Some of Mr. Navarro’s insights in that book are attributed to Ron Vara in later works, Ms. Morris-Suzuki said. For instance, Mr. Navarro advised in his 2001 book, “Don’t play checkers in a chess world.” That same wisdom is attributed to Ron Vara in “The Well-Timed Strategy” (2006) and “Always a Winner” (2009).

Far from an investing oracle, Ron Vara tended to offer advice in bite-size clichés, such as “Ride the stock market cycle — or be run over,” which appeared in Mr. Navarro’s book “When the Market Moves, Will You Be Ready?”

By the time Mr. Navarro’s musings turned to China, so did, naturally, those of Ron Vara. In “The Coming China Wars,” a section about China’s “poisoned food chain” warned about toxic Chinese fish being exported to the United States. A quote from Ron Vara drove the point home: “You’ve got to be nuts to eat Chinese food.”

“Death by China,” Mr. Navarro’s seminal book, which he wrote with Greg Autry, used a Ron Vara quote to set up a section about how the American eagle had become the world’s biggest pigeon: “The Manufacturing Dragon is voracious. The Colonial Dragon is relentless. The American Eagle is asleep at the wheel.”

A White House spokesman had no comment on Mr. Navarro’s work. A spokesman for the University of California, Irvine, declined to weigh in.

“Mr. Navarro is on leave and no longer represents the university, so we do not have a comment,” said Tom Vasich, the university’s director of media relations. “We appreciate your interest in U.C.I.”

In a statement to The Chronicle, Mr. Navarro likened Ron Vara to “Alfred Hitchcock appearing briefly in cameo in his movies” and said it was “refreshing” that someone finally figured out his joke.