Where the US leads...

One of the unplanned themes of this year's Davos already seems to be the decline and fall of the United States empire, so it was good to hear the US praised for leading the way by the moderator of a discussion on global risks, Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group risk management consultancy. "The last couple of days we have at least seen that the US does have global leadership - on the downturn."

Away from the financial woes of the world, one subject that has tested the best brains at previous meetings of the World Economic Forum has been how to advance the cause of democracy. But a senior Chinese figure had advice to well-intentioned westerners at one discussion earlier today on geopolitics. Wu Jianmin, China's former ambassaor to France and now President of the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, said: "You western countries, you decide the rules! You have got a habit of lecturing! 'You're a good boy, you bad girl, you're behaviour is not so good!' You look at the world in that way. Take democracy - the US elected its first president in 1789 and only 4 per cent of American citizens voted. American women got the right to vote in 1920 and black people in the 1960s. France gave women the right to vote in 1945. You are where you are after so many years of evolution."
China started down the path of democracy in 1978. "You want other people to behave exactly like you but it is impossible."

From David Charter, The Times Brussels correspondent, in Davos