CHINA US Focus - Perspectives shaping the world's most important bilateral relationship

The world’s two biggest economies are entering the final stages of political campaigns to pick their national leaders. But that’s where similarities in the politics of the United States and China end.

 

While American candidates wage loud, rah-rah campaigns with a clear timetable as they head toward the Nov. 6 presidential election, China hasn’t even announced the date for this fall’s Communist Party congress that will appoint the next top leader to replace outgoing Hu Jintao — a post widely expected to go to Vice President Xi Jinping.