In his defense, at least he’s not trying to out-McCain McCain in other foreign policy arenas.

“I would, say, ‘Toys, they cannot come in.’ Food, Japan, they have set up their own inspection standards in China, and they say, ‘unless you meet our inspection standards, you cannot ship in here. If we don’t have labor agreements and environmental standards that are enforceable, there are consequences.’”

Stopping the importation of goods until they meet safety standards…not that crazy.
(minute 43 of the debate: here)

Obama has also called on Bush to strongly consider boycotting the opening ceremonies.

Obama has similarly threatened to “shut off Chinese access” to American markets if China doesn’t revaluate the RMB faster.

Remember also that Obama has shot his mouth off about China before, only to fall back to a more moderate position. Do you recall the “ban all Chinese toys” comment just before Christmas?

Now, I don’t expect a lot to come from either candidate’s rhetoric in turns of policy. After all, I seem to remember that the first candidate Clinton in 1992 accused the first president Bush of “coddling the butchers in Beijing” and having too liberal a trade policy, but then went on as president to be cozy with Beijing, save for the 1999 embassy bombing incident. Hillary or Barack or John would be more of the same.

Really, none of the Presidential candidates is discussing China and that’s a shame. They don’t want to make promises that they’ll have to retract later.