President Barack Obama has decided to test whether Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s “charm offensive” is a legitimate effort to reach an agreement on a more constricted and transparent Iranian nuclear program. With this decision, he embarks on the most transformative and important diplomatic initiative of his presidency.

Upset that the fiscal stalemate in Washington is threatening the global economy, China called for the U.S. dollar to be replaced as the international reserve currency as well as for broader steps to create a "de-Americanized world."

As the world's second largest economy, the fastest growing economy in the G20 and with more than a trillion dollars sitting in various sovereign wealth funds, China has quite a bit of cash to invest. And as the chart below shows, in recent years it has begun loosening the purse strings - in 2005, the Chinese government and Chinese companies collectively invested about $17bn (£11bn) in global assets, according The Heritage Foundation. Last year they invested almost $130bn.

Dancers perform the ballet "Concerto de Bach" at the Saint Peter's Theater in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Oct. 12, 2013. A ballet was staged as the opening show of the China Cultural Month here on Saturday. More than 150 artists from China will present the local audience with a series of cultural feasts such as ballet, acrobatics and art exhibitions from October to December, 2013 in Brazil.

California recently made foreign-policy history by becoming the first sub-national government to sign an agreement with China’s powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), which oversees the country’s economic growth. Just as significant is the objective: fighting climate change by circumventing deadlocked decision-making in Washington and Beijing.

What if China was beating the US as its own super-power game in the Pacific and we didn’t even notice? While Washington distracts itself with shutdown shenanigans and failed attempts to control the situation in the Middle East, president Obama’s “pivot to Asia” looks increasingly shaky. Beijing is quietly filling the gap, signing multi-billion dollar trade deals with Indonesia and calling for a regional infrastructure bank.

Picture a world where human relationships are challenging, narcissism and self-centeredness are on the rise, and there is disagreement on the best way for people to live harmoniously together. It sounds like 21st-century America. But the society that Michael Puett, a tall, 48-year-old bespectacled professor of Chinese history at Harvard University, is describing to more than 700 rapt undergraduates is China, 2,500 years ago.

When President Obama last traveled across Southeast Asia, in a trip two years ago designed to show his commitment to entrenching U.S. influence there, his administration's "pivot to Asia" was stymied almost immediately by events in the Middle East. The Arab Spring was setting the region aflame. Obama's goals of offsetting Chinese power, rallying rising East Asian economies under American stewardship and securing a role in this increasingly important corner of the world would all have to wait.