China's Improving Image Challenges U.S. in Asia By Philip P. Pan:

When a research group in Bangkok asked residents last month what country they consider Thailand's closest friend, about 76 percent named China. By comparison, fewer than 8 percent of residents questioned by the Kasikorn Research Center picked Japan, Thailand's top trading partner and its number one source of foreign investment. Barely 9 percent chose the United States, a longtime military ally and the world's leading importer of Thai goods.

Which sounds as if it's at least partly trendiness.

The success of Chinese diplomacy in the region can be attributed in part to the rise of a generation of better-educated, better-traveled diplomats. But Chinese analysts said it also reflects a fundamental foreign policy shift in which China has decided to act like a "great power" with responsibilities across the region instead of just playing the role of a victim exploited by Japanese and Western nations for a century.

It's hard to argue with that.