NEW DELHI — By roaring at its neighbors and picking territorial fights with them, China lived up to the year of the tiger that 2010 represented in its astrology. An increasingly assertive China also strained its relations with the United States and Europe, while its resource extraction-centered outreach to Africa brought about fresh tensions over what many locals see as a neocolonial strategy.

Now in 2011, the year of the rabbit, will China emulate that burrowing animal? Will it mean more tunnels being burrowed in the Himalayas for river diversion and other strategic projects? And "carrots" (rabbit's favorite) being demanded from neighbors and the rest of the world for eschewing irascible behavior?

If the Chinese leadership were forward-looking, it would use the year of the rabbit — which begins Feb. 3 — to make up for the diplomatic imprudence of 2010 that left an isolated China counting only the problem states of North Korea, Pakistan and Burma as its allies. The onus now is clearly on a rising China to show that it wants to be a responsible power that seeks rules-based cooperation and acts with restraint and caution.