The story of One-Belt-One-Road

A third reason for the timing is the international picture. Many of America’s friends and allies in the region were dismayed by Mr Trump’s decision to walk away from the TPP trade agreement, an agreement which his predecessor had said was vital to the US setting the rules of the road in Asia rather than letting China set them.

Mr Xi’s new push for the belt and road initiative is the same kind of canny political opportunism that spurred his defence of globalisation at the Davos forum in January.

Indeterminate outcome

So China’s president has been lucky in his timing and bold in seizing the stage. And it will certainly look to his guests as if he usually gets what he wants. No country puts on a grand spectacle of purpose and progress quite like China does.

This weekend Beijing’s sky will be blue. Smog, traffic snarl and ghost towns littered with white elephant infrastructure will be safely far from view.

This is the show and tell of Xi Jinping’s story… China the can-do master builder inspiring awe in all beholders and giving hope that what China has achieved at home it might replicate elsewhere.

But the truth is that Mr Xi’s will works as an organising principle only for some of the people some of the time, and usually only for a very small number of highly specific objectives. Even in Beijing, the sky is not always blue, the traffic is often snarled and resources are often misallocated.

How much more is this true beyond the glittering capital. China is an economy with a perilous debt overhang precisely because its investors are just as fallible as those of other countries.

Yes, on the right project and for the right price, Chinese money and Chinese master builders can work infrastructure wonders. But that was always the case. The belt and road is an important initiative, but one of indeterminate boundaries, duration and outcome.

Mr Xi’s guests should not make the mistake of thinking all Chinese players will do his bidding and all bedtime stories will come true.