The political cycles in Washington and Beijing have become fascinatingly entangled. But while Obama will gain politically as he seeks a new term by appearing decisive, even adventurous, the opposite applies in China.
For the men lined up to take over from Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao -- Xi Jinping as party general secretary, Li Keqiang in the No 2 role as premier -- any bold move risks being pounced on by their rivals as destabilising. This makes it especially galling that in regional terms they are still losing some ground.
Academics and others without official status are informally authorised to vent some of this inevitable frustration. Thus in the past few days we have seen Chinese elements attack India for planning to boost its troop numbers on the Chinese border, and The Philippines for celebrating rather noisily its alliance with the US, with a visit from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
A People's Daily commentary growled that "such Philippine provocations bring negative political influences to the region, China must take fitting measures to pay The Philippines back".
Vietnam, which has become especially irritated by conflict between its fishing and other vessels and Chinese vessels in the South China Sea, has rapidly developed an unlikely military relationship with the US.
South Korea has in the past few days arrested large numbers of Chinese fishing boats.
And as Burma prepares to take over as ASEAN's chair in 2013, its new military chief, General Min Aung Hlaing, has made Vietnam -- not, as usual, China -- his first port of call overseas in his new role.
This provides a setting in which Australia's modestly enlarged role in its US alliance can be more easily accommodated.
This is not "containment", as the Chinese government and, especially, its more nationalistic outliers would claim. China's business interests are almost ubiquitous, and that is mostly to be welcomed. But it is discovering the limits to its power -- limits intensified by regional concerns about its opaque governance -- just as the US government is also learning, in the debt negotiations in train in Washington, the limits to its own economic capacity.
