Obama, McCain lambast China — for now

McCain, 71, the presumptive Republican nominee, seized on the issue of unsafe toy imports after a recall of Chinese-made products.

“If I were president of the United States, the next toy that came into this country from China that endangered the lives of our children, it would be the last,” he said on April 22.

During the past year, McCain has taken Chinese leaders to task for denying their citizens freedom of worship and speech, supporting “pariah states” such as Myanmar and Sudan and promoting regional organizations that seek to exclude the U.S. from Asia.

The Arizona senator has proposed reconfiguring the Group of Eight industrialized nations to keep China from joining, even though its economy is bigger than all but three current members. He says the G-8 should be limited to democracies.

Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser, says the senator will govern no differently than he has campaigned regarding China: “He does not advocate any positions or principles today that are different from what he intends to carry out if he should become president.”

China’s ambassador to the U.S., Zhou Wenzhong, shrugs off criticisms from the presidential candidates. “My friends advise us not to take this campaign rhetoric too seriously,” said May 14 at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. “The most important thing is the policies.”

Yan Xuetong, director of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, says Chinese-U.S. relations might be more stable under a McCain presidency than with either Democrat. Either way, he says, the relationship will be under strain. “No matter who wins the election, China will have a tougher period in the early part of the presidency and then the relationship will improve,” Yan says.

Still, Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley’s Asia division in Hong Kong, says the next president may have more difficulty retreating from anti-China statements, given how strongly such rhetoric resonates among voters. In an interview with Bloomberg Radio, Roach asked: “Can a president who gets elected running on this theme just all of a sudden get sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009, and say, ‘Oops, I didn’t mean it’?”

1|2|3

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email