The presidential candidates’ rhetoric in recent weeks signals that a tougher U.S. policy toward China may be in store under a new administration. History suggests otherwise.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush denounced China on the campaign trail and promised a harder line. Both changed course when confronting the realities of governing, which today include China’s role as the second-largest foreign owner of U.S. debt — its holdings have increased eight-fold since 2000 — and as a central partner in efforts to contain North Korean nuclear ambitions.

“There is a tendency for president after president to come in bashing,” says Richard Baum, a China scholar at the University of California at Los Angeles who says he quit as an informal Clinton adviser last month after she began attacking the Asian nation. “But six months later, everything is the same, because the relationship is too important.”

That sums up the experiences of the last two presidents. Bill Clinton campaigned in 1992 against coddling the “butchers of Beijing” who ordered the crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square. Bush in 2000 said he would recast U.S. policy to treat China as a “strategic competitor,” not a partner.

In office, Clinton backed legislation normalizing trade relations, visited China and even took part in a welcoming ceremony near the site of the 1989 bloodshed. Bush, after the Sept. 11 attacks, sought Chinese support for fighting terrorism.

“Once a president is elected, he or she has a year to unwind all the anti-China rhetoric they used in the campaign,” said Charles Freeman, a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former top U.S. trade official on China.

China’s role has grown so large that the new president may come under pressure even sooner to ensure smooth relations.

Last year, China surpassed Canada to become the largest exporter to the U.S., selling US$322 billion in goods; that’s more than triple the amount in 2000, before Bush took office. American exports to China have risen more than 400 percent since 2000, according to U.S. Commerce Department figures.

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