Some hot topics come and go: the End of History; Imperial Overstretch; Europe as Venus, the US as Mars. And some keep coming back, sometimes after long pauses. The Rise of China is back, with a vengeance, in the papers, on television, in magazines, conferences, seminars, and so on. It is as though people have suddenly woken up to the fact that China is a major power again, and it may be that both the benefits and perils of this phenomenon are being exaggerated. This tends to happen whenever the west feels challenged by a non-western people. It may also be that western fears are not exaggerated, but simply misplaced. For the past several hundred years, China has been either a "sleeping dragon" or on the rise. Many people might prefer the sleeping mode. Either way, the Chinese dragon is seen as a fearsome beast that has excited the greed, envy, terror and fascination of many generations of Europeans and Americans.

Much of the reporting in the west about China's extraordinary economic growth - skyscraper cities sprouting like concrete forests, entire industries taken over, massive markets opening up - has a tone of awe, sometimes tempered by environmental worries and the odd caveat about human rights. "Nine per cent growth," said one American observer, "is not a boom, it is a transformation." But there is a strong hint of anxiety, too: will China dominate the world? What can the west do to compete with this strange and ancient civilisation of worker bees and autocrats?

Fear of the far east probably goes back at least to the fifth century, when Attila the Hun's warriors left a trail of devastation from the Eastern Roman Empire all the way to what is now France. Then Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes reached the outskirts of Vienna in 1241. But the modern idea of yellow peril is commonly ascribed to the Americans. The influx of Chinese immigrants, in the late 19th century, provoked fears of economic competition (those worker bees), heathenism, and racial pollution. To protect his purity and livelihood, the white man had to save civilisation from the oriental menace, represented in the 1920s by Sax Rohmer's Dr Fu Manchu.

In fact, as is the case with so many New World prejudices, yellow peril also has a European provenance. Kaiser Wilhelm II was obsessed by it. He sent ferocious messages to his cousin Nicky, the Russian tsar, urging him to defend the borders of civilisation against "the yellow danger". These missives were often illustrated by the kaiser himself with cartoons of flying Buddhas emerging from thunderclouds to destroy the western world. Kaiser Bill's outbursts were usually provoked by the murder of Christian missionaries in China. When the Boxers attacked missionaries in 1900, he sent German troops to China as part of a western (and Japanese) effort to crush the rebellion. Seeing off his soldiers at Wilhelmshaven, he couched the expedition in oddly religious terms.

"Show yourselves Christians," he cried, "happily enduring in the face of the heathens! ... Give the world an example of virility and discipline. Anyone who falls into your hands falls on your sword! Just as the Huns under King Etzel created for themselves a thousand years ago a name which men still respect, you should give the name of German such cause to be remembered in China for a thousand years that no Chinaman, no matter whether his eyes be slit or not, will dare look a German in the face."

Huns were hardly Christians, of course, but never mind. In fact, the Christian factor is with us still. Americans, in particular, have a history of missionary zeal in China. The vast empire of heathens was always a temptation for religious entrepreneurs who wished to bring hundreds of millions of souls to the bosom of the Lord. When George Bush recently visited China, he said little about human rights, but what little he did say mostly concerned the rights of Christians. "May God bless the Christians of China," he wrote at a church in Beijing. This was entirely in keeping with a certain tradition in east-west relations.

Western fascination with China was, however, not always hostile, inspired by religious zeal, or even fearful. For much of European history, China was far enough away to be an abstraction, a kind of fantasy kingdom, an exotic utopia, where everything seemed to be back to front or upside down. This was true as late as the 18th century, the great era of literary and artistic chinoiserie, even though there had been enough accurate accounts of China to get a more realistic picture by then.

But exoticism has its own merits. It allows one to dream of an ideal model that can be contrasted with the discontents and imperfections of one's own part of the world. A true Romantic will insist on things being different and see any mark of western influence as an abomination. One of the great literary dreamers of China, who actually knew the country quite well, was the French writer Victor Segalen (1878-1919). He insisted on difference, on mystery, on a world that was literally impenetrable. The creeping uniformity of the modern world, driven by commerce and tourism, and everything people once described as "progress" and now call "globalisation", was insufferable to him. China was the last frontier of exoticism, but even then, in the 1910s, it was already tainted in Segalen's eyes. In a letter to a friend, who was about to visit China for the first time, he wrote: "Trust me: scorn the coast. Forget Shanghai and the ports along the lower river. The edge of China has 'advanced' like the bruised surface of a fruit. Inside the pulp is still delicious."

This pulpy dream of Chinese authenticity was, for Segalen, largely aesthetic: ancient inscriptions on stone monuments, the flowery manners inside the imperial court, the stylised conventions of the Peking Opera, that kind of thing. China, or rather the idea of China, especially in the 18th century, was not always so quaint, however. To Voltaire and his fellow philosophers of the Enlightenment, China represented a model of rationalism. They saw China as a society of superior wisdom, run by gentlemen selected purely on scholarly merit. Unlike France, say, which was still under the thumb of an absolute monarch, surrounded by obscurantist priests. Voltaire found "the religion of the men of letters of China ... admirable. No superstitions, no absurd legends, none of those dogmas which insult reason and nature ..."

Never mind that China was ruled by a monarchy no less tyrannical than the court of Louis XIV. And Voltaire was not blind to the superstitions of Chinese clerics. But the idea of a great society run by scholars was bound to appeal to intellectuals. And the tyrannical aspect of imperial politics, far from being a black mark, added to China's mystique. Intellectuals often have a weakness for strongmen, because they can take hold of ideas and actually carry them out, unfettered by the messy compromises of more libertarian regimes. Dictators "get things done".

This was one of the reasons Chairman Mao enjoyed such a good press among western intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Raymond Williams and André Malraux. Like a true emperor, Mao, often presented as the epitome of the Oriental philosopher king, who wrote classical poetry in his idiosyncratic calligraphy, could transform a backward society. And blessed with the wisdom and subtlety of his ancient civilisation, he could even help to transform the world. There were echoes of Voltaire in this type of Mao worship: China as a model of reason, led by men of ideas who did their best to sweep away religious superstitions and other cobwebs from the dark, feudal past.

Few of the worshippers were especially interested in actual life in China. To them, as with the philosophers two centuries before, China was an abstraction to be held up in protest against the prevailing conditions back home. In fact, you didn't have to be a Maoist, or even a leftist, to be awed by the mystique of Chinese power. Henry Kissinger was so impressed by Mao, and especially by his loyal paladin, Zhou Enlai, that he behaved rather like a fawning bearer of tribute to the imperial court. And the notion that Chinese authoritarianism may be a little rough, but at least gets things done, is still a common feature of western writings in praise of China. Many a rightwing fat cat will tell you that the Chinese capitalist transformation could only have happened under the stern rule of the Communist party of China. Rupert Murdoch, among others, is of that persuasion, as are some people who used to be devoted Maoists. It may actually be true, but what does this tell us about the nature of China's political economy, that sinister combination of crony capitalism and political dictatorship?

This is where greed comes in. Of all the potential markets in the world, China has long been seen by western merchants as the biggest prize of all. The sheer size of its population is one reason. And the Chinese have had a long reputation as born business people. This rested less, in the past, on the experience of doing business in China proper than on encounters with Chinese traders in south-east-Asian port cities. And yet, for one reason or another, China has a history of refusing to let foreign traders pluck its juiciest fruits. In the 19th century the guns of the Royal Navy had to blast China open for trade, then mostly in opium.

The main barrier to trade in China has always been the traditional role of government. Chinese officials, keen to preserve their privileges, tried to keep the merchant class under firm bureaucratic control. To trade with China in the imperial past required kowtowing to the Chinese court, and the presentation of many gifts. When Lord Macartney embarked on a trade mission to the Chinese emperor in 1793, he was followed by 600 packages of presents, borne by 3,000 coolies. But his refusal to go down on both knees to the Chinese sovereign meant that his request for permission to open Chinese ports to British trade was turned down. "Our empire," he was informed, "possesses all things in prolific abundance."

Things have changed, of course, but not entirely. The way some western capitalists indulge Chinese Communist party officials with flattery and tributes, often putting up with snubs and other indignities that they would never tolerate in their own countries, has strong echoes of the ill-fated Macartney mission. And just as they did in trading ports before the Opium War, Chinese officials still often conspire with local businessmen to limit unwelcome foreign competition. But lust for that great Chinese market is still enough of an incentive for the foreigners to keep on trying.

The promise of market-driven riches is surely the main reason why democratic governments have pretty much given up on trying to press the Chinese rulers to improve human rights and liberalise their politics. The potential prize is simply too great to get distracted by such trifles as forced labour camps, the lack of free speech, the torture of religious people, the oppression of ethnic minorities, or the nonexistence of independent trade unions.

Western politicians and some business people say that business is actually the surest route to political freedom. They repeat the old mantra about capitalism expanding the middle class, and the middle class demanding democracy. But the rise of China may not conform to this pattern. The Chinese middle class is indeed expanding, just as happened in Japan more than a hundred years ago. But China is not becoming more democratic. The Chinese Communist party appears to have struck a bargain with the educated urban elite, the very people whose children demonstrated on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and other cities all over China, in 1989. In exchange for political obedience, for relinquishing democratic rights, the middle class is promised stability, order, and ever increasing prosperity. It is in some ways a traditional east-Asian bargain, based on a certain reading of Confucianism. The Singaporeans have accepted it, and to some extent even the Japanese. It is an authoritarian capitalist alternative to liberal democracy, and its success should be a cause for concern, at least for those, in and out of China, who care about democracy.

If China keeps on rising economically, without opening up its politics, the Asian model will be a boon to all those who believe that democratic politics are redundant, or even a noxious threat to stability. All those who believe that societies should be run by autocrats and technocrats, by media moguls and dictatorial managers, who know what is best, will be heartened by the Chinese example. We already see the tendency in Thailand, ruled by the media tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra. We see inept shades of it in Berlusconi's Italy, and even in America; think of the way Bush dismisses any opposition to his policies as "just playing politics", as though it were a form of sabotage rather than the stuff of democracy.

It is sometimes said that businessmen form one of the pillars of democracy. But the popularity of Pinochet in business circles, and among certain Tory politicians, showed that autocracy can be just as congenial, if not more so. Who would not like to do business in a country with no trade unions? Far from being a threat, the rise of China, for many businesses, is an opportunity. But if the success of the Chinese model is worrying to democrats, its collapse could prove no less of a danger. The most disturbing thing about autocratic capitalism may not actually be its purported stability, but its inherent instability.

Centuries of fearful, fascinated or greedy mythology about China has given us the idea that China is unique. But it is not. Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II, the father of yellow peril, had struck a similar deal with its expanding middle class: order and industrial growth in exchange for a retreat from politics. The problem with this system is that a sudden drop in economic prosperity creates intense disorder, with no free political institutions to absorb the shock. This can easily lead to revolution and wars. It has before.

China may well continue to rise for a long time, and the drop in prosperity may not be an immediate prospect. But when it comes, it would be safer for China, and the rest of the world, if the Chinese had the freedom to express critical opinions, vote out the rascals, and find ways to cope with a crisis that rest on popular consent. This means that business with China should continue, but not at the price of political acquiescence, of keeping quiet about human rights and civil liberties. The Chinese middle class, for the time being, may have no other choice. Western governments do.