China’s obligations as an economic power and its needs as a developing country are at the center of this piece by Reuters’ Paul Eckert:

Success in winning China’s help with global tasks like reviving the world economy or fighting climate change can depend on which China you’re talking to: the established economic powerhouse or the developing country.

China the new power holds $2 trillion in foreign reserves, including about $1 trillion in U.S. debt, and increasingly lectures rich nations on economic management. Developing China has tens of millions of rural poor among its 1.3 billion people and falls in the same World Bank per capita income rankings as Cameroon and Guatemala.

The emergence of China as a heavyweight economic player with a relatively poor population has economists scrambling for new definitions, perplexes policymakers in other countries and has some competitors crying foul.