As Chinese president Hu Jintao is touring the United States this week, an issue that is close to his heart is no doubt the heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Ditching the interventionist approach in the 1960s through to the early 1970s - a period when China’s direct influence was clearly felt behind the communist insurgencies across South-East Asia - Deng Xiaoping announced on the eve of the reform era in 1978 that Beijing would in the decades to come “hide its capabilities and bide its time”. This has since come to be known in Chinese as tao guang yang hui .