On the campaign trail in Virginia yesterday, Mitt Romney called out President Obama for breaking another of his erstwhile campaign promises by failing to brand China a currency manipulator, and promised to do so himself at the start of his presidency. His campaign also released an ad yesterday pointing out how China’s perfidious financial practices unfairly give them an upper hand in the manufacturing industry.

The Chinese government didn’t like that, no siree. Via Politico:

“If these mud-slinging tactics were to become U.S. government policies, a trade war would be very likely to break out between the world’s top two economies, which would be catastrophic enough to both sides and the already groaning global economy,” Xinhua’s Liu Chang writes. “For generations, China-bashing has been a cancer in U.S. electoral politics, seriously plaguing the relations between the two countries.”

The commentary also takes a shot at Romney’s wealth, declaring it “rather ironic that a considerable portion of this China-battering politician’s wealth was actually obtained by doing business with Chinese companies before he entered politics.” …

Rather than attacking China, Xinhua suggests “[t]o cure its economic ailments, the United States needs to put its own fiscal house back in order, substantially slash its tremendous military expenditure, and optimize its economic structure.”

Oh, but for the petulant huffing and puffing of bullying communist regimes accustomed to getting their way! Yes, China, I’m sure you’d just love for us to ‘slash our tremendous military expenditure,’ the better to assert your dominance in the Pacific region, but do you really want to lecture us on ‘optimizing our economic structure’ and ‘putting our fiscal house back in order’? Are you sure you want to go there? Because you guys are only precariously maintaining a severely jacked-up, ill-begotten communist bubble, and sooner or later, that sucker is going to pop.

And yes, of course Romney got richer from doing business with you — we all have (check your clothing labels, friends!). The point is, you’ve wandered down a sketchy road of devaluing your currency to keep exports cheap and the trade deficit artificially high; it may benefit you in the short run, but in the long run, we’ll all be worse off. Romney was an international businessman, and did deal with Chinese companies, so he does indeed know exactly the kind of underhanded financial sneakiness you guys get up to — I’d say he’s in fact better positioned to call you out on it than most.