LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM: China is taking up cricket as a sport with an eye on the 2011 World Cup, and has engaged Australian and Indian trainers.

Singaporean minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew highlighted this new instance of China's potential and its enormous hopes, which the world had witnessed in full at the Olympics in Beijing.

He described these elements of China's unstoppable but peaceable rise at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), in response to several questions that touched on China's status.

Besides sports prowess, China has also sent astronauts into space, he said.

Tonight, China is scheduled to send three astronauts into space and one of them is expected to make a historic walk in space for the country.

"I see all the signs of power already in ascendance, without them having to use physical forms of power," Lee said at the one-hour dialogue Wednesday (24 Sept), the final day of his three-day visit to Britain.

At the same time, there is a cohesion of Chinese policy and drive in the execution of policy, he added.

But though China's potential is vast, it has to tackle growing challenges like climate change, Lee said.

Smog is back in Beijing after the Olympics. To clean up Beijing permanently will incur a very big cost, he said.

While greenness, for Singapore, was a matter of survival, "it wasn't for them. Just go for growth", he said of the Chinese ethos.

However, Beijing is now switching to the yardstick of sustainable growth. "But between the goal and the final execution are long years," he added.

Other possibly prickly issues facing China that Lee discussed were its contest with mega-consumers like India for oil--and the fact that it may make little headway on North Korea.

When one participant wanted to know how energy security will impinge on India-China relations, he pointed to the bottom line: "It's a free market competition."

This means India will have to outbid China on price. So it is a case of economic rivalry, not military conflict, and the minister mentor believes China will not threaten oil producers if they sell to India.

This is the picture, even though Beijing has oil interests in Angola and Sudan, and is making friends with the Central Asian republics, he noted.

The good news is China will play by the rules of the game. "They are quite convinced they can win that game. That's why they are playing by the rules of the game," he said.

On nuclear proliferation, Lee said that though he was not an expert on the issue, he was pessimistic.

He never believed the Chinese would be able to get North Korea to "give up" nuclear weapons. Pyongyang may be prepared to put them into a "glass box", but nuclear power is a matter of "survival" for them.

North Korea had seen how China "abandoned" it for South Korea, he said, when the Chinese sought the latter's technology and investments.

"So they are not going to trust China," he said of Pyongyang's sentiments.

The IISS is a leading authority on political-military conflict. MM Lee was invited to speak before some 200 members and to inaugurate the Lee Kuan Yew Conference Room at the institute.

After completing his visit to Britain Wednesday, Lee left for a three-day trip to France where he is meeting political and business leaders. (By LEE SIEW HUA/ The Straits Times/ ANN)