In early 1998, the niche-market Chinese journal Strategy and Management published a hefty bilingual report on the years 1997 and 1998. There, a then little-known author, Zhang Xiaodong, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, argued for a new Chinese policy on the Middle East.

He said China should be more proactive in the Middle East and Central Asia because the Middle East was a huge concern for Chinese Muslims; because the region provided virtual and concrete support to the pro-independence Uighurs in Xinjiang; because in 1996 China became for the first time a net importer of oil; and most importantly because Beijing could use its support for Iran as a bargaining chip to influence American support for Taiwan's independence.

This last argument was extremely important, as just two years before America had stepped in to avert a confrontation between Beijing and Taipei, when the latter was pushing almost for a unilateral declaration of independence.

In fact, for the first time in its history, China was stepping out of its historical area of influence, and for the first time a scholar was suggesting a new foreign policy in a region traditionally of little interest in order to gain advantage in a core problem for Beijing: Taiwan, the island de facto independent but formally still part of one China.

Zhang Xiaodong was breaking with the traditional vision of Chinese foreign policy. He saw that for the first time China had to develop a global worldview to uphold its interests even at local level.

Iran or China's Middle Eastern policies had to become bargaining chips to gain advantage with America. After all, back then the US was far more concerned about the Middle East than Taiwan or China, and thus Washington would give in to China on Taiwan, as it saw it could get an extra advantage in the Middle East.

Back then, as the Soviet Union had disappeared and Russia was pulling out of the region, China could become a point of reference for militant regimes like those of Iran and Syria. To gain backdoor support from China would be advantageous for America.

The idea was shocking for some American China-watchers, to the point that allegedly during a visit to Beijing later that year US president Bill Clinton asked then Chinese president Jiang Zemin about the essay. Jiang didn't know the essay or the author but later inquired.

This was when Zhang Xiaodong shot to great fame in China's foreign-policy circles. He was indeed already famous among experts, as he was the only one who correctly forecast that in 1991, during the first Gulf War, America would fight in Iraq. Then most Chinese experts thought the US would not go to war.

Yet it was after the 1998 essay that Chinese foreign policy took a different turn. Israel started to pay great attention to the China factor and went on to develop a military exchange program that was later blocked by America, as it was transferring US technologies to China. All of this occurred also because Zhang had shown a new way to look at foreign policy both to China and other countries.

Certainly Mao's China also had a global view, but it was only with a naive vision of ideological influence. Pro-Mao movements were supported and financed all over the world, but while this gave a huge boost to Mao's personal ego, it did nothing but damage to China's overall interests in the world.

Zhang was different: he saw and illustrated the interconnection between China's growing global reach and the possibility of bargaining with America and other countries on many issues, political and economic.

He further developed this vision a decade later in his research on Afghanistan and Iraq, while the American intervention was unfolding there. This vision created a new intellectual spirit in China and might also have contributed to the official acceptance of the still very controversial Chinese theory of peaceful development.

China then became politically open to the world and no longer closed in its regional shell as it had been for centuries.

It is then a huge loss for China - and also for the countries dealing with China's foreign policy - that this scholar passed away at only 51 years of age in the early hours of January 20.

Without his keen intelligence and sharp eye, trying always to align global interests with those of China and looking for an opening to advance China's interests without upsetting the world order but creating greater harmony, Beijing was made weaker.

To us, his friends and brothers of decades, his departure makes the world emptier and life a little more meaningless. Goodbye, Xiaodong. (2013-01-24 Asia Times)