NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

He went there to accept the surrender of the old order, opening China as Matthew Perry and his black ships forced open Japan almost 120 years before.

The Bush trip, just one generation later, was arranged over a weekend and it was different from the start. The Presidential party was whisked down wide avenues past skyscrapers and smart shops. The motorcade proceeded at a steady pace, the lights automatically set for it so as to minimize disruption to the busy city’s traffic. The old city Nixon had visited was gone

Those Chinese alive in Nixon’s time wished they could have been there. Those who watched the Bush car drive by were too busy to care.

China had a new state bird – the building crane. Loyally seated across from the President, new Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice (Bush didn't like Wolfowitz contradicting him) noted that while other nations were busy rejecting America, China was embracing it. She didn’t bother noting that the America they were embracing was the Blue America of Manhattan, something Bush and his Republican predecessors back to Nixon explicitly rejected.

“China is becoming a city of four star hotels, of skyscrapers, and of great modern architecture,” Rice added.

Said outgoing commerce secretary Don Evans, seated beside her, “They have all the foodstuffs we have in America. As peasants leave farms and are replaced by machines China is becoming a food exporter. Their mobile phone network is as good as our own. They’re now the world’s number one exporter of PCs.”

Bush accepted the briefing but sat stone-faced. Nixon had come to China open-faced, to accept China’s surrender. Well, he was not going to surrender America.

Rice worried over what the next few days might bring. But she kept her silence.

“We’ll be staying at the Grand Hyatt,” chief of protocol Don Ensenat told the First Lady in another limousine. “It’s just like Hyatts in the U.S., only without the central atrium, and it's within an easy walk of Tienanmen Square. The girls will love it.” Jenna Bush giggled, while Barbara kept the tight lips of her mother Laura.

Hu Jintao had some powers denied even George Bush, and one of them was the power to throw out every guest in the Hyatt for a week. People who had committed to paying up to $1,450 per night for their stay found themselves shuttled to such (otherwise fine) hotels as the Jing Guang New World and the Crowne Plaza, with refunds, so that the Hyatt could be secured.

Given that it now was secure, and to White House standards, it made sense for President Hu to have his first meeting with the U.S. President in the Hyatt’s banquet hall. As soon as the Bush party arrived the ladies were escorted to their rooms while Secretary Rice led the President to the hall. Hu Jintao and his own entourage were waiting.

The meeting was brief, and formal. Hands were shaken and a toast of orange juice was offered. (The Chinese had been told many times about Bush's alcoholism.) Hu didn’t particularly care for orange juice but he smiled as he drank it. The President was gracious, but obviously tired.

Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing suggested to Rice, in English, that she might meet immediately or be briefed later, at formal meetings in government offices.) Li had studied English and French at Beijing University.) Rice assented to the earlier briefing and the two walked out of the hall alone, into a function room at the Noble Court, the hotel’s Cantonese-style restaurant.

A selection of dumplings was offered. Li poured himself a Glenlivet over ice. Rice accepted another glass of orange juice, sipping it carefully once, then placing it on a coaster.

The pleasantries were brief. Li had once been ambassador to Washington. He had liked Colin Powell. He didn't know what to make of the new woman.

“It is good to see you, for the first time on my own ground Madam Secretary,” Li began. Rice nodded, but acknowledged the double meaning. China now considered itself America’s equal, she calculated. We would see about that.

“The Great Leader was wrong, about power coming from the barrel of a gun,” Li continued. “Power is based on what your people can produce, their economic might. It comes from the power of a purse. Those who have economic might may wield it against those who don’t, and it is inevitable that they will.”

“We have used our economic power to benefit mankind,” said Rice defensively.

“Phah!” said Li, startling Rice slightly, gulping the remains of his scotch, and motioning for a waiter to refill it. Rice saw this as being to her advantage. A strong man weakened by drink is a weak man. Weakness was something she resented, deep in her bones. “We have both, China and America, comforted ourselves, despoiled the environment, and left our poor to rot." Li calmed himself quickly, seeing her tight-lipped reaction. "It is the way of the world.

“And before you quote Jefferson to me, as so many Americans love to do, we have learned that even ideals must pass the market test. That's your Senator Kerry's test, Madam Secretary...the market test!" Li chuckled at his jibe.

"So we have adjusted, in many ways, inclining ourselves to you for decades to become like you. You know what we call Chaoyang, the new town northeast of here? We call it Manhattan. There is even a Four Seasons restaurant there. It’s crap but it will get better."

Li took another sip of his drink, a smaller one this time, and placed it on a coaster opposite Rice's orange juice. She sat across from him impassively. Li silently wished Colin Powell were still Secretary. He would have joined him in the drink and enjoyed the joke. This woman was colder and drier than a Mongolian wind.

“You are here, Madam Secretary, because we have finally taken the final step. We have done what your people asked us to do for years, making Renminbi directly convertible into dollars. You were right, it turned out. Many millions of Chinese, middle-class Chinese, loyal Chinese, wanted to trade their Yuan for dollars right away. But thanks to your ignorance we have been able to teach them a terrible lesson.”

“Our ignorance?” Rice asked.

“My colleague Jin Renqing told your ambassador we wanted to discuss your problem with Iraq, to help you solve the problem that has troubled financial markets.”

“Ambassador Randt never reported that, either to me or my predecessor," referring to former Secretary Powell. "He just said something about Taiwan.”

Li looked carefully at Rice, searching for deception. Finally, with nothing to go on, he merely shrugged. “We lose things in translation even when we speak a common language, eh?”

Rice felt uncomfortable. If Jen had been talking about Iraq to Randt, the message had not gotten through. This could prove troublesome.

“Please, Madam," Li continued. "Let’s not trouble about who said what to whom. The point is we have your attention, you are here now, and we now have an opportunity to return the great favor your President Nixon did for us so many years ago.”

“What favor was that?”

“He slapped our face with the new reality, Madam Secretary. I’ve seen Mr. Stone’s movie, I’ve read many books on Nixon, and I know he felt it was only a bit of diplomacy.

"But it was far more than that for us. It was the point on which our whole history as a nation turned. There is the pre-Nixon China. There is the post-Nixon China. And for you, perhaps, there will be the pre-Hu America and the post-Hu America.”

Given the hold of ideology over her man, Condoleeza Rice doubted Li’s words very seriously. But, as a diplomat, she was willing to toast them. The Chinese orange was more sour than those from Florida. She smiled with closed lips through the bitterness.