Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s promise to get tough with China may fall on receptive ears in the U.S., but in China his vow has barely registered, much less caused alarm. Unlike in 2008, when the Chinese media and bloggers were intensely focused on the unexpected rise of Barack Obama, the current election has generated limited media coverage and online discussion. To an extent, this shouldn’t be surprising. China is in the midst of a once-per-decade, totally opaque and undemocratic national leadership transition (expected this fall but still unscheduled). Those Chinese who care about politics understandably care more about their own.
Adam Minter is an American writer based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he serves as a columnist for Bloomberg View. From 2002 to 2014, he lived and wrote in Shanghai, China, where he focused on a...