The Davos Agenda: Sending a message to Beijing and missing Dubai

* username: rupertbu

1) Had a quick aside with a journalist friend from the gulf; we quickly agreed on the most notable absence from the proceedings -- Dubai. Shouldn't be surprising, given how extraordinarily savvy they've historically been at branding themselves and generally speaking the vocabulary of globalization. Call them the Tiger Woods of the World Economic Forum.

2) Conversation with a senior member of the official U.S. delegation. Their highest priority here on the foreign policy side -- getting a strong message across to China. Apparently they've been given pretty broad parameters to talk tough on cybersecurity in particular. To quote: "Google isn't such a big deal, but what it represents is enormous." The Obama administration wants Beijing to understand there are serious consequences if there's no change in behavior.

3) Breakfast with one of the American CEOs; he's most worried about regulatory policy globally and limitations on capital flows accordingly. I suspect we'll see a huge amount on this issue over the course of the meeting -- after all, the world economic forum has historically been the voice of globalization. With a few exceptions this year, it still will be. But the challenges are getting harder to ignore -- all sorts of signals that the world is now moving in a different direction.

Ian Bremmer will be blogging from Davos this week sending reports and commentary from inside the World Economic Forum.