"China’s public offer to mediate peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government marks a notable departure in Chinese foreign policy. It is the first time Beijing is taking a genuine leadership role, on its own initiative, on a geopolitical issue both sensitive and significant". Says Andrew Small, a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, in a New York Times Op-ed dated 26 March, 2015. This marks another turning of China's growing global gravitas.
This is a marked departure from Deng's famous imperative of "hiding the light under the bushel, and never assuming leadership", which broadly has served China well for past decades. Now that China becomes a ten-ton panda, this dictum has clearly outlived its usefulness.
Meanwhile, China's economic influence is gathering apace in Europe, with a massive shopping spree to acquire global brands and technologies, as reported in The Economist dated 28 March, 2015.
Initial U.S. cold shoulder notwithstanding, there is a rapid global rally behind a China-led Asian Infrastructural Investment Bank, as can be seen from the following roll-call of regional and non-regional Members and applicants.
Download Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
Supported by Ascent of the RMB, the Chinese currency, all these seem to suggest that the West-dominated world order, defined by American exceptionalism and the post-World War II Bretton Woods institutions of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is about to give way to a new geoeconomic and geopolitical paradigm more amenable to China's growing global clout.