Minxin Pei recognizes some brutal consequences of the one-child policy, and implores for outsiders and Chinese alike to emphasize the senseless cruelty that such measures imply and work to ensure that they are never seen again.

Corruption, however, while a persistent illness with a debilitating and self-generating momentum, is not exclusive to China. If truth be told, China’s largesse abroad is also a major source of corruption and fraud, especially when it involves government-to-government transactions where transparency and accountability are absent.

A recent McKinsey Global Institute report titled "The China Effect on Global Innovation" finds that China has the potential to evolve from an innovation sponge - absorbing and adapting global technologies and knowledge - to an innovation leader. As a matter of fact, China is far better at innovation than is generally known and, in some kinds of innovation, is already emerging as a global leader.

Beginning this week, the Party must agree on the direction of China’s 13th Five-Year Plan, which is to be launched in 2016 and is supposed to enable the country to graduate from middle-income status by 2020 by reforming the quality of market competition, government accountability, and the provision of public goods and services

China's economic growth eased to 6.9 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, beating expectations but still the slowest since the global financial crisis, putting pressure on policymakers to roll out more support measures as fears of a sharper slowdown spook investors.

China certainly experienced a turbulent summer, owing to three factors: economic weakness, financial panic, and the policy response to these problems. But none on its own would have threatened the world economy. The assumption that China is now the global economy’s weakest link is highly suspect.

China’s recently announced cap-and-trade system to limit emissions is a positive development, but not new. China’s emissions trading system (ETS) has seen some capping, and very little trading. Additional challenges lie ahead in the pricing of carbon and introduction of unified measurement, reporting, and verification systems.

It is hard to avoid the U.S.-China bipolar narrative, although this over-simplistic analysis misses other measures of global power and insecurity. Xenia Wicket argues there is no single paramount power, but a variety of nodes of state and non-state actors.

China's exports fell less than expected in September, with monthly figures showing recovery, but a sharper fall in imports left economists divided over whether the country's ailing trade sector is showing signs of turning around.

As Xi Jinping heads to the United States he might need to check that he takes his irony meter with him, for there seems little evidence that anyone in the Western media has one they might be willing to lend him.