ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 analyzes the “Chinese Professor” ad along with twenty other televised campaign ads from the 2010 U.S. midterm elections. In analyzing such ads, I argue that both Democrats and Republicans portrayed China as an economic red peril. Emphasizing political challengers’ economic ties to China, the ads criticized U.S. politicians for failing to safeguard the United States against the Chinese red peril. These ads revised yellow peril fears of an invasion of Chinese immigrants by verbally and visually conveying that China’s accumulation of U.S. debt and limitless supply of cheap labor would result in an invasion of Chinese goods and communist China’s economic domination of the United States. The ads’ use of visual symbols such as the Mao suit, the color red, the Chinese flag, and Cultural Revolution posters heightened the threat posed by China through arousing deep-seated Cold War fears of domination by the red menace. Positioning the United States and China in an adversarial economic relationship, the ads claimed this parasitic connection would ultimately devastate the U.S. economy.
