Society

China's consumer-safety agency, at the urging of U.S. and European officials, plans to tighten product-safety regulations in an effort to stamp out defective and dangerous exports and to ease trade tensions between China and the U.S.

Chinese manufacturers will be held accountable for the safety of their products, said Zhi Shuping, head of the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, in a meeting Tuesday with European and U.S. counterparts. The government aims to provide them with safety and testing standards created in cooperation with the U.S. and the European Union. Regulators are particularly eager to rid products of materials containing high levels of caustic metal, such as lead and cadmium.

Beijing officials are mulling limiting the number of cars on city roads in order to ease worsening traffic congestion, according to state media (report in Chinese).

At a forum on urban development, Liu Yumin, deputy director for the Beijing Planning Commission, said, “Traffic problems will not be resolved by gains made in other areas.”

It’s the first time a city official has publicly mentioned plans for limiting the number of automobiles in China’s capital, and could mark a change in gridlock-fighting policy that is tougher than existing programs.

China bashing has become a bipartisan sport this election season. But if the bashers won’t heed the economic case for not knocking down America’s second largest trading partner, they ought to consider the political one: Even if they get into office by peddling false economic theories, in order to stay there they will have to produce the right results. This protectionism never has – and never will – deliver.

Every election needs a foreign villain, and with the public ODed on the A-rab threat, our political class has turned its sights further East. And, truth be told, China’s autocracy is not helping itself by choosing this moment to halt shipments of rare metals used in wind mills, solar panels and the like. Still, slashing trade with China will do as much to stimulate America’s moribund economy as a bitch in heat would to stimulate my neutered dog’s libido.

The dichotomy between the world's two greatest economies is the tension most impacting the financial markets and geopolitics today. The U.S. wants to add to already substantial amounts of indebtedness to avoid deflation and to stimulate the economy by dint of lower interest rates. China, on the other hand, wishes to dampen its economic growth and stifle growing inflation by raising its interest rates, which it just did this week. Two opposite paths to avoid crisis, and another violent battering of financial markets.

Ben Bernanke hopes quantitative easing will increase the flow of credit to the domestic economy and stimulate job creation. China's Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, is plainly worried about asset bubbles forming in real estate and other activities in China.