China is in the middle of a major anti-trust push, mostly targeting foreign firms. Beijing claims this isn’t a protectionist agenda, but it clearly is. That’s to be expected.

It has been in vogue lately to compare China’s rise and its relations with other world powers to the relationships between Germany and Great Britain in the years preceding The Great War. Others counter with rival historical analogies. But debating specifics of these comparisons risks losing sight of a broader point about great power politics.