George H.W. Bush’s visit to Bryant University Saturday was a salute to the school’s role in building ties with China and a chance for the 83-year-old former president to savor the presence of thousands of students, teachers and parents appreciative of his role in American history.

“Thank you for the warmth of your welcome,” he said at the commencement. And why shouldn’t it be warm? Sure, he is a partisan Republican figure, but he also has given the nation a lifetime of public service, starting with being a Navy flier shot down over the Pacific in 1944.

Bush’s remarks, in the largest tent I’ve ever seen (340 by 120 feet), were less a speech than a toast. He said Navy pilots used to look for CAVU: Ceiling And Visibility Unlimited. “That applies to my life today. … and that’s the way I want your lives to be.”

You recall he was vice president, a congressman, CIA director and ambassador to the United Nations. But in 1974-75 he was chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing before there were full diplomatic relations with China, and that made him a prize catch for Bryant President Ronald Machtley, a former GOP congressman. Bryant houses the U.S.-China Institute, which forges academic, business and cultural links with Chinese institutions.

Before the commencement ceremony, Bush joined Machtley and Chinese entrepreneur Fan Jianchuan in unveiling a scale model of a replica of a building in Beijing’s Forbidden City that is to be constructed in China, disassembled, and rebuilt at Bryant to house Institute offices, a library, and an exhibition area.

Bush, who has had back surgery, walks stiffly and looks thinner than I remembered him, declared, “The U.S.-China relationship is the single most important bilateral relationship we have. … It’s very, very important, and I’m just very proud that this university is going to have this to show off.”

When I had a chance to chat with Bush, I noted that President Gerald Ford had offered him the gold-plated ambassadorships to Britain or France and was puzzled when Bush wanted China.

Bush told me, “I just saw the future and I still feel that way.” He said of China, “It’s so big and so different than what most Americans think that we just have to stay in touch. We have to know — understand — China and we can’t do it their way exactly on everything, but we’ve got to make sure that we don’t get crosswise with China. And I became even more convinced of that after I got over there and lived there, and I’ve been back a lot, go back a lot and enjoy it.”

I told Bush that in 1975 I interviewed his pal, the late John Chafee, who’d visited China in his role as a lawyer for a textile firm. This was before Chafee was a senator and interviewing someone then who had been to China was like talking with someone who’d gone to the moon. “That’s right,” Bush said. But now the Olympics will be in Beijing in August. Bush will be there as honorary captain of the U.S. team.

How weird it is to recall that the United States long refused to recognize the “Red Chinese” and worked to keep them out of the U.N. “Time marches on. A lot of things are weird,” Bush shrugged, “but we’re doing well with them.”

Now he had a question: “How’s your man Buddy Cianci doing?” I said the former Providence mayor, out of jail and now a radio star, is not my man.

“Do you ever see him?” Bush asked. I said I’d seen him once.

“I had a pleasant relationship with the guy,” Bush said. “But I can’t vouch for everything else he did!”

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com