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The emergence of China and other 'rising powers' has effectively ended the period of unipolarity that followed the end of the Cold War. The gradual shift of power to the East entails both provisionalisation of the role of the United States as global hegemon and the provincialisation of Europe. Modernity and modernisation will continue but their pursuit is no longer synonymous with incorporation into the West. At the same time, this shift does not necessarily imply any fundamental challenge to the values of capitalism or 'empire' (however defined), but rather a transfer of power within a functioning global system. The combination of a change of epic dimensions with a strong element of continuity is redolent of the Roman concept oftranslatio imperii, of a succession from one ephemeral empire to the next, thereby attaining a semblance of eternity that empires aspire to but, almost by definition, do not achieve.