The first was, simply, not to get in Washington’s crosshairs. The China scholar Rush Doshi has chronicled how the Communist Party identified a militarily pre-eminent, ideologically ascendant America as its primary rival as far back as 1989. Yet precisely because U.S. power was so daunting, Beijing went out of its way to avoid the sort of focused American hostility that had destroyed Soviet ambitions.

Party leader Deng Xiaoping’s “hide and bide” strategy of 40 years ago focused on cultivating good relations with the U.S. and other key states, as a way of buying time, gaining access to global trade and advanced technology, and amassing the strength that would allow Beijing to get its way in global affairs. Once China reached “the level of the developed countries,” Deng said, “the strength of China and its role in the world will be quite different.”

The second lesson was to avoid a Cold War-style arms race. That strategic arms competition had ultimately exhausted the Soviet Union and played to America’s economic advantages. So Beijing maintained, for many years, a relatively minimal nuclear deterrent, and focused its spending on areas of comparative advantage, such as conventional capabilities designed to give China an edge along its maritime periphery.

Both lessons have now been discarded. Chinese rhetoric and policy have a distinctly Cold War feel.