Samuel Huntington must be laughing in his grave. More than a decade ago the prescient political scientist popularised the term Davos Man. This was the cosmopolitan proponent of “transnationalism” who dreamt of a world in which borders would disappear, states would be obsolete, and all would be governed by elections and markets. Globalisation, to him, was not just about economic interconnectedness but a universal vision encompassing political governance, international relations and social values.

This week, in an irony of the first order, the World Economic Forum welcomes President Xi Jinping, who took to the Swiss Alps to deliver the keynote address. Davos Man’s view of China has been ambiguous at best. Even as the global elites allowed Beijing into some of the institutions that govern the world order, such as the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund, they continued their finger-wagging about global responsibilities and even internal matters such as democracy and human rights. China has been branded a “free rider”. It is seen as a holdout to the vision of a uniform set of rules for global governance.

The west and Japan have refused to recognise China as a “market economy”, as they pledged to do when it acceded to the WTO 16 years ago. The now defunct US-led effort to establish the world’s largest free-trade block through the Trans-Pacific Partnership pointedly excluded Beijing.