Niall Ferguson is an acclaimed historian and filmmaker who has chronicled war and empire, the Rothschilds and, most recently, the life of Henry A. Kissinger. He has also written extensively about China’s economic rise, and even coined the term “Chimerica,” to describe the unique links between the economies of the United States and China. A senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, Ferguson — who studied at Oxford — has taught at New York University, Harvard and Tsinghua University in Beijing. He has produced an Emmy award winning PBS Series, "The Ascent of Money," as well as a British TV documentary series called “China: Triumph and Turmoil." And in the past year, he has written columns and spoken often of what he terms the emergence of Cold War II, and insisted it could be actually be a healthy competition between the U.S. and China, if things don't get out of hand. What follows is a lightly edited Q&A. Niall FergusonIllustration by Kate Copeland Q: Yo