LU Kewen, as our Prime Minister is known to tens of millions in Mandarin, is usually no Red Guard.

In fact, he is a counter-revolutionary, having written his honours thesis admiringly on the famous Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, who wrote a brilliant large character wall poster on the “fifth modernisation”: democracy, which China’s leaders have refused to embrace as part of their economic modernisation.

But Kevin Rudd this week has produced his own cultural revolution. He may have transformed the way the world deals with China. He may have produced a great leap forward in the broad international project of making China a normal nation.

For Rudd has shown the world that it is possible to be a good friend of China and still speak to the Chinese leadership frankly and in public about its appalling human rights practices. This is a profound revolution.

Let no one tell you it is not a change from the past. I am sure Australian officialdom advised against this approach and it is a radical departure from the practice of John Howard, who preferred to concentrate on what he and the Chinese had in common.

Australian officials may perversely try to play down the radical nature of what Rudd did. Don’t buy it. That is a nonsense interpretation.

No Western leader, with the partial exception of US presidents, does what Rudd did this week: criticise the Chinese over human rights abuses in Tibet before he arrives, in fact in a joint press conference with US President George W. Bush. Repeat the criticism in London. Absorb furious official Chinese protests in Beijing and Canberra, then go to China and repeat the offence in public, in front of a Chinese audience.

It’s true that the Chinese censored this part of Rudd’s speech at Beijing University. That is not the point. The Chinese were ropeable at Rudd’s statement and millions of Chinese will hear about it one way and another. It figured prominently in CNN and BBC reports this week, as well as coverage by Deutsche Welle and countless other news services. I myself did an interview with Al Jazeera’s global audience explaining Rudd’s statements. These statements featured heavily in The Economist, as they did in newspapers and journals across the world. Given the internet, much of this finds its way back to the Chinese public.

Nonetheless, Rudd had a positive visit to China. Although the Chinese leadership was furious with him and took the unusual step of having party spokesmen denounce Rudd’s views while he was in China, nonetheless it continued with the positive side of the visit, simultaneously embracing and honouring Rudd as it denounced his views. This is why his performance constitutes a cultural revolution in doing business with China.

His approach, of course, was immensely sophisticated. In his speech at Beijing University he said he wanted to be a zhengyou to China. This Chinese term means a friend who is such a good friend that he will tell you unpleasant truths. This is where Rudd’s approach, which was very high risk, much higher risk than anyone will now admit, has paid off handsomely, indeed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams before the trip began.

In his speech to the Chinese students Rudd suggested the marriage of two concepts. One was the official Chinese description of its national development as a “peaceful rise” or “peaceful development” or more recently promoting a “harmonious world”. The other was the formulation of former US deputy secretary of state Bob Zoellick that China should become a responsible stakeholder in the global order.

The next sentence of Rudd’s was critical. He said: “The idea of a ‘harmonious world’ depends on China being a participant in the world order and, along with others, acting in accordance with the rules of that order. Failing this, harmony is impossible to achieve.”

As much as his comments on Tibet, this sentence produced a stony silence in Rudd’s listeners. But this goes to the very nub of how the world deals with China.

The best way to treat China is as a normal nation, which has the normal rights and responsibilities of any other nation, which plays a role in the world commensurate with its importance and standing, and which honours basic norms of civilised behaviour and the international order.

The Chinese, for the past 30 years, have been pulling a confidence trick by claiming that previous Western colonisation of China means that any Western criticism hurts the feelings of the Chinese people. The resort to crude nationalism and old-fashioned communist propaganda is evident in the reaction of China’s state-controlled media to the worldwide demonstrations in favour of human rights in Tibet. To express concern for the human rights of Chinese citizens, in this twisted world view, is to be anti-Chinese.

China’s apologists in Australia often reinforce this paradigm by their support of the “whateverist” school. Whatever the Chinese Government does is right and any criticism of it is wrong. Sometimes this is justified as being sensitive to China; at other times it’s defended with a kind of tawdry ersatz realism: China is too big to offend.

Rudd has completely transcended this sterile paradigm and he has done so while moving forward on a positive agenda with China. Rudd’s positive agenda was solid. He got a climate change co-operation agreement and the establishment of several new co-operative bodies on it, one at ministerial level. He got an agreement to work together on reducing deforestation which, if you are serious about climate change, is vital. And he got agreement to inject new political energy into the free trade agreement negotiations between Canberra and Beijing.

He also made various economic representations to the Chinese and prosecuted a lot of other business. It’s not absolutely earth-shattering but it is more than respectable. But to do it while publicly criticising the Chinese over human rights and telling them that they have to abide by the rules of the global system: that is earth-shattering and unprecedented.

The Chinese will not like it much because it tells other Western leaders that they do not need to be so mealy-mouthed as they normally are with the Chinese. Of course China badly wants Australia’s resources, so Rudd was in the strong position of not going to China as a mendicant with a beggar’s bowl.

Similarly, his Mandarin language and his undeniable love of Chinese culture provided the best possible context for his harder messages to Beijing. But, still, there was no guarantee at all that the Chinese would not react by cancelling his high-level appointments and humiliating him.

It may be that circumstances partly pushed Rudd into having to make public statements on Tibet. But he could have wimped out of it without any serious political damage in Australia. Rudd took a risk for human rights and it was a well-judged risk.

Whether his cultural revolution represents a new international pattern of a more normal China or whether it is a false spring, soon to be followed by a new wind of Chinese hostility, is perhaps now the most fascinating question.