In the article titled "US strategic rivalry with growing China will prove mistaken in long term" published on this newspaper on May 13, the author drew on relevant facts about the history of China to show that a policy of containment of China was based on false assumptions about the country, but he did not go further to show that the second millennium resolved emerging forces by conflict as an almost automatic event.

War and conflict were constant in the second millennium throughout Europe and beyond. In the last century alone upward of 100 million people died in wars.

In my personal opinion, attempts at international governance, the League of Nations and then the United Nations, failed to arrest the use of war to maintain power. It is the advent of nuclear power, with its horrific effects, that might prevent war being used as a conflict solver.

It will not happen without attempts to dare aspirants to fight a much more powerful nation. But, in the end, and hopefully without trial, the merchants of war will realize it is a dead instrument that cannot be limited in its impact.

It is then that nations will see the benefits of a European approach, where today after 1,000 years of killing, we have had 60 years of relative peace, and no European thinks of another European nation invading.

It is because Europe has seen the total destructivity of war, and that other means must be used to deal with differences, however serious they are.

As the world is tested economically by competing free trade areas, so the resolution will be in a global compact that updates the WTO, as no longer can a wall of protection be built around a nation or nations.

The innovative and creative ways to bring goods to market will overpower any false barriers.

So as global economics moves toward a global field, global security must move in that direction too.

These trends may take 100 years or more.

It depends on how long it takes nations, especially the powerful ones, to accept the fact that the world has changed and has moved beyond a single power source.

Let the Chinese dream hold up anti-corruption as a real policy to cleanse China's soul, and let its global policy act, understandably, for China.

But within a continued commitment to a world of peace and interdependence where open markets, balanced with a need to protect new economies' developing capabilities, are the catalyst for sustainable progress.

Stephen Perry, chairman of the 48 Group Club,  an independent business network committed to promoting UK-China links