ACTION

“China is a really easy scapegoat,” said Erika Franklin

Fowler, a political science professor at Wesleyan

University who is director of the Wesleyan Media

Project, which tracks political advertising.

Polls show that not only are Americans increasingly

worried that the United States will have a lesser role

in the years ahead; they are more and more convinced

that China will dominate. In a Pew poll conducted in

April, 41 percent of Americans said China was the

world’s leading economic power, slightly more than

those who named the United States.

The attacks are occurring as trade tensions continue

and the United States is pressuring the Chinese

government to allow its currency to rise in value, a

central topic under discussion at the International

Monetary Fund meeting in Washington this weekend.

The ads are so vivid and pervasive that some worry they

will increase hostility toward the Chinese and complicate

the already fraught relationship between the two countries.

Robert A. Kapp, a former president of the US-China

Business Council, said that even though tensions had

flared in the past, he had never seen China used as

such an obvious punching bag for American politicians.

“To bring one country into the crosshairs in so many

districts, at such a late stage of the campaign, represents

something new and a calculated gamble,” he said. “I find

it deplorable. I find it demeaning.”

Not all of the ads are solely about China; a few mention

India or Mexico. A recent ad from Mrs. Boxer accuses

Ms. Fiorina, a former chief executive at Hewlett-Packard

of outsourcing thousands of jobs to Shanghai instead of

San Jose, Bangalore instead of Burbank,” and of “proudly

stamping her products ‘Made in China.’ ”

It is no accident that Democrats, in particular, have been

eying China as a line of attack. This spring, national

Democrats, including the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi

, began to encourage candidates to highlight the issue

after reviewing internal polling that suggested voters

strongly favored eliminating tax breaks for companies

that do business in China. The party first began emphasizing

the issue in a special election for a Pennsylvania House

seat in May, said Representative Chris Van Hollen of

Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional

Campaign Committee.

Never mind that there is hardly any consensus as to what

exactly constitutes outsourcing and how many of the new

overseas jobs would have stayed in American hands. The

Democrats cite studies this year from the Economic Policy

Institute a liberal research organization, that assert three

million jobs have been outsourced to China since 2001

because of the growing trade imbalance.

But Republicans, backed by some academics,

say the number is much smaller. Indeed, Scott Kennedy,

director of the Research Center for Chinese Politics

and Business at Indiana University, said that most

of the jobs China had added in manufacturing through

foreign investment had come from Taiwan, Hong Kong

and South Korea,not from the United States. Still, some

Republicans clearly see the issue as potent,

and they are counter attacking with ads stating

that the Obama administration’s stimulus package

helped to create $2 billion in wind turbine technology

jobs in China, a claim the Treasury Department and

the American Wind Energy Association say is dubious.

Representative John A. Boehner, the House minority

leader, in a speech Friday in Ohio, blamed President

Obama and Ms. Pelosi for a “stimulus that shipped

jobs overseas to China instead of creating jobs

here at home.”

Evan B. Tracey, president of the Campaign Media

Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising,

said that “China has sort of become a straw-man

villain in this election” in a way that elicits

comparisons to the sentiments toward Japan in the

1980s over car manufacturing and Mexico in the

1990s over the North American Free Trade Agreement.

While China’s growth has slowed a bit recently, its

economy is still projected to surge by about 10

percent this year, continuing a remarkable three-

decade streak of double-digit expansion.

“In a lot of ways it’s a code word: ‘Let’s be mad at

China because then the voters will connect the dots

and say our manufacturing plants have been shut

down because of China, and all the unfair labor

practices, and throw on the fact that we’re basically

selling all our debt to China,’//” Mr. Tracey said.

Even as the ads play up Americans’ unease with the

threat posed by modern China, they often employ

outdated and almost cliché depictions.

In a new spot for Representative Joe Sestak, who is

running for the Senate in Pennsylvania, a gong clangs

as a narrator says of his Republican rival, Pat Toomey:

“He’s fighting for jobs — in China.”

An ad for Ryan Frazier, a Republican running for Congress

in western Colorado, shows Forbidden City-style doors

opening to reveal China on a world map, as the voiceover

criticizes the Democratic incumbent Ed Perlmutter, for

supporting cap and-trade legislation, which some

Coloradans believe will drive more manufacturing jobs

overseas.

Consultants from both parties are monitoring polling and

voter reaction to gauge the effectiveness of the ads and

to determine how long to continue showing them. Based

on the back-and- forth between candidates on the

campaign trail, the issue does not appear to be going

away anytime soon.

At a Senate debate in Connecticut on Monday night between

the Democrat Richard Blumenthal and the Republican Linda

E. McMahon, Mr. Blumenthal repeatedly tried to raise concerns

about the business practices of World Wrestling Entertainment

, the company in which Ms. McMahon served as chief executive.

A tense moment occurred when Mr. Blumenthal asked: Why

does Ms. McMahon’s company manufacture its popular action

figure toys in China, rather than here at home? She said it was

not her decision, but that of the toy company, and moved on.