'Hide your strength, bide your time.'

This famous quote of Deng Xiaoping, the architect of modern China, drove Beijing's foreign policy for decades. Deng, whose reforms led to the opening of China's economy in the late 1970s, wanted China to focus on internal development, avoid confrontation with major powers and gradually strengthen itself until it was ready to assert global influence. Successive Chinese leaders followed that piece of advice.

It was because of this reason that when China was undergoing major transformation, the outside world had little or no clue about. China's economy grew by an average 10 per cent annually for three consecutive decades. At the turn of this century, China surpassed all other developed countries and is the world's second largest economy today. As China grew in not just economy but other fields such as technology and military hardware, it is now opening up to the world.

Last week, I travelled to China at the invitation of the International Department of........

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