Q: Am I able to gift a song from my home in the U.S. to someone who lives in China?

No.

iTunes Gift Options  >  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2736

Sorry but no. It's not possible to gift outside of your own country.

Regards.

LumiTech wrote:

 

Is there any way for me to accomplish this, I.e. buy the song, convert to a recognizable format, and attach to an E-mail?

Unfortunately this could be construed as tantamount to Piracy... as you actually do not own the song(s) only a licence for you to use and listen to it.

There is no way you can accomplish this other than to purchase a physical CD with the song and send that to the intended recipient in China.

Just so it's clear, by "physical CD" I don't mean that you can buy the track from the iTunes Store, burn it to CD, and send that to China. That would be both illegal and a violation of the iTunes Store terms. I mean that you would need to buy the album from a record store and ship that. You may have understood correctly, but I wanted to be certain.

Regards.