The big debate about the Chinese economy
has long pitted those who see it as a bubble waiting to burst
against those who judge it a sustainable success.
A new debate is now emerging, which is potentially far nastier.
Much of the world falls into one camp: admiring China's accomplishments,
but also reeling from a deluge of Chinese exports.
In the other camp is China, utterly convinced of the rightness of its economic model.
This debate is not so much about what the future may bring but about defining the economy's basic condition today.
The external view, held by many foreign officials and economists, is that China is beset with challenges,
from persistent deflation to a collapsing property market and anaemic consumer spending.
Exporting the fruits of industrial overcapacity to the rest of the world is seen as a lifeline.
The official Chinese view, by contrast, is that these problems are sideshows to the main event:
an economy breaking through to new technological frontiers.
This is not an abstract disagreement.
It helps explain the ferocity of the trade war between America and China.
Prominent members of the Trump administration
believe China's economy is so weak that tariffs and export controls will have it crying for mercy.
Mr Trump himself flirts with this:
on October 12th he posted that
Xi Jinping,