The presidential face off on foreign policy between President Barack Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney was geared to sway U.S. voters, but at points on the globe that the candidates argued over -- from Libya to Pakistan to China -- netizens, analysts and activists tuned in and weighed in.

China

After weeks of tough talk about China, the candidates made little mention of the growing superpower.

Netizens in China did not seem to take sides but instead used the debate to banter about the relationship with the United States.

"Whoever the winner, they are still all scoundrels and will not benefit China in any way," a tweet by @SiShiSiNianDeSi read on China's Weibo social network.

"China only factors into a small part of the debate. From these bits and pieces, any conclusions you draw is like that of a blind man feeling out an elephant," said another post by @YouYiSuiYi.

China's state news agency used the occasion to admonish whomever may become president to "tone down his get-tough-on-China rhetoric made along the campaign trail" and deal realistically with "China's inevitable rise."

Which candidate is elected seemed only to make a slight difference to China to analyst Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center in Beijing.

"Yes and no," he said, when asked if there were significant differences in the candidates' stances as concerns China.

"Both candidates, they made it clear that they want to treat China as a partner and that they want China to play by the rules," Wang said. But Romney's negative rhetoric stuck out, particularly that "he'll designate China as a currency manipulator," Wang said.

He found Romney's idea that China could not enter into a trade war with the United States as a reaction to tough measures from Washington because of the already existing trade imbalance "a very simple calculation."

"The decisions to be made in Beijing here will not only be based on the trade volumes but on domestic political concerns," he said.

But Wang advised that keeping up pressure on China about trade issues has been effective, particularly in the area of copyright.

"People start to use copyrighted materials, and people started to pay more and more respect to intellectual property," he said. Calls by the U.S. and international agencies to do so have "certainly played a role."

Afghanistan and Pakistan

In Pakistan, Romney's comments on the country's nuclear weapons program raised some ire.

"Pakistan and the U.S. have an old friendship, and it's disappointing to hear that Mitt Romney brought this relationship down to one that is purely based on Pakistan being a country with 100 nuclear warheads and counting, said Naveed Chaudhry, an aide to President Asif Ali Zardari.

Chaudhry said he wishes the United States would recognize what Pakistan has done for the war on terror.

Raza Rumi, director of the the think tank the Jinnah Institute, said it does not much matter who is president.

"Both candidates made reference to drone strikes and said they would continue," he said. "Pakistani public opinion is really swelling against the drone strikes."

Rumi was also disappointed there was no mention of a long-term strategy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan. "I can understand at the moment the American public wants the government to exit from Afghanistan, but surely there should be a strategy for that, because we have suffered once in the 1990s with that void, when Afghanistan was left (by the Soviets)."

Tweets out of Kabul, Afghanistan, indicated that viewers there felt left out of the debate.

"So who won the debate today? I know who lost. Afghans. Little mention of war, except for w/drawal. Differences not so different from e/o," tweeted someone who went by the name Subel.

Another tweeter, Musa Mahmodi, wrote: "Watched the US presidential debate, nothing new on Afghanistan, they both do not seem understand this country."

Libya