WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Mitt Romney lashed out at Beijing and President Barack Obama's China policy on Thursday, criticizing the president for going in "precisely the wrong direction" and calling meetings this week with visiting Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping "empty pomp."
In an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, the Republican presidential candidate chided Obama for demurring to the Asian powerhouse and said he would change course if elected by preserving a military presence in the region and confronting human rights issues in China more forcefully.
"President Obama came into office as a near supplicant to Beijing, almost begging it to continue buying American debt so as to finance his profligate spending here at home ... Such weakness has only encouraged Chinese assertiveness and made our allies question our staying power in East Asia," the former Massachusetts governor wrote.
"Now, three years into his term, the president has belatedly responded with a much-ballyhooed 'pivot' to Asia, a phrase that may prove to be as gimmicky and vacuous as his 'reset' with Russia," he said, adding that "the supposed pivot has been oversold" and was "also vastly under-resourced."
Romney's comments come as China's vice president and presumed future leader visits the United States to build ties and urge greater cooperation between the two countries. Obama and other administration officials have pressed Xi to improve China's human rights record and play by the rules of the world economy.
China's leader-in-waiting visited America's grainbelt on Thursday and discussed increased trade in farm goods with U.S. agricultural officials.
China is not beloved by the American electorate. Its trade and currency policies are blamed for job losses in the U.S. manufacturing sector that hit important election battleground states such as Ohio especially hard.
Beating up on Beijing is an easy way for candidates to score political points, and Obama's campaign, which was expecting Romney's attack, responded by calling him a flip-flopper on the issue.
"Today's tough talk on China stands in stark opposition to his position two years ago, when Romney called the president's decision to enforce trade laws against China 'bad for the nation and our workers,'" said campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, quoting from Romney's book, "No Apology."
LaBolt also cited a Wall Street Journal report that said Romney's financial advisers had sold some $1.5 million in investments in China last year.
"He was comfortable investing 1.5 million of his own money in China rather than America until he decided it was bad for his politics. A Commander-in-Chief only gets one chance to get it right," LaBolt said.
TOUGH TALK FROM BOTH SIDES
On Wednesday, one day after meeting with Xi at the White House, Obama continued his attack on Chinese trade practices and called for manufacturing jobs to move back to the United States.
Obama chided competitors for not playing "by the same rules" at a campaign-style visit at Master Lock's Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
factory and pointed to his creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit to investigate unfair trade practices in China and other countries.
But Romney said in the newspaper piece he would take a different tack, calling for direct action to counter "abusive Chinese practices in the areas of trade, intellectual property, and currency valuation."
Romney, who is running in large part on his experience as a business executive, has made tough talk on China a centerpiece of his campaign's economic message and last week criticized China's "authoritarianism" during an address to an audience of technology executives.
"Unless China changes its ways, on day one of my presidency I will designate it a currency manipulator and take appropriate counteraction. A trade war with China is the last thing I want, but I cannot tolerate our current trade surrender," he wrote on Thursday.
He also called for reversing defense cuts and maintaining a strong military presence in the Pacific to balance "the long-term challenge posed by China's build-up."
"This is not an invitation to conflict. Instead, this policy is a guarantee that the region remains open for cooperative trade, and that economic opportunity and democratic freedom continue to flourish across East Asia," he wrote.
On the issue of human rights, Romney wrote: "We must also forthrightly confront the fact that the Chinese government continues to deny its people basic political freedoms and human rights."
(Editing by Anthony Boadle)
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