George W. Bush: Hu Jintao's and the Communist gerontocracy's best friend

Chinese leaders may be forgiven for some feelings of nostalgia for the outgoing US president. Bush may have fumbled in Afghanistan and miscalculated badly in Iraq and in the "war on terror" in general, all the while alienating traditional European allies. But for the most part, his presidency has been a boon for China, which has continued its relentless rise as a world power under his largely congenial watch.

On New Year's Day, Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao exchanged warm, congratulatory messages marking the 30th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the US and China. After the success of Mao Zedong's communist revolution in 1949, the US had recognized Taiwan, to which the defeated nationalists fled, as China. The historic 1972 visit to Beijing by then-president Richard Nixon made diplomatic ties possible seven years later.

From a Chinese perspective, Bush has been a good steward of the Sino-American relationship. Consider, for example, the Strategic Economic Dialogue the two countries began in 2006 under Bush's secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, the former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs and a long-time friend of Beijing. One key, if unspoken, agreement of these talks was that the US would mostly look the other way as China manipulated its currency, the yuan, to fuel its export-driven juggernaut of an economy, which has averaged double-digit growth during Bush's tenure.

The Bush administration also blinked as the central government continued to trample on human rights in China. The crackdown was particularly apparent during the buildup to last summer's Olympic Games, when Beijing did its best to eliminate any possibility that its international coming-out party would be marred by the embarrassment of political protests.

The violent response to last March's bloody riots in Tibet was the most visible example of the central government's heavy hand. Outside the international spotlight, however, human-rights activists and even ordinary citizens petitioning their government to address grievances concerning land grabs and corrupt local officials were routinely rounded up and locked up in the past year - with barely a squeak of objection from the Bush administration.

While other Western leaders such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed reservations about attending the opening ceremony of the Olympics, Bush always was and continued to be a great supporter of China as Olympic host.

The Bush White House has also seen China reach deeper into Africa for raw materials while at the same time cozying up to some disreputable regimes - for example, those of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan and President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe - with a no-strings-attached policy that prompted only muted concern from Washington.

Likewise, the significant expansion and modernization of China's military machine drew only polite expressions of concern and calls for greater transparency from the US Department of Defense. Military spending is up nearly 18% over the last two years and has averaged double-digit growth during the Bush administration. Officially, China laid out US$59 billion on its military last year, but the Pentagon estimates that the real figure is much higher, perhaps twice that, making China's military budget second only to that of the US.