To many in the West, China’s rise is an indisputable fact. Commentators celebrate its success in language not seen since an earlier generation of political tourists gushed over Mao’s China: in February, after returning from a visit to the country, the investor and columnist Steven Rattner averred that China’s “model of state-directed capitalism” had helped produce “the colossus that dominates global manufacturing while making extraordinary progress in fast-growing, technology-oriented fields