NEW DELHI: Not too long ago, a packed Harvard audience, with a good many Chinese students attending, heard a keynote address on how China's rise to being the world's pre-eminent power at America's expense was pretty much inevitable and US's efforts to balance Pacific power equations weren't going to change things.
Just months later, it seems a changed world as Chinese President Xi Jinping, hailed till recently by western media for accumulating the most power since the charismatic Mao, set foot in the US in the wake of bedlam in China's stock market that lost 30% value since its June high.
It was only the other day that Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi plainly told a high profile seminar in Beijing that relations with Japan were bound to improve - as they had with Russia - once the Japanese reconciled to the inevitability of China's rise.
Indeed, the muscle flexing over the nine-dash line that left the Philippines bruised and Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei watchful and wary seemed China's way of doing away with any pretense of the humility urged by leaders like Deng Xiaoping ("hide your brightness, bide your time").
As Xi assures US audiences that China will not devalue the yuan and allow market forces to steer the troubled currency, it seems time to ponder if Deng's lessons need to be persevered with a little longer.
In comparison, Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins his US yatra on a more confident note despite lack of success in negotiating the parliamentary blocks that have stalled important tax and land acquisition reforms.
Modi is not having to reconcile claims to impending glory with changed circumstances. In fact, India is a much smaller speck in the US policy universe, and the situation has only changed somewhat after Modi's election created a buzz around him.
India's energetic diplomacy in Asia and elsewhere over the past year has emphasized its traditional posture of a stable power that is not a threat to anyone. Despite problems with some neighbours, India does not come across as a hegemonic presence as China does to a wide arc of nations.
Modi's challenge lies in overcoming the perception that he has not done enough to check cultural chauvinists and that actions against certain NGOs are an assault on civil society. But he has the full-throat-ed support of Indian diaspora, long starved of a mascot capable of invoking national pride and modernism in the same breath.
It's not that Xi's China dream is over. As general secretary of the communist party - his far more relevant title than the arcane president - Xi would know how the remarkable interpenetration of the state by the party gives China's rulers an abundance of levers to influence economic and social life.
China's giant economy with its large domestic market will continue to be a magnet for global commerce. Its talented and nationalist middle-class remains a high quality asset. But the estimated $144 billion spent in shoring the capital markets shows the dragon can trip on its own success.
In 'Is the American Century Over?', political scientist Joseph Nye reassures his American audience that the US can, if it acts wisely, project its power - with some compromises - well into the current century. The Chinese stumble will seem reassuring.
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