Peter Wilson

Three main things struck me in the US this time:

a) optimism: this is a bad economic crisis. But there is an abiding faith in the US economy's ability to innovate, and more attention now being paid to international efforts to do the same thing. There was no interest in Government circles in playing a blame game, even when talking about global imbalances - people want to work together globally to pull the world into recovery.

b) pragmatism: all those I talked to used this word to describe Adminstration policies towards global issues. People are focussed on what works. On 4 March, Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a rare address to Congress. He spoke about the economic crisis, and what needed to be done at the London Summit on 2 April: the Congressmen applauding his speech came from both sides of the aisle.

c) expertise: in one block on Massachusetts Avenue, it is possible to see ten people inside of three hours, all of whom have a strong expertise in China policy, many of whom have served in recent Administrations. All of them are experts, most of them are policy makers. The openness of the US system, its ability to come up with new ideas, and the level of its expertise on China are quite remarkable. I will not forget walking into one Congressional office and hearing two US staffers (admittedly for my benefit) talking to each other in fluent Mandarin. Hard to think of other legislatures round the world where this is possible, outside China.

I went to New York too. We have a big interest in increasing our co-operation with China at the UN. We do a lot of work together on the P5. We are stepping it up.

Thank you for your comments. Cyril - you are right to prompt me - sorry to be such a jetlagged blogger. Alan, I agree with you that the blogosphere in China is not free. But it is freer than other forms of communication here, growing fast, and says some surprising things. The trend is clear, but the consequences are not. Your continued opinions on this are very welcome. Surat - I may be in a minority on this, and I don't have a settled view, but at the moment I am less worried about cyber-nationalism than some of my Chinese friends. This weekend's publication of a nationalist tract called Zhongguo Bu Gaoxing (China's Not Happy) shows clearly that nationalism cuts both ways - just as it does in the rest of the world.