Candidates Criticize China; Presidents Show Caution

By Michele Kelemen

Published September 10, 2012 at 5:05 PM EDT

For more than three decades, presidential candidates have talked tough about China during the campaign season, but opted for more moderate policies as president. Republican nominee Mitt Romney, shown speaking in Colorado in July, accuses China of manipulating its currency in order to export its goods cheaply to the US.

It has become a staple of U.S. presidential campaigns: Candidates talk about getting tough with China, only to adopt much more moderate positions once they are in office.

When Ronald Reagan ran against President Jimmy Carter in 1980, the challenger often blasted the incumbent for, in his words, "abandoning" Taiwan to establish diplomatic relations with China.

"There will be no more abandonment of friends and allies by the United States of America and I want very much to send that message," Reagan said.

In 1992, challenger Bill Clinton accused incumbent George H.W. Bush of coddling those Clinton called the "butchers of Beijing."

This administration and this president failed to stand up for our values," Clinton said. "Instead he sent secret emissaries to China signaling that we would do business as usual with those who murdered freedom in Tiananmen Square."

And when George W. Bush was running for president in 2000, he said in a CNN debate that the one thing he'd change about Clinton's foreign policy was America's attitude toward China.

"The current president has called the relationship with China a strategic partnership, I believe our relationship has to be redefined as one of competitor," Bush said.

China's growing economic might means that it has increasing power to push back against US policies that it does not like, according to analysts. This photo from August shows the construction on the Shanghai Tower, which will be the tallest building in Shanghai.

A Pattern That Hurts US Credibility

Jeff Bader of the Brookings Institution says that this pattern of campaign posturing is not particularly helpful.

"We have an unhappy history of candidates taking a tough line on China during a campaign for political purposes and then after the election a period during which they had to walk back their commitments, with damage to our credibility and finally, essentially, adopt the policies of their predecessors," he says.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney says if he becomes president he would label China a currency manipulator.

Bader, who worked in President Obama's white house, thinks that could spark a trade war and points out that both presidents Obama and Bush opted against that.

"The rhetoric and talk of campaigns seems to assume that the chinese have no response but to use a Chinese phrase, to tremble and obey once we've decided on a new course and actually the Chinese have the ability to respond and to retaliate," Bader says. "When you are in a campaign, you don't worry about that. But when you are president you do. Particularly now that this is the world's number two economy."

China's Growing Might

This pattern of using China as a whipping boy in the campaign and then softening the US position may not hold much longer, though, argues Ted Galen Carpenter of the CATO institute.

He says there's a growing sense that China is gaining on the US, and America's debt to China is a major concern as well.

"There's resentment and not very well disguised resentment against the Chinese," he says. "Add to that some very real grievances about the value of China's currency and some of the strategic tensions involving the South China Sea especially and you have a mix for a less friendly relationship than what we have seen probably since the Tiananmen square massacre (of 1989)."

The US has already been shifting military assets to the Asia Pacific region and this pivot to Asia will likely continue, according to Bonnie Glaser of the Center for Strategic International Studies.

"The Asia-Pacific region is the most dynamic region in the world," she notes. "It is the most economically dynamic region. US exports to the region are increasing much faster than our exports to other parts of the world, and in addition to that because of china's rise, that requires more attention from the US."

Glaser says Republican and Democratic administrations alike have sought to engage China but also pursue what she calls a hedging policy.

"We have the Chinese developing some military capabilities that are often referred to as anti-access, area-denial capabilities that would make it risky for the US military to operate close to Chinese shores if there's a conflict .. and the US has to have to ensure that we are 10 steps ahead of the Chinese," she adds.

And that's true in other fields as well, she says. But Glaser also points out that the US has to be mindful of the many internal challenges facing China as well.