From the Washington Post, we have Joe Biden, at Sichuan University in China yesterday:

Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

And Mitt Romney, on Joe Biden's statement:

China’s one-child policy is gruesome and barbaric. Vice President Biden’s acquiescence to such a policy should shock the conscience of every American. Instead of condoning the policy, Vice President Biden should have condemned it in the strongest possible terms. There can be no defense of a government that engages in compulsory sterilization and forced abortions in the name of population control.

Romney wins this round. He attacked Biden before all the other Republican candidates, he turned a comment about a foreign power into a strong anti-abortion statement, and he appeals to the xenophobia crowd, which will be turning out in big numbers for the Republican primaries next year.

Of course, it does make you wonder about the tea-powered Republican Party's stance on diplomacy when their frontrunner's foreign policy involves castigating one of the major owners of our debt. Does Romney also refute the Republicans who have made nice with China through the years? Pretty much all the foreign policy we've seen out of this crop of Republicans involves running away from fights, ignoring regime change that could result in democracy, and sacrificing diplomacy in the name of morality. Whoever wins the nomination will probably have to backpedal furiously during the general election, unless they're willing to damage our relations with major foreign powers in hopes of tapping a deep isolationist undercurrent in the voting public.