President Donald Trump's accusation China is meddling in November's mid-term elections was triggered by the need to make China the fall-guy when the Republican Party loses the governorship of Iowa to a Democrat.
Trump delivered this rant at the United Nations General Assembly without presenting a shred of proof to back it up. His rant was apparently touched off by a four-page paid and bought by China in the newspaper, the Des Moines Register. The ad's stories were all from the China Dailly, a newspaper owned by the Communist Party of China. They presented China's side of the trade war.
The choice of Iowa for this ad was strategic: Iowa is the top soybean producing state in the U.S. and China's tariffs in retaliation for Trump's are costing Iowa soybean farmers over $2.2. billion. In addition, Iowa is the state closest to the heart of Chinese president Xi Jinping.
Xi lived in the small town of Muscatine, Iowa for two weeks in 1985 as head of an animal feed delegation that visited farms and attended Rotary Club meetings. Xi returned to Muscatine in 2012 to visit Thomas and Eleanor Dvorchak, the family he lived with when he first visited in 1985. He was China's vice-president in 2012.
Polls tracking the Iowa governor's race show Democrat Fred Hubbell, who promises to boost the state's exports, ahead of incumbent Republican, Kim Reynolds, who's taking the blame for the enormous losses suffered by soybean farmers on account of Trump's unnecessary trade war on China.
Now, "Trump is worried about being blamed if there is a GOP loss in Iowa, so he's trying to get ahead of that," said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing.
Chinese analysts are astounded that Trump sees a paid ad as election meddling when the Chinese ads are more transparent than what Russia did during the 2016 presidential election. The ad in the Des Moines Register carried headlines such as Duel undermines the benefits of trade and Dispute: Fruit of a president's folly. There was also a story about Xi's fun days in Iowa in 1985.
China immediately denied Trump's charge of election meddling. Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said the international community "knows very well who is most used to meddling in the internal affairs of others." He blasted Trump's allegation as 'totally far-fetched and fictional.
Trump's allegations of unproven Chinese mid-term meddling are "not helpful" at this tense time in the bilateral relationship, said Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Shanghai's Fudan University.
Shen asked how can the Chinese government present evidence if it hasn't done anything? Trump needs to present the evidence, he said.
