Meanwhile, Project 2025 – the conservative Heritage Foundation's policy plan often associated with Trump, although his campaign denies the connection – mentions China no fewer than 483 times in a 922-page document. The project's official website even highlights the goal to“take on China” on the“About” page.

It was not, therefore, surprising that Trump-supporting elements of the US media pounced on news that Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota chosen to be Harris' running mate, has previously taught in China and traveled there an estimated 30 times since 1989, including on his honeymoon .

Although Walz has said he is“neither a 'dragon slayer' nor a 'panda hugger'” when it came to China, conservative commentators painted Walz as a“Marxist” who would make Communist China“very happy.” Fox News host Jesse Watters even called for Walz to undergo an FBI background check due to his China links.

On August 16, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee chair, Republican James Comer, opened an investigation into Walz's“longstanding connections” to China.

The ties that some Republicans find suspicious include Walz's running Educational Travel Adventures with his wife, Gwen Walz, from 1994 to 2003.

The company they founded helped students from small-town America travel to China to learn about the country's history and culture . Walz also served on the human rights-monitoring Congressional-Executive Commission on China during his time as a House representative.

While consistently critical of the Chinese government , Walz has also recognized that the relationship between the US and China does not have to be an adversarial one, and there can be“many areas of cooperation .”

Despite his extensive China-related experiences, the Democratic vice presidential nominee has yet to mention China during major campaign speeches – China didn't make it into his party convention address , unlike the speeches of Harris, Trump and Walz's rival for vice president, JD Vance .

Walz's apparent reluctance to highlight his knowledge about China also contrasts with the action of a previous Republican presidential hopeful, Jon Huntsman, who served as an ambassador to China and is fluent in Chinese.

During his campaign in 2011, arguably a different time in US-China relations, Huntsman repeatedly demonstrated his ability to speak Chinese and was often praised for doing so .

One reason behind the difference in emphasis on China between the two presidential tickets is, I believe, the different framing of the election.

To the Democrats, the upcoming vote is about movement – they are projecting the choice between going backward or going forward. Taglines such as Harris'“we're not going back” position the United States and its people as marching toward a future of unity, promise and opportunity that, in their view, leaves behind the chaos, division and repression of the past.

In this framing, the role of China as a threat is anchored primarily in the area of high-tech competition; Harris' mentions of China in her convention speech were in regard to the future on space and artificial intelligence .

By contrast, the Republican campaign is premised more on protecting an imagined Americanism from foreign forces, which is why you hear more from Trump and Vance on the much dramatized“invasion” of immigrants illegally crossing the borders and“bringing” drugs and crime.

The same logic, I would argue, informs the GOP's frequent invocation of China as a geopolitical and economic threat.

After all, Trump has long attributed a great number of actions to the Chinese government, from calling it a creator of the“Wuhan virus” to blaming it for producing the“hoax” of climate change.

In his convention speech, Vance linked China directly to the illegal cross-border drug trade . At a rally in Michigan on August 27, he also accused Harris of using tax dollars to pay“the Chinese Communist Party to build factories on American soil,” omitting the fact that the Republican-led legislature had developed the program.

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Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance invokes China in campaign speeches. Photo: Jeff Swensen / Getty Images via The Conversation

This characterization of China fits what I called the“racialization” of the Chinese state in my book“Disorienting Politics .” The rhetoric depicts China as a powerful agent that carries out nefarious acts that can only hurt America.

'Make it all about China'

Over the past two decades, parts of the American media have conflated China's Communist Party rule with fascism and totalitarianism.

That rhetoric in the US over the“Chinese virus” during the pandemic triggered a spike in reported anti-Asian racist attacks, showing that manufactured fear of a distant place like China can also sow hatred toward people perceived to have come from that place.

In this sense, Walz's reluctance to invoke China perhaps corresponds to a refusal to oversimplify the complex society of China.“The best way to study about people is to hear them tell what it is like where they live,” said the former social studies teacher back in 1991 , while discussing a US-China pen-pal program with a local newspaper.

As the election season unfolds, the specter of China is likely to return as even more urgent geopolitical conflicts continue to dominate the headlines.

After all, even one of Walz's former students – a self-described“dormant Republican” attempting to defend Walz against Republican attacks on his character – still advised the Trump campaign to focus on policy and“make it about China .”

Fan Yang is professor of media and communication studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

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