Europe's economic troubles have forced it to continue looking to China for financing. But Beijing, which is thought to hold up to 30 percent of its reserves in euros, is driving an increasingly hard bargain.

Despite what some critics say, much has changed in the eurozone in the three years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Yet until now there has not been a plan - something that we urgently need as the euro crisis reaches potentially disastrous proportions.

Denmark is about to go to the polls, and Europe has been strangely absent from the election campaign. If the EU is to re-invent itself and survive, it must rediscover a constructive place in the national political conversations of member states.

The USA and Europe have something in common: they need China's money. In the coming decade, the three economic centres of the world have to find better ways to interact on financial and economic matters.

The European financial crisis is not just about the immediate debt problem: it's about Europe's longer term viability in a more competitive world. For the sake of future European generations we need to start the hard bargaining process over real and painful reforms straight away.