By Tom Plate

How should America best deal with China? Carefully.

China, future superpower, could prove more difficult for the United States to relate to than the former Soviet Union. Beijing acts on strict national-interest goals arrived at with intellectual rigor — and to neighbors appears rational and restrained. There's no room for whim in its direct and, some might say, humorless diplomacy.

President Bush has had a taste of this. There were few laugh lines during the private chat with China's new leader, Hu Jintao, in Bangkok. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit offered the two leaders needed time together. The result was no clash of civilizations, but several sticky issues (especially balance-of-trade and currency disputes) didn't lead to the frat-house chumminess offered to media lenses after Bush's dinner with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Tokyo.

China, for better and worse, is not Japan. Its definition of national security these days revolves around economic growth and security. Asking Beijing to re-value its currency upward overnight is like asking the U.S. to disarm its military overnight. Neither is going to happen.

Hu — a cool, Machiavellian bureaucrat who has masterminded his way to the top — represents an ancient culture of millennial maturity. Bush — a former Texas governor who hop-scotched into the White House on his father's hard-earned name (and a quirk in U.S. elections law) — represents a brilliant nation that is, in China's eyes, a relatively unproven teen.

Back in Washington, dazed by Hu's computer-like national-interest approach, Bush should ask his staff to educate him, for China is potentially his most important foreign-policy legacy. Re-reading Henry Kissinger's classic 1994 book "Diplomacy" might be a good place to start.

China generally takes the long view of history. Its diplomacy is driven not by adventurism or romanticism or benevolence but by logical self-interest. Its control over domestic opinion, though far from absolute, permits patience in dealing with important issues, such as reunification with Taiwan, which can come in the course of time (i.e., not necessarily tomorrow). Kissinger described it as "a common tradition of painstaking analysis and the distillation of the experiences of an ancient country with an instinct for distinguishing between the permanent and the tactical."

In Bangkok, Bush expressed pleasure that Beijing was working to knock sense into North Korea — but what are Beijing's motives here? "Nixon was not concerned with Mao's motives," wrote Kissinger. Bush shouldn't be either. China's sudden upsurge in North Korean diplomacy reflects not charity but clarity. A North Korea with a nuclear arsenal would alarm Japan enough to drive that technologically advanced society to respond. You don't need to be a Chinese rocket scientist to know that a nuclearized Japan, not to mention Korea, would be bad news for China.

The volatile North Korea issue thus has the capability to bring Beijing and Washington closer — or drive them apart. The Bush administration's new willingness to sign off on a non-aggression promise as a regional offering is a huge icebreaker. Good move, Mr. President!

But if we expect China to reciprocate for this U.S. "favor," think again.

Chinese diplomacy is less about tactical tradeoffs and more about strategic tacking. Although we can learn much about goal-setting and steadiness from the Chinese and they can learn much about technology and democracy from us, don't expect Beijing to slice away at its core cluster of national interests to make us happy.

Persistent and consistent diplomacy between China and the United States will pay huge dividends, especially if Hu and Bush grow together in their jobs and come to respect the divergences of interests as well as the moments of convergence. The inevitability of the former will make the achievement of the latter even more meaningful.

Tom Plate, whose column appears regularly in The Honolulu Advertiser, is a UCLA professor and founder of the nonprofit Asia Pacific Media Network. Reach him at tplate@ucla.edu.