THE POST-9/11 WORLD has been a mixed bag for the Chinese. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the deployment of forces to Central Asia renewed fears of American encirclement and upset a decade of careful diplomacy. Beijing’s efforts to negotiate security and stability along its continental border–a prelude to greater activity in maritime Asia–seemed all for naught.

But then came the invasion and, more significantly, the occupation, of Iraq. The U.S. military, which had seemed entirely invincible, now seemed to be bogged down in an interminable quagmire. The Bush administration, which had campaigned for office in 2000 by casting China as a “strategic competitor,” reversed course 180 degrees under the winds of the “global war on terrorism.” Arms sales to Taiwan, once a priority for the White House, have been all but cancelled, while the plucky democrats of Taipei have been reviled by President Bush and his lieutenants as independence-obsessed troublemakers. From Beijing, the future looks better than it has for some time. China is a great power, not only in its own mind but increasingly in the minds of the rest of the world.