Today was the 120th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth, and as the event is celebrated in grand style in Beijing and around China, images of the Chairman are even more ubiquitous than usual this week: A rumored $2.5 billion was invested in celebrations in honor of the figure whose portrait watches over Tiananmen Square and is fastened to the gate of the Forbidden City.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited a controversial shrine to World War II dead, including 14 convicted war criminals, ignoring U.S. advice against gestures bound to strain already tense relations with neighbors China and South Korea. Abe told Japanese news media the visit was intended "to report the progress of the first year of my administration and convey my resolve to build an era in which the people will never again suffer the ravages of war."

China's leaders bowed three times before a statue of Mao Zedong on the 120th anniversary of his birth Thursday in carefully controlled celebrations that also sought to uphold the market-style reforms he would have opposed. The approach underscores the delicate balancing act the Communist Party leadership — installed last year — has to perform in managing perceptions of Mao's legacy.

In the early hours of Saturday morning (Beijing time), a Bolivian telecommunications satellite launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China’s Sichuan province, Xinhua reports. The launch, observed by Bolivian President Juan Evo Morales Ayma, was one more example of China’s growing space diplomacy.

On the face of it, China’s recent declaration of an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) extending to territories that it does not control has nothing in common with America’s arrest and strip-search of a New York-based Indian diplomat for allegedly underpaying a housekeeper she had brought with her from India. In fact, these episodes epitomize both powers’ unilateralist approach to international law.

The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) closed mid-November, but it still keeps China-watchers awake. Foreign analysts were rather underwhelmed by the immediate outcomes: a bland, boilerplate communique issued on November 12.

A hot topic these days in D.C. is the quest for what is quickly becoming the foreign policy holy grail — a U.S. foreign policy strategy towards the People’s Republic of China. The quest in many respects makes sense. After the declaration of a “pivot” to Asia, many in America’s foreign policy community expected a major push by the Obama Administration to clearly define some sort of strategy towards Beijing incorporating a number of broad areas of importance — defense, economic, and cultural interactions.