Each has a price.

EVERY journey begins with a single step. The first that Mao Zedong took in his famous Long March began on Oct 16, 1934. It has not yet reached its destination. China's progress towards its destiny is still ongoing.

In 1934, Mao and his companions in the Red Army were in retreat, pursued by the Nationalist Army under Chiang Kai-shek. A hundred years later, the Red Army has morphed into the People's Liberation Army, with an active force of over 2.2 million and 1.2m in reserve.

Today, Chiang Kai-shek's successors are marooned on the island of Taiwan, protected by 169,000 active military personnel with 1.66m in reserve, its political continuity underwritten by the United States.

In 1985, the defence policy of the People's Republic of China under Deng Xiaoping changed dramatically. From a strategy to 'hit early, strike hard and to fight a nuclear war', China has 'focused on increasing mechanisation and informatisation to be able to fight a high-intensity war'. Aiming at 'quality rather than on quantity', it has reduced its armed forces by over 1m and cut its bloated leadership by 50 per cent.

China has decided that enough is not enough.

Nevertheless, China carries a big stick of 350 nuclear warheads. Pakistan has 165. (Readers should know that one nuclear device can annihilate half a million humans.)

So, why does the stronger China not invAaAAAde its offshore island of Taiwan and be done with it, as Nehru did with Goa in 1961?

It is clear that China has adopted WinsAton Churchill's advice that 'Jaw-Jaw is better than War-War'. Ever since the PRC took its seat in the United Nations, ousting Taiwan from the Security Council, it has watched with dismay as the UN has becoAAme (to use Mao's telling phrase) 'a runnAing dog' of neo-imperialist Western powers.

While China has often exercised its veto to protect UN member states from the idiocies of the US and its accomplices, it has not been able to make the UN fulfil its role as a peacemaker. The UN's blue helmets have all too often brought shame, not honour, to its peacekeeping operations, especially in war-torn Africa.

China has decided that enough is not enough. By brokering the recent rapprochement between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, China has taken its first significant step in its Long March as an international peacemaker of the first resort.

It has left the Russians to recall its stale success in brokering the Tashkent Declaration between India and Pakistan in...