DeSantis invokes China ‘boogeyman’ narrative amid flailing campaign

It was a desperately needed moment of grandeur for Ron DeSantis: the Florida governor’s strongman act over China briefly lifting his stuttering presidential campaign during last week’s Republican primary debate in California.

But what DeSantis left unsaid as he railed against China’s growing global influence, while promising a “hard power” approach to Beijing should he win the White House, was how his posturing was hurting students and families back in his home state.

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While their governor was speaking thousands of miles away, hundreds of distressed and bewildered parents in Florida were trying to figure out their next move after DeSantis stripped four private schools of state scholarship money, alleging without evidence they had “direct ties to the Chinese Communist party”.

Without state funding, many families face having to withdraw their children and find alternative educational arrangements barely a month into the school year.

Critics point to what they see as hypocrisy in DeSantis’s move, given it was his Republican-dominated legislature that controversially widened the availability of school vouchers earlier this year, sapping billions of dollars from an already underfunded public school system and funding private education for any family that wanted it with taxpayers’ money.

“They’re attacking schools that are predominantly very Republican, well-established private schools that are among our best, so I just don’t understand it,” said Anna Eskamani, a Democratic state representative whose central Florida district covers three of the four affected campuses.

She said the state’s linking of the schools to China’s ruling communist party was “garbage”, and based on DeSantis’s political ambitions and desire to stoke anti-Chinese sentiment rather than any evidence the schools were “influencing students with communist ideology”, as the governor asserts.

“They’re not going to be teaching anything but capitalism, in fact the schools are entirely based on capitalism,” Eskamani said. “Parents are outraged, they’re frustrated and scared, and just really surprised at what the governor is doing. The irony is he’s attacking his base of voters.”

The Florida department of education refused to provide details of the “thorough investigation” it said it had undertaken to determine that the purported connections with communism posed “an imminent threat to the health, safety, and welfare of these school’s [sic] students and the public”.

Instead, it provided a hyperlink to one school’s website that states its parent company, the California-based Spring Education Group, is controlled by the Hong Kong investment firm Primavera Holdings Ltd.

Primavera was founded by the Harvard-educated entrepreneur and economist Fred Hu, a former partner of Goldman Sachs who grew the US investment bank’s footprint in the Asia-Pacific region.

Neither Spring nor Primavera responded to the Guardian’s request for comment.

In a statement, Park Maitland school of Winter Park denied it was beholden to China. “Our schools are locally run, abide by local, state and federal laws, and do not have ties to any government or political party, either foreign or domestic,” it said.

Analysts share Eskamani’s belief that DeSantis’s targeting of China is self-serving.

Victor Shih, associate director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California at San Diego’s school of global strategy and policy, said: “For the Republican side, also to some extent on the Democratic side, China has become this sort of boogeyman, a catch-all opponent of the US in a way that does not take into account a lot of economic and social realities.

“Primavera is not the Chinese communist party. They do manage money for China’s sovereign wealth fund, that’s well documented, but so does BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, and I don’t see Ron DeSantis going after others who have managed money for China. You cannot say that anyone who does business with the investment arm of the Chinese government is acting on its behalf.

“[But] that’s how the Republican party operates these days, right? They take these issues that they think will easily galvanize the emotions of their base voters.”

Sheena Greitens, director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Asia policy program, also sees DeSantis, and other rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination who seek to revoke China’s trade status, attempting to capture growing global resentment of Beijing.

“It’s fairly common for tough-on-China rhetoric to rise during campaign seasons, [but] in this case the candidates’ comments reflect a more fundamental shift in American views of China. That shift is bipartisan in nature, and stems from changes in Chinese domestic and foreign policy in the past decade, as well as deeper, structural transformations in the basis of the US-China relationship,” she said.

“Their comments reflect a broad-based downturn in views of China, not just in the US but a significant number of other countries, and that seems unlikely to reverse without changes in Beijing’s policies and behavior. That new geopolitical reality will be a major challenge for whoever occupies the presidency after the next election.”

In Florida, opponents have little doubt about what is fueling DeSantis’s renewed anti-China rhetoric. It follows a wave of recent new laws including a “discriminatory” ban on most Chinese citizens owning land or property; outlawing state colleges and universities from entering into partnerships with institutions in China; and prohibiting investments by nationals from “countries of concern”.

“The law is wreaking havoc on the lives and plans of Chinese people who reside in Florida, and some lenders are refusing to deal with Chinese nationals,” said Ashley Gorski, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union that is appealing the land ownership law in federal court.

“More broadly, it is stigmatizing, and casts suspicion over any prospective purchaser of Asian descent.”

Eskamani, meanwhile, said the school suspensions were further proof of DeSantis’s “bullying” of minorities.

“People have been targeted in Florida for a long time for being different, and no one is safe. This just feeds into anti-Asian fear mongering,” she said.

“He uses his position to bully people and make life harder for folks already struggling to fit in or be themselves. He’s always been someone who has centered his own political ambition over that of everyone else. I just think it’s much more transparent now.”