CHINA is a country everyone should get to know. It is big; it has 1.4 billion people. It has the world's second largest economy after the United States. It is investing more than any other country in developing modern technologies. Its high-tech expenditure is increasing at a rate four times faster than that of the United States. Soon we will see Chinese robots all over the world doing what human beings do now.

And the United States is now getting engaged in a trade war that some believe may heat up into a real war. Those who think that that might happen are under the influence of Thucydides, the Greek sage, who centuries ago wrote about the Peloponnesian war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. The Greek philosopher-historian believed that if an established great power is challenged by the one that is rising, war between the two is the inevitable result.

Graham Allison, a Harvard University professor, organised a research group to study whether Thucydides was right. They looked at 16 such encounters since the 15th century in which the leading power faced competition from a rising one. In all but four the challenge led to war. Is that likely to happen in the case of the United States and China? Those who read between the lines in Allison's conclusion of his research in his book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape the Thucydides Trap? - as the newsmagazine The Economist did in its review - believe the confrontation between these two mighty states will also lead to open war.