Candidates Spar Sharply Over China

HONG KONG - Foreign policy issues provoked two of the sharpest moments of the second debate between President Obama and the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, on Tuesday night. They sparred over the attack that killed four Americans in Libya, including the U.S. ambassador, and there was a testy exchange about U.S. policies toward China.

Mr. Obama mentioned three new trade agreements and a number of unfair trading cases brought by his administration - twice as many as the Bush presidency, he said. He specifically cited a move against China's “flooding” of the U.S. market with car and truck tires, a challenge that he said “saved a thousand jobs.”

“When he talks about getting tough on China,” Mr. Obama said, “keep in mind that Governor Romney invested in companies that were pioneers of outsourcing to China and is currently investing in companies that are building surveillance equipment for China to spy on its own folks.”

Mr. Obama then spoke sharply and directly to Mr. Romney, saying, “Governor, you're the last person that's going to get tough on China.”

The third and final presidential debate will focus more on specific foreign policy issues and the United States' role in the world. That debate is scheduled for Oct. 22 in Boca Raton, Florida, and one of the five topics will be “The Rise of China and Tomorrow's World.”

Later in the debate on Tuesday, Mr. Romney repeated his promise “on Day 1” to label China a currency manipulator, which he said would enable him to impose tariffs on Chinese goods. He said Beijing “has been cheating over the years,” stealing products and intellectual property from American companies. China, he said, he “not played by the rules.”

In response, Mr. Obama repeated the outsourcing charge and said his administration has “exerted unprecedented trade pressure on China.”

Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. secretary of state who pioneered and c ontinues to promote close relations between Washington and Beijing, said both candidates have been using “extremely deplorable” language in speaking about China, as Rendezvous reported.

“Both used the word ‘cheat' as applied to China, in trade,” Mr. Kissinger said during a panel discussion at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. He said “theoreticians” unschooled in the nuances of the U.S.-China relationship “want to turn this into a crusade.”

“Do you want China to be an enemy or a friend?” Maurice Greenberg, the former chairman of American International Group, said on Bloomberg TV last week. Mr. Greenberg, who backs Mr. Romney, is a director of the U.S.-China Business Council, a free trade group.

“We have a choice between a trade agreement or a trade war,” he said. “I choose a trade agreement and I hope that we will.”

Mr. Greenberg said he would expect a President Romney to back off the anti-China comments he has mad e as a candidate, including the promise to call out China on its currency.

“It's common sense, and I think he has common sense,” Mr. Greenberg said of Mr. Romney. “It's not backtracking. He'll have some advisers around him that will put it straight.”

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows that a rising China is a concern to the U.S. public, even more than it is among retired military members, government employees, business people, journalists and foreign policy scholars. More than half of Americans see China's rise as a “major threat” to the United States, the survey found. Just one-fourth of scholars hold that view.

Fifteen percent of the public labels China as an enemy, the Pew survey found.

“Republicans are considerably more concerned than Democrats about the impact of China's rise,” a Pew summary of its survey said. “Six in 10 Republicans believe China's emergence as a world power poses a major threat to the U.S., compa red with 48 percent of Democrats.”

The survey also found that Americans overwhelmingly describe the Chinese people as hardworking (93 percent), competitive and inventive. “Most also associate these traits with the American people,” the report said, “but fewer say Americans are hardworking (78 percent) than say the same about the Chinese.”