China-Bashing Gains Bipartisan Support
Author: Naftali Bendavid</br></br>China is emerging as a bogeyman this campaign season, with candidates across the American political spectrum seizing on anxieties about the country's growing economic might to pummel each other on trade, outsourcing and the deficit.</br></br>In television ads, China is framed as an ominous foreign influence in a time of economic anxiety, often accompanied by red flags and communist-style stars and sometimes by Asian-sounding music. Democrats say Republicans support tax breaks that reward companies for moving jobs to China; Republicans blame Democrats for a federal budget deficit they say forces the U.S. to borrow money from China.</br></br>"Candidates are looking to speak in a visceral way to the fears and concerns of voters about jobs," said Lawrence Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. "Bashing China is safe."</br></br>The heated rhetoric puts the White House in a bind. Administration officials often don't mind Congress putting pressure on China, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner himself in a speech Wednesday offered a blunt critique of Beijing's currency policy. But officials also worry that a confrontational approach could backfire.