Shambaugh says that few Chinese companies, apart from telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, electronics goods maker Haier Group, computer company Lenovo Group Ltd and State-owned enterprise oil companies China National Offshore Oil Corp and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, have had much impact in overseas markets.

He points out that of the 71 Chinese companies in this year's Fortune 500, only three make more than 50 percent of their revenues outside China.

"They are not really multinational corporations. They are Chinese companies which make most of their money inside China."

Shambaugh, who speaks fluent Chinese with which he sometimes intersperses with English, has taken five years to write the book, including one year at the Academy of Social Sciences Institute of World Economics and Politics, part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Chinese government think tank.

A leading commentator in China, he has been to the country every year since 1979, 34 consecutive years.

"It is now unrecognizable compared with the first time I came here - everything about it. It has certainly surprised me the level of development that has taken place," he says.

He doesn't deny that China is now an economic force by the sheer size of its economy.

"Well China has a significant economic role in the world. That's a general phenomenon. I've argued that if you look at the economics, being the world's second-largest economy is a measure of significance: foreign exchange reserves of $3.9 trillion, that is a measure of significance. But it is more about quality than quantity. That is what I am arguing.

Questioning China's real achievements