DON'T LET DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE Robert Zoellick's fondness for pandas mislead you. The Bush administration's China policy has been undergoing a quiet metamorphosis, and now has a new steeliness to it.

Fifteen months ago, just two days before George W. Bush's reelection, the Chinese government's English-language mouthpiece, China Daily, reprinted a blast by senior diplomat Qian Qichen against a "Bush Doctrine" marked by "cocksuredness and arrogance." President Bush no doubt believed, in the last days of an extremely tight race, that Qian's comments were an attempt to influence the result of the election, or at the very least an attempt to ingratiate Beijing with John Kerry, then slightly ahead in the polls. Upon his reelection, President Bush was apparently not amused.

Since then, his China policy has evolved away from its once-cautious optimism that Beijing might possibly, somehow, be persuaded to join Washington in maintaining a rules-based world order on such issues as nonproliferation, trade, human rights, energy, environment, and health policies. The official U.S. agnosticism about where China's rise will take it--and the world--seems to be ebbing. Instead, the administration seems ready to conclude that China is not going in the right direction and that the United States must hedge its bets.

On February 3, a midlevel interagency meeting kicked off a new round of policy reviews in preparation for President Bush's upcoming meetings with Chinese president Hu Jintao, scheduled for the end of April. The meeting was hastily arranged after Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian's remarks questioning the continued utility of Taiwan's

The question of the day at the February 3 meeting was, "How does the Taiwan president's stance affect the Taiwan Strait 'status quo' in the run-up to the Hu visit?"

"Not much," according to some administration China experts. Bush's National Security Council China director Dennis Wilder, I was told, launched the discussion with a recitation of China's unhelpful behavior in the Taiwan Strait over the past year and urged a policy of "balance." To be sure, Taiwan's infant democracy has given fits to the Bush administration. But China's behavior has been egregious.

Beijing's so-called "Anti-Secession Law" last March was an open-ended declaration of a casus belli against Taiwan. Since 2001, Taiwan has opened direct links between China and the offshore islands of Kinmen and Matsu, licensed direct charter flights to China, relaxed investment rules, and begged for military-to-military "confidence-building measures." China has rebuffed every call from Taiwan for cross-Strait dialogue. Chinese Communist party leaders will deal only with opposition parties in Taiwan that "adhere" to the "one China principle" and oppose Taiwan's defense spending. Beijing even refused to allow a Taiwan representative to attend the December 30 funeral of Wang Daohan, Beijing's most eminent Taiwan negotiator.

In short, China has done nothing to requite Taiwan's outreach. By the time of his November visit to Beijing, President Bush had become so dismayed that he inserted a paragraph praising Taiwan's democracy into his Asia policy speech in Kyoto--a paragraph that surprised every China watcher in Washington, including those in the White House. The president, it seems, was personally trying to maintain the balance.