Building healthy rhetoric in China-US ties

Before the first US presidential debate on Monday, quite a few American experts on China were upset that the two candidates, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, had not talked much about the United States' broad policy toward China. They have been witness to the positive momentum in bilateral relations, yet they were troubled by the worsening strategic rivalry between the two countries.

Former US ambassador to China Winston Lord believes that even in the transition period, the president-elect should find someone very important to start talking with China in a bid to turn bilateral ties around. Orville Schell, director of the Center on US-China Relations at Asia Society, has suggested that former US president Bill Clinton take up the job if his wife is elected.

For many Chinese, the absence of China as a topic during the US presidential race may not be a bad thing, because candidates have for long used China as a bogeyman. Many still remember Republican nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 yelling and swearing in every speech that he would label China a currency manipulator on the first day in office if he was elected president. At one Republican primary that year, Jon Huntsman, a former US ambassador to China, was made to look the least relevant for US-China relations by his opponents.