Remember the “Chinese Professor” advertisement from the 2010 congressional campaign? That was the spot produced for the Citizens Against Government Waste that featured an ominous Chinese lecturer, twenty years in the future, crowing to students about the decline and fall of the United States, concluding “now they work for us.” At the time, it seemed to me that China-flogging hadn’t been as central to American politics since 1882, when Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, following anti-Chinese riots against the “yellow peril.”
But last year might have been only a warmup. It’s not yet 2012, but Republicans have already hauled China back into the ring as foil and spectre. What appears to be the first China-themed advertisement of the Presidential race comes from the Republican National Committee. It features a little girl on a couch, flipping channels, on January 20, 2017, Obama’s last day of an eight-year tenure. A news broadcaster tells her, “Debt to China reaching record levels. Some analysts believe the Chinese have overtaken the United States.” (Never mind that the ad mistakenly features the image of sitting Chinese president Hu Jintao—who will be four years into retirement by 2017.)
The ad—showing in six states that Republicans won in 2004 but lost in 2008—comes just in time for Mitt Romney to début his China angle. Speaking at a manufacturer in Pataskala, Ohio, he accused China of currency manipulation, intellectual property theft, and protectionism—and recalled a pledge by then-candidate Obama in the 2008 race to “take [China] to the mat.”
“He and we have been taken to the door mat,” Romney said, straining the metaphors a bit.
Romney called Chinese businesses the world’s “worst offenders” on trade violations and said, “We will crack down on cheaters like China and protect the intellectual property and the jobs of American workers, and American enterprises. And I will do that if I am President.”
Image: Still from new ad from the R.N.C.
