I have, at least since 1989, been a believer that competition between the West and China is likely to dominate global history for the foreseeable future. By that I mean at least the next hundred years or so. I am a reluctant convert to the view that the contest has arrived at a new and more dangerous phase. The increasing belligerence of Chinese foreign policy in the last few years has overcome my doubts. It was a quarter century ago that I read World Economic Primacy: 1500-1990, by Charles P. Kindleberger. I held no economic historian in higher regard than…