US politicians find it all too easy to use China as a punching bag. This isn't a desperation measure; even candidates like multi-millionaire Mitt Romney, who has a team of the wonkiest and best-paid campaign consultants working for him 24 hours a day, resort to it. So it's clearly an effective technique. But why?
No president, Republican or Democrat, is very likely to "get tough with China." US corporations that do business in China, and who contribute heavily to both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates, have a lot to lose if economic relations between the US and China seriously deteriorate.
Insiders know this, so they assume that the campaign rhetoric about "getting tough with China" is mostly hot air. It's a safe form of posturing, since the people who are for it believe it, while the people who would be against it, were it sincere, know that it's nothing but empty talk.
This is part of a larger pattern; so, for example, Romney is also attacking US President Barack Obama for trying to talk to the Taliban about a political settlement that would end the war in Afghanistan. Talking to the Taliban is a consensus policy among the establishment; even insiders who support the war support talking to the Taliban.
The real difference is over timing and conditions: Should we talk to the Taliban now, or wait to attack them more first, in an attempt to weaken them before negotiations? What kind of deal with the Taliban should the US be content with? So the position that Romney is advocating - no talks with the Taliban at all - is totally outside the elite consensus.
But perhaps Romney's advisers believe this is just harmless opportunism. After he is elected, he can switch his position to the elite consensus, perhaps after waiting a decent interval and then claiming that circumstances have changed, and perhaps claiming that his way of talking to the Taliban is fundamentally different from and more tough than what Obama was doing.
The opportunism could be harmful to Americans in the short-run if political pressure delays the peace talks, but in the long run, the US is going to talk to the Taliban, no matter who is president. Equally, talking tough about China plays well with the public, but won't be reflected in actual policy.
Another reason that China-bashing is particularly attractive is that many working class Americans do have legitimate grievances that are related to US economic relations with China. In working class communities across the US, you can find people who have lost jobs when the companies they used to work for relocated production to China.
Of course, the fundamental causes of these grievances lie with the policies of the US government, not with the policies of the Chinese government.
It's the US government that gives US corporations incentives for relocating production overseas. It's the US government that allows products made for the US consumer market, like Apple computers, to be produced in sweatshops in China where labor laws are routinely violated.
And this is a policy that goes back decades, not just with respect to relocating production to China, but also to other countries like Mexico. And again, there seems to be little prospect at the moment that these US policies, which are strongly supported by major corporate donors to both political parties, will change regardless of who is elected president.
Finally, there is no powerful domestic constituency that minds the attacks on China very much. If a candidate vowed to "get tough" with Israel, whose policies tend to enmesh the US in unpopular wars, this would appeal to some voters. But it would offend the well-financed Israeli lobby and the critical Jewish vote in swing states like Florida.
The key US constituents for US economic relations with China are the US corporations who do business with China, and they are content to let the politicians bash China during the campaign, so long as they remain convinced that US economic policies toward China won't fundamentally change.
The author is policy director of Just Foreign Policy, an independent and non-partisan membership organization dedicated to reforming US foreign policy. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn