It takes some brass, as the Secretary of Explaining Stuff might say, to make your opponent's alleged weakness on China a major campaign issue when you, personally, continue to profit from investments in China. Mitt Romney has that brass. Take the case of auto parts manufacturer Asimco:
Nine years ago, the company bought two camshaft factories that employed about 500 people in Michigan. By 2007 both were shut down. Now Asimco manufactures the same components in China on government-donated land in a coastal region that China has designated an export base, where companies are eligible for the sort of subsidies Mr. Romney says create an unfair trade imbalance.
Can you guess the punchline? That's right, not only does Bain Capital own Asimco, but Mitt Romney personally has "as much as $2.25 million invested in three Bain funds with large stakes in Asimco and at least seven other Chinese businesses." On top of that:
[...] a confidential prospectus for one of the Bain funds, obtained by The New York Times, promotes China as a good investment for some of the same reasons that Mr. Romney has said concern him: "Strong fundamentals" like manufacturing wages 85 percent lower than what Americans earn, vast foreign exchange reserves and the likelihood that China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy.
Additionally, at the same time as Romney has been assailing President Obama for not cracking down on Chinese intellectual property theft, Microsoft says that one of the Chinese companies Bain has invested in is a software pirate.
Romney's big excuse is that he has no control over the money in his "blind" trust, but that excuse has two gaping holes. For one thing, Romney's trust is only pretending to be blind. For another, Bain's investments in China and offshoring jobs date back to when Romney was running Bain.
Romney wants us to believe that while he may have spent decades profiting from Chinese investments and China's export subsidies, if he was president it would all be different. He'd turn around and get tough on China. He says this all the time on the stump. And every damn time he says it, he's insulting the intelligence of every voter he's trying to persuade to believe him and vote for him.