White House talks between Barack Obama and China's president, Hu Jintao, which begin on Tuesday night, are not just any old summit. The former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski summed up the mood, describing the meeting as "the most important top-level US-China encounter since Deng Xiaoping's historic trip more than 30 years ago". As some in China and the US see it, the choice boils down to one of future war or peace.

Historically speaking, empires always fight. Successive American administrations have struggled to define the relationship between the world's leading superpower and the rising star of Asia that threatens to supplant it. Past summits often produced little of substance. Now, facing critical public, congressional and business scrutiny, Obama is under pressure to stand up for US interests and obtain tangible results. The past year brought a series of public clashes, reinforcing a growing US belief that China was swapping its designated role as strategic partner for that of strategic rival. Specific issues – Beijing's supposed unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft, US arms sales to Taiwan and South China Sea security disputes, the attempted gagging of Google, and the continued detention of the Nobel peace prizewinner Liu Xiaobo – raised the bilateral temperature, sometimes to boiling point.

Some rightwing commentators claim the US and China are already at war, if not yet in the conventional sense, and accuse Obama of naivety. Through currency manipulation, commercial attrition and expanding overseas investment, Hu is pursuing "war by other means", said Irwin Stelzer in the Weekly Standard, adding: "The communist regime sees trade policy as merely one strategic weapon in a war aimed at overtaking the US as the world's pre-eminent economic and military power." He cited the boast of China's defence minister, General Liang Guanglie, that "in the next five years our military will push forward preparations for military conflicts in every strategic direction".

While firmly rejecting war analogies, the White House knows it has a fight on its hands on many fronts – economic, political, ideological. Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, said last week that relations had reached a crucial juncture: "It is up to both nations to translate the high-level pledges of summits and state visits into action. Real action, on real issues."

Tim Geithner, the treasury secretary, Robert Gates at defence and Obama himself have all joined Clinton in setting out what the US expects from China. Their shopping list includes fuller co-operation on nuclear proliferation and climate change, stronger Chinese support on specific problems such as Iran and North Korea, and a more "responsible" exchange rate policy. White House aides say Obama also plans to publicly step up pressure on human rights.

Obama met leading US-based Chinese human rights advocates last week, discussing how best to influence attitudes from within. According to the Washington Post, Obama recalled his childhood in Indonesia, then governed by a dictatorship. "One thing he kept coming back to was – how does the omnipresence of the state, how does corruption, affect the lives of real people?" one official said. "And he asked how we should use our leverage … There was a lot of talk about how to reach into China to be heard."

The problem with America's exhortatory approach to human rights and other issues is that it rarely works. Clinton admitted that Beijing resented such interventions as an infringement of sovereignty. And trying to spread the civil liberties message Iran-style, behind the Communist party's back, is hazardous. It may only compound the problem, hurting those Obama seeks to help. China has its hardliners, too. They would undoubtedly exploit such action to weaken Hu and the party's reform wing.

This unpalatable reality reflects a bigger truth: the US must stop trying to tell China what to do. The time for that has passed. China is too big to be bullied, too canny to be conned, too complicated to be changed from without. And it cannot sensibly be blamed for America's declining global clout. Some self-awareness, a focus on practical, mutually beneficial measures, and a little circumspection would ultimately work better to stop a war of words turning into something worse. That's not to say human rights abuses can be ignored. But grandstanding will not help.

Hu wants a successful summit. He retires next year – and is enough of a politician to want to assure his legacy. But he's not going to roll over. Before getting on the plane, he warned Obama to tread carefully or risk deepening estrangement. "We both stand to gain from a sound China-US relationship, and lose from confrontation," Hu said. The two countries should "respect each other's choice of development path".

This summit marks a strategic turning point. Hu's constituency is the Communist party, the People's Liberation Army, and an increasingly nationalistic Chinese public. Bowing to America is not part of their 21st century script.