 25% of the world's reserves.
