Amid China's rise, US pivot to Asia takes the shape of a threesome

Our intellectual (and tall) US president is a well-known connoisseur of the sport of basketball. One of the game's famous offensive strategies is named "the triangle". And, so, with the very welcome announcement by Barack Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice, of separate state-visit invitations to the leaders of China and Japan, the much-discussed but so far amorphous US "pivot to Asia" looks to be taking on the shape of a triangle.

But triangles, a common plot device of romance novelists, can make for stormy and unstable relationships. Both Japan and China now field strong leaders with strong wills. America's conduct in Asia has not always been consistent and is sometimes indifferent. Each might wish for the US to choose between them, but with a long-abiding security treaty with Tokyo and economic ties to Beijing that are historically unprecedented, they figure that America will try to play both sides of the street.

Despite the tension, Xi Jinping and Japan's Shinzo Abe will accept a shared relationship with Washington as preferable to any other geometry of uncertainty. Two of the three triangle points are nuclear powers and a rapid deterioration in East Asian security could produce a third all too quickly. In this regard, the triangle does appear to be a better arrangement than any other currently conceivable configuration.

It could also prove productive. Last week, at a riveting Asia security conference in Los Angeles, Professor Susan Shirk offered penetrating observations about China's emerging leadership. This former Clinton administration State Department official, now on the University of California San Diego faculty, compared Xi to his predecessors, who, she asserted, were "no more than ordinary politicians who worked their way up". By contrast, Xi is "Red royalty", and is on the whole popular with the Chinese people today, in part because of his evidently deep feeling that it is high time for his country to be governed competently, not corruptly.

"Much to everyone's surprise, including mine," she said, "Xi is trying to rule as a strong man."

Her analysis concedes that, viewed through the usual Western media filters, this does "set off alarm bells". But, in fact, the consequences for China-US policy "might be pretty good", she added. A China with "a more decisive leadership" could prove welcome at the Obama White House, eager to capitalise on the triangulation of its Asian pivot.

In the past, after all, China's decision-making process on regional and international issues has operated at something less than the speed of light. Not to mention Japan's.