Greg Torode examines implications for China in US election

There has been a bipartisan cast to US presidential engagement with China since Richard Nixon blazed the trail to Mao Zedong's Beijing 40 years ago. But that bipartisanship extends in a very different way to White House election campaigns.

While the long path of Sino-US engagement has broadened ties, progress comes despite the rhetoric on the hustings. Both Democrats and Republicans feel they can bash Beijing with abandon - Communist Party-ruled China is a tailor-made bogeyman and the race for the White House usually sees it portrayed in terms that bring more heat than light to the debate.

Just consider the history. An insurgent Bill Clinton railed at incumbent president George Bush Snr in 1992 about the need to stand up to the "butchers of Beijing" over human rights and trade. Once successfully in office, Clinton pushed for China's historic entry into the World Trade Organisation.

Eight years later, candidate George W. Bush would warn that Clinton went soft on China, only to be in turn described as a "patsy" of Beijing as Barack Obama launched his own historic run for the White House eight years later.

Now Republican hopeful Mitt Romney is describing President Obama as a "near supplicant" of Beijing on everything from security to trade to human rights. Obama, meanwhile, is touting an unprecedented record of standing up to China over unfair trade while warning that Romney's private equity firm, Bain Capital, "shipped jobs to China".

When the pair squared off in Florida last Monday in their third and final debate, Obama described China as "both an adversary and a potential partner in the international community, if it is following the rules". It was one of the few insightful thoughts uttered in a segment on China that swiftly degenerated into squabbling over who-said-what-to-whom.

On one level, then, the 2012 race for the White House is a classic example of political blood sport. But across Washington, there are signs of an evolving debate about how a struggling US can keep its edge and leverage over a rising China. It is something that Obama and his leading advisers spend a great deal of time thinking about, according to White House officials. You just won't see it on the campaign trail, now in its intense closing stages.