Chinese President Hu Jintao says that China aims to lift the size of its economy by 2020 to $4 trillion, four times what it was in 2000, and just behind where Japan, the world’s second largest economy, stands now.

After a stunning growth rate of 9.5 percent for the past 15 months and 9.3 percent for the year before that, most analysts expect China's government-induced cooldown finally will start to have an effect later this year. They expect growth this year will slow to about 8 percent -- still better than any other significant economy in Asia and more than enough to keep China's mantle as a global engine of expansion.

The Eurozone would give up its butter mountain for a third of that 8% growth rate. China is probably already lifting more people out of poverty more rapidly than has ever been achieved before. It means that the economic landscape of the new century could be unrecognizable before we are even a fifth of the way into it.

Of course, time and chance happeneth to them all, and it may not come about. At some point there will be pressure from those gaining economic power to have a bigger stake in decision-making, and it could all go haywire. Or the internal strains of the transition might force a major slowdown. Still, it is thrilling to watch, and the massive wealth creation makes nonsense of the idea that people only become richer by making others poorer.

It will cause environmental problems, but it will bring the wealth to solve them. And it will make us richer in the process as we trade our services and luxuries for their cheaper manufactures. Chinese students already constitute a huge proportion of foreigners at UK universities, and we look forward to welcoming increased numbers of Chinese tourists and business visitors.

Nations can line themselves up behind many banners, but "enrichez-vous" is one of the most benign.