China at Korea Talks: Taking Diplomacy Upstage By JOSEPH KAHN:

China cajoled and badgered the United States, North Korea, South Korea, Japan and Russia to join negotiations on how to resolve the Korea arms crisis. It succeeded in pressing participants to commit to another round, despite obvious tensions between the United States and North Korea.

Such initiatives are oddly foreign to China. Although it has the world's largest population and fastest-growing economy, it has generally abstained or carped from the sidelines on the most pressing issues of the day, most recently the war in Iraq. For more than a decade, it dismissed American-North Korean tensions as a relic of the cold war that the two nations should resolve on their own.

Beijing's decision to broker the nuclear talks reflects alarm in the top ranks of the Communist Party that the North Korean problem could spiral out of control, with both the North and the United States locked in polar positions. Experts said China had decided that it was uniquely positioned to make a difference because of longstanding ties with North Korea, a neighbor and onetime political and military ally, and its improving relationship with the Bush administration.

Yet its assertiveness may also reflect a new sense of engagement with the world that offers some parallels to the emergence of the United States as a dominant power nearly a century ago, experts say.

"China is starting to act like a big power, with interests it has to defend even outside its borders," said Yan Xuetong, a influential foreign policy expert at Qinghua University in Beijing. "I expect these talks to be remembered as an important milestone in history for that reason."

Assuming they keep at it.