Great power diplomacy with or without the United States.' This brief but bold statement sums up the post-Kosovo foreign policy of President Jiang Zemin. It also underlies much of what Mr Jiang hopes to achieve in his on-going trip to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Given the best of worlds, Mr Jiang would like to inherit the so-called pro-US policy of his mentor, Deng Xiaoping. It was Mr Jiang who tried to forge a 'constructive, strategic partnership' with Washington during the two presidential summits of 1997 and 1998.
When Mr Jiang and advisers such as Liu Ji and Wang Huning put together the daguo zhanlue (literally, 'big country strategy') in late 1997, the US was perceived as largely a benign partner. The original version of Mr Jiang's great power diplomacy looked like this: China would pursue a daguo foreign policy, or one commensurate with its growing economic and military might; however, Beijing recognised the superpower status of the US and as far as possible, would seek to work with rather than against Washington in moulding a new global order.
In return for advantages such as hi-tech transfer and Washington's recognition of Beijing's goal of national reunification, the party leadership was willing to acquiesce in American domination in areas including Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia.
Then came the bombshells of 1999: Nato's eastward expansion; Kosovo; an expanded US-Japan security arrangement, seen as a harbinger of an 'Asian Nato'; and Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's 'two states theory', which, Beijing is convinced, has been abetted by anti-China elements in the US and Japan.
Mr Jiang has not yet given up hope on the US. Yet after the recent crises, he and his advisers have been spending more time and resources on projecting Chinese power and countering what Beijing perceives as Washington's anti-China containment policy.