One of the themes that runs through this book is that, every now and again, something is said about China that resonates with an audience and gains popularity through repetition. It crystallizes an emerging but often ill-defined viewpoint or sentiment to become the sort of ‘theme of the time’ discussed in Chapter 1. Joshua Ramo's identification of a ‘Beijing Consensus’ is an excellent example. First proposed in an op ed in the Financial Times in May 2004 (Ramo, 2004a) and subsequently elaborated in an expanded format for the Foreign Policy Centre in London (Ramo, 2004b), it captured a general feeling, refined it, gave it a hook, and fed it back to a largely receptive audience. Those who looked in detail at what Ramo described as the fundamental elements of the Beijing Consensus were largely unconvinced that it was an accurate reflection of how China's political economy actually worked (Kennedy, 2010). The model as described by Ramo looked more like the aspirations that China's leaders were espousing for what a future model might look like, rather than an accurate reflection of the nature of the political economy at the time. But in some respects, the actual content of the Beijing Consensus was irrelevant. The Beijing Consensus, and the notion of a ‘China Model’ that succeeded it, both summed up the growing feeling that China might have something that others could learn from to provide an alternative to neoliberal development prescriptions. Moreover, it spoke to more than one audience. Those who had been hoping for an alternative to neoliberalism welcomed it, while supporters of liberal projects – and not just neoliberal ones – were concerned by it. It even started a debate within China itself over whether there really was a replicable model or not.

A revived China threat

Another example is the emergence of the argument that China deliberately deploys a form of ‘debt-trap diplomacy’. After Sri Lanka ceded control and ownership of Hambantota Port to China in 2017 after being unable to pay back loans, Brahma Chellaney (2017) argued that this was the result of a deliberate Chinese state strategy. China, he argued, had deliberately made loans so easy to get, and on cheaper terms than those offered by more traditional funders, that a number of developing countries had been lured into overextending themselves.