More political ads paint China as benefiting from weak U.S. economy (WP)

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102803256.html

More political ads paint China as benefiting from weak U.S. economy
By John Pomfret

... On the campaign trail, both Democrats and Republicans are slinging Chinese mud. Currently, 250 ads targeting China are being aired in just under half of the 100 competitive districts, such as the battle for the Pennsylvania Senate seat between Republican Pat Toomey and Democrat Joe Sestak. Sestak's ads come equipped with a gong and this line: "Pat Toomey - he's fighting for jobs . . . in China. Maybe he ought to run for Senate . . . in China."

At a news conference last week, Illinois Democrat Alexi Giannoulias accused Republican Mark Kirk - both locked in a tight race for President Obama's old Senate seat - of "economic treason" for raising money from American businessmen based in China. "It's not out of the norm for political ads to go looking for the straw man or the villain to generate an emotional response," said Evan Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group. The problem, he noted, is that "political ads are the leading indicator of the next set of policies."

Michigan's governor, Jennifer Granholm, ran a successful ad in the 2006 campaign accusing her Republican rival of outsourcing jobs to China. Much to the chagrin of Michigan business leaders, she has skipped all of the state's trade delegations to China. While the China scare-mongering has parallels with the backlash against Japan that occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s, the difference is that Japan was - and remains - an American ally, and it had powerful friends throughout the country who stood up for it. Japan also responded by investing hundreds of billions in the United States, which Chinese firms have yet to do.

In addition, corporate America, which used to be China's great booster in the once annual congressional debates on China's most-favored nation trading status, has effectively gone silent on the benefits of a strong relationship with Beijing. The reason is that many corporate leaders no longer believe that China, which is aggressively pursuing policies to acquire Western technology and compete with Western firms, is the land of opportunity that it once was...