China's diplomats could hardly be more busy.
More than 20 global leaders have descended on Beijing in recent weeks amid pomp and ceremony.
An even greater show may be needed should President Donald Trump visit China next month.
Talks between top Chinese and American officials in Spain in recent days suggest the idea is not an impossibility.
Knowing exactly what to say, and in what tone, is critical amid all this excitement.
Our new index shows that one diplomatic style,
once favoured by Chinese bigwigs, will almost certainly be avoided:
the "wolf warrior" posturing so prevalent in recent years.
This confrontational diplomacy takes its name from the "Wolf Warrior" series of jingoistic blockbusters,
in which Leng Feng, a kind of Chinese Rambo, fights off foreign baddies.
One of its greatest practitioners was Zhao Lijian, the foreign ministry's spokesperson from 2019 to 2023.
He once told a Bloomberg journalist that members of the Five Eyes alliance should be careful, "lest their eyes be poked blind".
Why the shift to wolf-warring in the first place?
It's possible that
Xi Jinping,
China's leader, wanted to stamp out any ideological laxity among the foreign ministry's cadres,
suggests Ito Asei of the University of Tokyo.
It might also have been a distraction from China's domestic woes, such as covid-19.
Lu Shaye, China's envoy to France from 2019 to 2025 and a prominent wolf warrior,
argued it was simply "self-defence" against aggressive foreigners.