In late january, as Donald Trump completed his first year back in the White House,
a group of scholars in Beijing penned a report thanking the American president.
Their gratitude was sarcastic, not an endorsement of Trumpian policy.
But the sentiment behind it was genuine.
Thank you, they wrote, to President Trump for driving away America's traditional allies.
Thank you for showing the world that China is more trustworthy and stable.
Thank you for putting economic pressure on China and thus pushing it to innovate.
And thank you, most of all, for illustrating that America is in its "imperial twilight",
a decaying and hypocritical power.
This report by Wang Wen and his colleagues at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University
was at the strident end of Chinese discussions about America.
Mr Wang, a cheerful nationalist, is known for his punchy language.
But he is not an outlier.
Many of China's leading intellectuals and officials believe that American power is terminally on the wane.
that "the East is rising and the West is declining."
(He has been diplomatic enough not to say explicitly it is China versus America.)
State media have long loved shining a harsh light on America's failings,
an unsubtle way of telling Chinese people they have it better.
Yet it would be a mistake to doubt the sincerity of China's verdict
that America's best days are behind it.