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Gov. Chris Christie speaks during a town hall meeting Monday at Sayde's Neighborhood Bar & Grill in Salem, N.H.
(Brent Johnson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)
SALEM, N.H. -- Shortly after Wall Street witnessed a dramatic drop in stocks Monday, Gov. Chris Christie -- a Republican presidential candidate -- told a New Hampshire restaurant filled with voters they should bame President Obama's reliance on borrowing money from China.
Experts said fears that China's economy -- the second-largest in the world -- is slowing led markets across the globe to tumble Monday. In New York, the Dow Jones Industrial average plummeted 1,000 points Monday -- its biggest drop ever -- before staging a recovery later in the day.
Christie responded by blasting Obama, saying the Democratic president has borrowed "lots and lots of money from the Chinese" to bolster America's economy.
"This president thought money was free and easy -- that he could spend as much of it as he wanted to without consequence to the American people," the governor said during a town hall attended by hundreds at Sayde's Bar & Grill in suburban Salem, N.H. "But he couldn't just print all of it. He had to borrow some of it, too. And he borrowed it from the Chinese."
Christie said it's dangerous for China to "hold this much of our debt."
"If the Chinese get a cough, we get the flu," he said. "Our economies are becoming so interdependent that if they don't do well, then all of a sudden it's going to be affecting us. The tail is waging the dog, everybody.
MORE: New Christie ad says 'lawlessness' has spread under Obama
The Dow finished with a loss of 588 points -- the eighth-worst single-day point decline and the second straight fall of more than 500.
China is the largest buyer of U.S. debt. But Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush, also faced criticism for increasing America's debt by borrowing money from China. In 2011, Obama accused Bush of taking out "a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children."
He touted cutting more than 800 programs from the state budget in his first six years as governor despite having a Democratic state legislature.
"We gave you a preview of what could happen to the country if you turned it over to liberal, borrow-and-spend -- tax and borrow-and-spend politicians," Christie told the crowd at the town hall, his 18th in New Hampshire. "We need to get this back under control."
And Christie stressed that the U.S. needs to elect a governor and not a member of Congress as its next inhabitant of the Oval Office.
"We need someone who will say no," he said.
The governor also attacked Obama on Monday with a new television campaign ad, saying "lawlessness" has spread across the country and the globe during his presidency.
Christie was in New Hampshire for only a day. He said he is flying back to New Jersey later Monday night to celebrate his son Andrew's 22nd birthday on Tuesday.
He will also take part in a news conference in New Brunswick on Tuesday to lobby New Jersey's congressional delegation -- especially U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) -- to oppose the U.S.'s controversial nuclear deal with Iran.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @johnsb01. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.