There are no reliable polls in China to assess the preference for the outcome of U.S. presidential election. The Chinese are conflicted but, in the end, probably prefer a Hillary Clinton victory.

Xi Jinping's foreign policy hinges on realizing "the China dream." But, beyond a nationalistic desire to "stand tall" on the global stage, few Westerners can articulate the underlying dynamics and motivations of Beijing's increasingly assertive behavior.

Most Americans, only marginally less ethnocentric today than twenty years ago, have a simplistic, nuance-free view of China and the Chinese people. Although apprehensive about the rise of an economic juggernaut and its impact on the American way of life, the images China casts up are rooted in the past.

In this one world, it sometimes seems a race is on between the newly empowered and the recently dispossessed. The truth is not only that both realities exist simultaneously, but that one is a condition of the other.