The highly charged rhetoric in trade politics: Representations of China during the 2010 U.S. midterm elections

In recent years, China's economic growth has caused alarm, as the global economic crisis highlighted the strength of China's economy and raised concerns about the U.S.' economic future. The political advertisements that aired during the 2010 midterm elections highlighted this concern, as both Democratic and Republican candidates and partisan PACs used strong political rhetoric to describe China and its relationship to the U.S. economy, particularly U.S. joblessness and the growing national debt. Over 65 political advertisements targeting China were released in House, Senate, and gubernatorial races across the country.;In order to address why such a large number of these ads were released, my study examined the political advertisements mentioning China that were released during the 2010 midterm elections in the context of public opinion about China, unemployment statistics, media coverage of China, and the content of the ads themselves. The results of the study indicate that although public opinion and unemployment rates were not determining factors in the release of these advertisements, these advertisements reflect a historical trend of implicit Orientalist representations. However, as the Asian American population grows, the media's production of these Orientalist representations may need to be critically reexamined so that political candidates can consider the effectiveness of these Orientalist appeals to Asian American audiences.