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The year is 2050, and a diplomatic dispute between China and Britain risks escalating into all-out war. But rather than launching a barrage of ballistic missiles and jet fighters to destroy key British targets, Beijing has a far simpler plan for defeating its enemy. It simply turns off the lights.

At the flick of a switch elite teams of Chinese hackers attached to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launch a hi-tech assault on Britain’s computer systems, with devastating consequences. Within minutes the country’s power stations, water companies, air traffic control, government and financial systems are totally shut down.

Britain’s attempt to respond by launching nuclear-armed Trident missiles at China has to be abandoned, as the computer systems that control the weapons system are no longer functioning.

At a time when relations between China and Britain are supposed to be improving, the prospect of Beijing launching a cyber attack against Britain and its allies might seem to be the stuff of fantasy.

After all, it is only two years since Gordon Brown made a highly successful visit to Beijing where the two countries agreed to increase trade by 50 per cent by this year, and to cooperate on a range of issues, such as global warming. As one of the world’s leading economic powers, China’s role on the world stage has transformed dramatically over the past decade, with the huge wealth that Beijing has accumulated from its impressive economic growth playing a key role in supporting the global economy.

As a consequence Western policymakers have intensified their efforts to persuade China to draw on its economic prosperity and play a constructive role in world affairs, such as persuading North Korea and Iran to give up their controversial nuclear weapons programmes.

But last week Mr Brown came up against an altogether different kind of China, one that appears to have no interest in behaving like a proper ally.

For weeks British ministers and officials tried desperately to persuade their Chinese counterparts to commute the death sentence passed on Akmal Shaikh, a mentally ill 53-year-old minicab driver from North London who was convicted of smuggling four kilos of heroin into China two years ago.

Mr Brown is said to have personally raised Shaikh’s case with the Chinese premier, Wen Jiaboa, when they met at last month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen, and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, made similar entreaties to the Chinese embassy in London.

But for all the talk of improved bilateral ties between the two countries, the Chinese took absolutely no notice. At 10.30am on Tuesday, Shaikh was put to death by lethal injection in the remote province of Urumqi, and his body disposed of in an unmarked grave. And when Messrs Brown and Miliband sought to remonstrate with the Chinese authorities for pressing ahead with Shaikh’s execution, all they received from Beijing in response was a firm admonition not to interfere in China’s internal affairs.

At a stroke the cold reality of China’s attitude to the outside world was laid bare for all to see. Rather than being a partner that can be trusted to work with the West on issues of mutual concern, the Chinese have demonstrated that their default position is that Beijing’s only real priority it to look after its own interests, whether it is enforcing its zero tolerance policy on drug abuse or refusing to cooperate with global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

China’s self-centred approach to international affairs should come as no surprise to the British government. American President Barack Obama was similarly rebuffed during his state visit to Beijing last November. Mr Obama arrived in China hoping to get Chinese cooperation on a range of issues, such as North Korea, financial stability and human rights. But despite being given a warm reception in public by Chinese officials, including a private guided tour of the Great Wall, the American president left Beijing without gaining any concessions from China on any major issue.

Much of China’s reluctance to engage constructively with the West on issues of mutual concern dates back to the psychological trauma the country suffered during the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, when British gunboats routinely humiliated the Chinese government of the day. The deep feelings of resentment most Chinese feel for the humiliation they suffered continues to this day, and was even reflected in the official statement issued by the Chinese Embassy in London following Shaikh’s execution. It said the “strong resentment” felt by the Chinese public to drug traffickers was based “on the bitter memory of history”.

To ensure that there is no repeat of a time when foreign powers could push the Chinese people around with impunity, Beijing is today investing enormous effort into developing technology that would render the West’s superior military firepower useless.

There have already been well-documented instances in recent years where Chinese hackers have successfully launched cyber attacks against key Western targets, including the Pentagon and Whitehall. In 2006 Chinese computer hackers were accused of shutting down the House of Commons computer network by flooding it with bogus emails, and the Foreign Office and other key government departments have accused rogue Chinese computer experts of trying to hack in their systems.

In America Chinese hackers are reported to have attempted up to 100,000 attacks on government computers each year, and have successfully penetrated the computer systems of some of the American military’s elite units, such as US Army’s 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions.

But now Western security experts believe Beijing has authorised PLA commanders to draw up a cyber wars blueprint that would give them the capability to neutralise the West’s military firepower by 2050.

The Pentagon recently reported that two highly accomplished Chinese computer hackers had been recruited by the PLA to draft a detailed plan that would enable China to disable the United States’ entire aircraft carrier battle fleet, simply by launching a pre-emptive cyber attack.

This blueprint is now seen as being part of an aggressive push by Beijing to achieve “electronic dominance” over each of its global rivals by 2050, with the US, Britain, South Korea and Russia the main targets. To ensure they recruit the best hackers available it was recently reported that senior PLA officers were holding computer hacking competitions throughout the country, and recruiting the winners to their burgeoning cyber army.

“The Chinese realise that, if it came to a conventional military conflict with the West, they would struggle to compete with the West’s superior military firepower,” said a Western security source. “But by concentrating their efforts on cyber wars they believe they can develop a cheap and highly effective method of achieving technical supremacy over the West.”

The government is now so concerned about the threat posed by China’s cyber warriors that it has established a Cyber Security Operations Centre at the GCHQ listening centre in Cheltenham. Lord West, Mr Brown’s security adviser, said that Britain was developing the capability to strike back against Chinese hackers by recruiting former British hackers to GCHQ.

“You need youngsters who are deep into this stuff,” Lord West explained last year. “If they have been slightly naughty boys, very often they enjoy stopping other naughty boys.”