Time for a reality check

US presidential hopefuls like to portray China as a rival because they don't have any answers to country's woes

The election is getting nasty in the United States. Slandering, after all, is not something US politicians are shy of. Republican candidates have to attack each other to garner votes from one state to another if they want to win the nomination race, and they mustn't forget to take digs at their "common enemy", US President Barack Obama. Irrespective of the reasons, all the Republican candidates have depicted Obama as a person of buoyant naivet. That was why Arizona Governor Janice Brewer dared to point the finger at her commander-in-chief at the airport.

All this has made it relatively easy for Obama to play tough. One of his pet areas seems to be China's exchange rate policy, as Obama and US Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner have repeatedly accused China of suppressing the yuan's value.