Contra the hype, Rudd speaking Chinese is not an advantage at higher diplomatic levels, for it just opens the door to endless dissembling and posturing which is traditional Chinese politics, and for plenty of smoke and mirrors at the Australian end.
Like any foreign Mandarin speaker, Rudd will have a ‘Chinese name’ which he will use to introduce himself to a Chinese speaker. (Mine is ‘Bian Xiao Xia’). A properly selected name has a subtle poetic meaning which gives the native conversant vast opportunity to expound obscure hermeneutics. So any conversation will go like this:

‘Greetings, my name is X-Y-Z and I am aspiring to be Prime Minister of Australia..’
“You speak excellently (even if you don’t), where did you learn? … Who was your teacher?…
Your name means ‘flower of the new spring’ and reminds me of my native province… have you been to Hai Nan? It is a beautiful place….”

And so on. Bearing in mind also that Chinese believe in ‘Wu-wei’, which means that the higher status the person the slower and more portentously they speak every syllable [the Emperor ideally was not supposed to speak at all, Wu-wei - ‘accomplishing without acting’ (by pure virtuousness)]. So the conversation will take an hour or so to cover a few preliminaries.
Since it’s basically a stunt to get elected, what’s the bet that Rudd is tempted to go to China, talk a lot of meaningless platitudes, then give us a distorted account of what was discussed?
After last week’s account of his attempt at press manipulation, I wouldn’t be surprised.