For Chinese citizens following President Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S., the message from Communist Party propaganda czars is loud and clear: The world's dominant power is finally treating China as an equal, and Mr. Hu, who steps down as party chief next year, is the man to thank.
State-controlled media have gone into overdrive to portray the visit as a resounding success and the start of a new era of bilateral relations, based on "mutual respect and mutual benefit," while Internet censors have scrubbed clean chat rooms and blogs of almost all comments that might suggest otherwise.
One forum set up on 163.com—one of China's leading news portals—to discuss Mr. Hu's visit showed 248,555 participants as of Sunday evening, but only 19,936 comments were visible, suggesting tens of thousands had been deleted. The comments that remained were overwhelmingly positive.
The only online commentary allowed to stray from the official party line was widespread praise from nationalist bloggers for Lang Lang, the China-born pianist who played a tune from a famous anti-U.S. Chinese film about the Korean War during the White House state banquet.
"This is so not giving face to the U.S.... hoho, this is so cool!" wrote Jing Niu on sina.com's microblogging service, one of thousands of netizens who hailed Mr. Lang's choice as a snub to President Obama. The pianist himself, writing about the White House evening on his blogsite, gives no hint that he understood the political implications.
The tightly controlled media blitz illustrates how sensitive party leaders are to public opinion about China-U.S. relations, which were rocked by a series of disputes last year over issues such as China's territorial claims, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and the value of the Chinese currency.
China's civilian foreign-policy establishment is now anxious to stabilize one of the world's most important bilateral relationship, but party leaders also must appease an increasingly diverse and demanding array of interest groups, including hawkish People's Liberation Army generals and nationalist bloggers.
Another important factor in the publicity campaign is Mr. Hu's desire to secure his own political legacy as the architect of China's "peaceful rise" to a major world power ahead of his anticipated retirement as party chief in 2012, and as president a year later.
China's leaders long have been judged by their colleagues and successors in part on their ability to manage relations with the U.S., and Mr. Hu's influence after his retirement will depend to a significant extent on his record on this front.
Mao Zedong, who led Communist forces to victory in 1949, oversaw the rapprochement between China and the U.S. that stemmed from the Sino-Soviet split, and famously shook hands with President Nixon when he visited Beijing in 1972.
Deng Xiaoping, who rose to power after Mao's death in 1976, established full diplomatic relations with Washington in 1979, and visited the U.S. a month later. He donned a Stetson and rode a stagecoach at a Texas rodeo, creating an image that defined U.S.-China relations—and his economic reform program—for the next two decades.
When Jiang Zemin paid a state visit to the U.S. in 1997, his mission was to attract foreign investment and to repair the damage done to China's image in the West by the military crackdown on protesters at Tiananmen Square eight years earlier. Mr. Jiang sparred openly with his hosts over human rights, but also charmed them, for example, by trying on a colonial tricorn hat in Williamsburg and reciting part of the Gettysburg Address on a tour of the White House.
By contrast, Mr. Hu's visit in 2006—three years after he took over as president—was a disappointment.
He wanted it to be a full state visit, but President George W. Bush downgraded it to an "official visit", and offered him only a "working lunch" instead of a full state banquet.
That visit was further marred by a series of perceived slights, including a supporter of the Falun Gong movement, which is banned in China, heckling Mr. Hu during a welcoming ceremony, and a White House aide introducing China's national anthem as that of Taiwan.
State media didn't report either incident, but accounts of them spread by word of mouth in political circles in Beijing and over the Internet.
Mr. Hu tried to emulate his predecessors in presenting a friendly image in 2006, at one point putting on baseball hat at a Boeing plant near Seattle, but his efforts seemed to fall flat in the U.S. and in China.
Since then, the 2008 financial crisis has accelerated China's emergence as an economic and military power, and encouraged some party insiders, especially in the military, to argue that Beijing needs to reshape the U.S.-dominated world order. Others, especially in the civilian foreign-policy establishment, say China needs to focus first on its domestic problems—especially on inflation and corruption—and are pushing the U.S. to shore up its defense ties with allies in Asia.
State media attempted to appease both sides of the debate in the past few days by stressing that Mr. Hu was given the respect due to a major world power, and by showing him reassuring the U.S. that it shouldn't feel threatened by China's rise.
"During his visit, President Hu spared no efforts to make friends, to proclaim China's philosophy of peaceful development and to express the Chinese people's willingness to join hands with the world to greet a spring of harmonious development," the official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.
"In Washington, President Hu and his U.S. counterpart, Barack Obama, agreed to build a China-U.S. cooperative partnership based on mutual respect and mutual benefit, and marked out priorities of the development of China-U.S. relations for the future."
The People's Daily quoted Yang Jiechi, China's foreign minister, as saying Mr. Hu had attended nearly 20 events in Washington and Chicago in 68 hours, and "interacted widely with Americans from various circles."
State media also made no mention of Mr. Hu's words on human rights, which despite suggestions to the contrary from some U.S. officials, didn't represent a departure from previous statements by Chinese leaders.
The success of the trip was especially important for Mr. Hu as he is directly responsible for the U.S. relationship as head of the party's leading group on foreign affairs. Further friction with Washington, especially on the military front, could affect the leadership change in 2012, when Mr. Hu and six other members of the nine-man Politburo Standing Committee are due to retire.
Mr. Hu is almost certain to be replaced by Xi Jinping, currently vice president, following Mr. Xi's promotion to vice chairman of the Central Military Commission in October last year. But the other positions on the Standing Committee have yet to be decided, and Mr. Xi has offered few indications of how he views the U.S.
U.S. officials are hoping for further insight when Mr. Xi hosts U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on an official trip to China later this year, and then makes a reciprocal visit to the U.S., the date for which has yet to be announced.