China served as bogeyman for U.S. politicians wooing voters worried about hard economic times, but Tuesday's election delivered a business-friendly Congress that could lower the heat on the Chinese.
Television networks projected Republicans would gain at least 50 seats in the 435-member House of Representatives, gaining control of House committees and poised to halt President Barack Obama's agenda.
From California across the central rustbelt to New Hampshire, Democrats accused China of pilfering U.S. jobs by suppressing the value of its currency and rigging its economy to favor Chinese state companies against American investors.
In the most blunt of the China-linked attack ads that featured in some 30 campaigns, Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania said his Republican rival Pat Toomey, a free trade supporter, "ought to run for Senate in China."
The China jab did not stop Toomey from winning the Pennsylvania race. And in Illinois, Republican Mark Kirk won a senate seat after a contest in which he was attacked for getting backing from U.S. firms that manufactured in China.
U.S.-China tensions flared up this year over business and trade, long the basic glue in a relationship between powers who differ sharply over human rights, climate change, and flash points such as Taiwan, Iran and North Korea.
In the last official business before they broke for the campaign, the House raised China's ire by passing a law that would treat an undervalued currency as an unlawful subsidy that could be remedied by duties on selected Chinese goods.
But Senate follow-up on the House action is far from certain when the outgoing Congress sits for a brief "lame duck" session later this month to conduct unfinished business.
TOUGH TALK WILL SUBSIDE
Many analysts think the currency bill will fall into limbo, lingering as a potential threat that Obama's administration can point to while it tries to negotiate currency policy with China in the Group of 20 and other forums.
"Most of the tough talk is election-year stuff that will subside after the election," said Walter Lohman, director of Asia studies at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.
"The rhetoric will die down and with it will go the possibility of anything getting pushed through on China," he said.
Under a consensus on the broad outlines of the U.S.-China relationship, business-friendly Republicans have supported free trade with China's fast-growing market as good for the United States and the best way to produce a more cooperative China.
But some legislators in both parties champion civil and religious rights in China and hold sympathy for the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader shunned by China as a separatist.
Taiwan, the self-ruled and democratic island China claims as sovereign territory, has had more Republican than Democratic friends -- which could mean that Taipei's requests for advanced weapons get a sympathetic hearing in 2011.
"I always trust the Republicans on free trade, but they may also sponsor pro-Taiwan legislation and push more on human rights issues," said Tao Xie, a U.S. politics expert at Beijing Foreign Studies University who advises the Chinese government.
"On the yuan front, the Republicans will probably lower the heat," he added.
INTERDEPENDENCE BREEDS PRAGMATISM
What victorious candidates do is far more important than what they've said about China on the campaign trail, said Drew Thompson, a China expert at the Nixon Center.
"Every two years, House members have to be very careful not to appear pro-China," he said of the campaign attacks that used China as a foil. "It's a tricky ground to run on."
Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi perplexed China when she took office in 2009, because she had criticized Beijing's human rights record since the 1989 Tiananmen killings. But she had generally positive dealings with Chinese officials.
"We've seen Pelosi have to basically represent the party rather than herself, and that's going to hold true for Republicans in leadership positions," said Thompson.
A Republican-led Congress is expected to support Obama administration efforts to beef up U.S. alliances with Japan, South Korea and the Southeast Asian states. All of these states experienced friction with China in 2010 and look to U.S. backing as a hedge against more assertive Chinese policies.
Former U.S. intelligence official Robert Sutter, now a China expert at Georgetown University, said Washington and Beijing will try to get along "for very pragmatic reasoning -- not because they like each other or they're friends."
"The administrations recognize that their governments and societies have become so interdependent that if they emphasize the negative with one another, they will hurt the other party, but also hurt themselves," he said.
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