Beijing 2008 – anyone care?

China’s Olympics was supposed to be a coming-out party, the chance to wow the world and prove it’s going places. Try finding anyone who isn’t well aware of that already. Beijing could scrap the Olympics; it hardly needs the advertising.

Last week’s events reminded us that only the actions of America mean more than China’s to asset and commodity prices or global politics. Not even Japan, Asia’s biggest economy, can surprise, delight, and madden markets the way the region’s no. 2 can.

The complexion of the global financial system will never be the same. Never has such an underdeveloped economy, with such a huge population and history of innovation, stepped into the global community with such alacrity. John Maynard Keynes and other economists thought the rise of America in the last century was something. Well, just wait for China’s in this one.

Just consider how last week’s teensy-weensy 2.1% currency revaluation had heads of state the world over issuing press releases. It touched off the biggest rally by Japan’s yen in more than three years and shaved 60 yen off the share price of Toyota Motor Corporation.

Imagine that. Investors in Toyota, the world’s most valuable automaker, found themselves at the mercy of the central bank of a communist state. Ditto for America, which saw its bond yields rise amid fears yuan revaluation might reduce demand for dollar-denominated debt.

Yet if China has shown the world anything, it’s that it knows how to play the global finance game as well as anyone.

China showed it’s got game, and offered some reassurances that officials in Beijing know what they’re doing as they try to engineer what’s arguably the most important economic project anywhere.

China didn’t alter its currency because America demanded it; the move had everything to do with an acceleration in second-quarter growth to 9.5%.

Consider the sheer brilliance of Beijing’s tactics. It took a baby step toward cooling its own economy and de-pegging the yuan, while also convincing the world it was making an accommodation. In reality, China gave the world little but a lesson in obfuscation Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan could learn from.

No one, aside from maybe China, knows how the new currency regime will work or which currencies will be in the yuan’s trading basket. And no one knows whether all this really will make China’s currency more flexible – or that the yuan won’t fall rather than rise. And it doesn’t even matter, because the rest of the world, including Treasury Secretary Snow, is delighted.

This kind of market and diplomatic savvy is a reminder not to count out Cnooc Limited in its quest for Unocal Corporation – or China’s growing hunger for Western brands to increase its global clout. China’s first revaluation in 10 years – and more to come – will help its companies bid for global assets.

Brands take time to build. China wants, and is willing to pay handsomely for, household names offering quick entry into America markets to boost global sales and distribution capabilities.

Lenovo Group Limited’s agreement in December to buy the personal computer business of International Business Machines Corporation for $1.25 billion was the first sign China is becoming rapidly more acquisitive. Haier Group’s recent attempt to buy no. 3 America appliance maker Maytag Corporation showed the trend is gaining momentum.

Unocal is the highest-profile Chinese target. Last week, Haier scrapped plans to buy Maytag, and Cnooc’s $18.5 billion cash bid was trumped by Chevron Corporation’s $17.1 billion cash-and-stock plan. The thing is, the yuan-based cost of American assets just got cheaper, giving Chinese companies room to raise bids.

Congress has been playing the national security card, trying to block Cnooc’s Unocal bid. What officials in Washington should realize is that they can try to beat back the Chinese all they want, and the Chinese will just keep coming.

American politicians pressuring China to revalue even further forget how Japan unnerved Americans in the 1980s when it bought Pebble Beach, Rockefeller Center, and Universal Studios. A stronger yuan won’t save many American jobs, but it will make America more affordable and might spark a Chinese buying binge dwarfing Japan’s. That could be a far bigger political problem than currencies.

China’s economic clout is rising whether America and Japan like it or not. At the moment, the world’s two biggest economies seem almost alone in viewing China as a threat. Here in Asia, most nations welcome China’s rise as an opportunity to dilute the region’s historical ties with America.

Recent events prove Beijing and Shanghai have become must-stops for executives, politicians, and investors.

Get used to it. China has arrived, and in a very big way.