Something must have gone wrong. Bush apparently appointed someone smart, competent and moderate to be his “man in Beijing,” as this profile in Newsweek indicates. (Well, he was Condi’s choice, and Bush did as he was told, but credit where due, to both of them.)

he Bush Administration’s point man on China is Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, a fierce and sometimes combative moderate who was handed the job largely by default. Last week in Beijing he wrapped up the first round of a bilateral dialogue that puts him in the driver’s seat of one of Washington’s most crucial relationships. But Zoellick has the backing of George Bush, a fellow pragmatist—at least on China—who kids Zoellick for being something of a nerd.

…

Colleagues say Zoellick frequently attends cabinet meetings in Rice’s place and is known to defend his moderate and nuanced views on China against administration hawks respectfully but forcefully. It was Zoellick who pushed the White House to commit larger packages of aid and generous trade concessions for tsunami-afflicted Southeast Asia in December, his colleagues say, and he is credited with preventing a trade war with China last year over Beijing’s alleged unfair subsidies of state-owned firms. The bow-tied and pedantic Zoellick offers a stark contrast to the anti-intellectual Bush, who occasionally ribs Zoellick for his mastery of wonkish detail. “Bush regards Bob as kind of a geek,” says a former colleague of Zoellick’s. “But they respect each other.”

Good article. It strikes me as proof that Bush himself doesn’t believe for a second all the hysteria whipped up in recent months about the imminent CHina “threat,” and that he and Rummy pay lip service to it as a political gesture to the hard right. Just my theory.