THE PRESIDENCY by HUGH SIDEY: Off to China with Betty and Books

Jerry Ford went genially off to China like a good Middle Western businessman with part of his family in tow and his bookkeeper along to finish a little budget work in the hotel at night. Maybe the best work Ford will do this week will be to polish details of his fiscal '77 spending programs with Budget Director Jim Lynn, who set up a traveling library of ten books containing the proposed budgets for the major Government departments. There won't be ten books' worth of agreements with the Chinese when Ford comes back next week, and there might be nothing at all on paper.

Sorting out the Chinese leadership will be part of the President's problem. Premier Chou Enlai, desperately ill, is not expected to join in the meetings. On his first visit to China in 1972, when he was minority leader of the House, Ford met Chou and liked him immensely. Henry Kissinger has always rated his evenings with Chou as among the most pleasant and rewarding he has spent on the diplomatic run. When Kissinger was in Peking in October to complete details for this summit, he received a note from Chou, and Kissinger sent flowers to the hospital, a touching commemoration of their special relationship. Ford may do the same, but that is about all the contact with Chou there will be. The man across the table will be Teng Hsiao-ping, a tough little guy whom Kissinger has never liked very much.

Ford wanted to know about Teng as he and Kissinger went through the State Department briefing materials for the meeting. The President scanned the transcripts of every conversation that Kissinger and Richard Nixon have had with Mao Tse-tung. No audience with Mao is formally scheduled this time, but Ford will probably be called in by the 81-year-old leader, with whom conversation grows more difficult each month. Even if they do meet, not much progress is expected on such issues as formal recognition between the two nations or the impasse on the status of Taiwan.

It will be a journey of impressions at a time when personal diplomacy grows in importance. Ford prides himself on his warm relationships with men like West Germany's Helmut Schmidt, France's Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and the old bear, Leonid Brezhnev. The President wants a Chinese face or two to add to the fraternity.

Members of the White House family want other trophies. Susan Ford carried along her Nikon to take slides, especially of a commune and the Great Wall. Mrs. Ford may bring back the warmest and most poetic feelings. "I really felt like I left a part of myself in China the last time," she said. "I loved it so." She declared her intent to see more of those wonderful Chinese kids, to talk with the women in greater detail about their lives and maybe to learn a bit more about acupuncture, which fascinated her in 1972. Before she left this time, Betty Ford grabbed a couple of pencils to practice her chopstick technique, and she tried her phonetic Chinese. "There is so much food," she said, "you have to learn to use the words gola, gola [enough, enough]."

William Lukash, the President's doctor, has counseled him to keep up his calisthenics and maybe search out a swimming pool in Peking for a plunge.