While President Bush basked in the Olympic limelight in Beijing, a new survey back home reported that large numbers of Americans see China as becoming "a critical threat to the vital interests of the United States in the next 10 years."

The survey, produced by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and released this week, found that 43 percent of those questioned thought China's military modernization could put the U.S. in jeopardy while 67 percent believed China's trade practices were unfair and damaged the U.S. economy.

Even so, 64 percent argued that the U.S. should engage China in diplomacy rather than confront China in ways that might lead to armed conflict. A smaller majority, 54 percent, said, "The United States and Japan should work together to limit the rise in Chinese power in the years ahead."

The survey seemed to reflect Bush's reasons for going to the Beijing Olympics. "The best way to conduct our diplomacy and conduct our relations," he told a Chinese TV interviewer 10 days ago, "is out of mutual respect. And it's much more likely a Chinese leader will listen to my concerns if he knows I respect the people of China."

The president was more pointed last week in a speech in Bangkok on his way to Beijing. "America stands in firm opposition to China's detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists," he said. "We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly and labor rights, not to antagonize China's leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential."

In Beijing, the president pursued that theme as he dedicated a new U.S. embassy, saying he continues "to be candid about our belief that all people should have the freedom to say what they think and worship as they choose." The embassy, which Ambassador Clark Randt called a "stunning complex" that symbolized expanding Sino-U.S. relations, is the U.S.'s second largest, surpassed only by that in Baghdad.

Joining the president in Beijing was his father, former President George H.W. Bush, who was the U.S. ambassador to China in 1974 for 14 months during the administration of President Gerald Ford. The younger President Bush visited China for the first time then.

Both of the leading candidates to succeed Bush, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, seemed to be on the same wavelength about engaging China, differing only in nuance.

McCain said in a speech that, "China and the United States are not destined to be adversaries" but that "dealing with a rising China will be a central challenge for the next American president." Obama said on his campaign Web site, "We must do all we can to guarantee that China's rise is peaceful." He pledged, if elected, to work "to ensure that China plays by the international rules."

The Chicago Council, which has a reputation for nonpartisan, low-key analyses, found that overall American attitudes toward China remained cool. On a scale of zero to 100, where 100 reflected warm relations, China scored 41, or lower than the neutral mark of 50. India scored a bit higher, at 47, while attitudes toward Japan, a major U.S. ally, came in at 59.

The council's survey, a random sampling of 1,500 Americans taken by telephone across the country during the first half of July, found that Americans were worried about the economic implications of China's rise. "Trade with China stands at the center of these worries," the report said, with two-thirds of Americans asserting that Chinese trade was unfair. The precise elements in trade that Americans found unfair were not specified.

The U.S. ran a $256 billion deficit with China last year, the largest among the nations with which the U.S. trades. The deficit with Japan was second, at $83 billion. Through May of this year, the U.S. deficit with China was $96 billion.

In the realm of armed conflict, only 19 percent of those queried said a confrontation between China and Taiwan, the island over which China claims sovereignty, would threaten U.S. interests. Only 32 percent favored using U.S. forces if China invaded Taiwan even though the Taiwan Relations Act, which governs U.S. relations with Taiwan, calls on the U.S. to be able "to resist any resort to force" against Taiwan.

The survey reported, however, that two-thirds of Americans thought Japan needed to be freer to project military power in Asia because of "China's growing military power and the threat from North Korea." Constitutional and political restrictions have precluded most deployments of Japanese forces outside of Japan.

Richard Halloran is a Honolulu-based journalist and former New York Times correspondent in Asia. His column appears weekly in Sunday's Focus section.