The first Industrial Revolution, the one that began in the late 18th century in Britain, was essentially a northwestern phenomenon. It did not initially affect a substantial proportion of the world’s population. It depended on two things: access to cheap coal, which was very conveniently located in places like the north of England, central Scotland and Belgium; and the ability to import cheap food and other agricultural raw materials, like cotton, from the rest of the world. In this first Industrial Revolution, fossil fuels were plentiful. It was money that was scarce. And money was scarce because the monetary system of the world was based on gold, a very scarce commodity indeed, no matter what you do. Compare that to the Industrial Revolution of our times, which is affecting a vastly larger proportion of humanity. Today, paper money is plentiful. There is no physical limit to the number of dollars that can be printed or otherwise created. It is commodities that are scarce.

The geopolitical dimension of the first Industrial Revolution was that when a power came along that was capable of matching Britain's industrial capacity, it could credibly challenge Britain as the dominant global power simply by cutting off its food supply – the core of German strategy against Britain in two world wars. Today, the key question of geopolitics is whether or not China will one day mount an analogous challenge to American primacy.

Is it likely that a China that feels it must grow at 10 per cent per annum – and therefore a China that insatiably needs to import commodities of every kind – is going to coexist peacefully with the United States for the foreseeable future? Only, it might be thought, if the United States grows so slowly in the wake of the credit crunch that it no longer feels itself to be in competition for those commodities.

Back in 2006 Chinese state television broadcast a 12-part documentary entitled The Rise of the Great Powers which charted the experience of nine empires, beginning with the Portuguese empire and including the United States. The remarkable thing about this series was that it was not a series of polemics against Western imperialism. On the contrary, an official statement that accompanied that broadcast declared: “China should study the experiences of empires it once condemned as aggressors bent on exploitation.” And the lessons were fascinating: the crucial importance of maritime power, the vital need for political unity.

All of this leads me to ask a question that was always implicit in the word, Chimerica, which was a pun from the outset. Could it be that Chimerica – the relationship between China and America that has been so crucial over the past decade – is now merely .?.?. a chimera?