Jon Huntsman has criticised a video, apparently released by a supporter of Ron Paul, which uses footage of Huntsman's adopted daughters to question his "American values".

The video, uploaded to YouTube by 'NHLiberty4Paul' exhorts viewers to "Vote Ron Paul".

Ron Paul's campaign has distanced itself from the clip, a spokeswoman saying "no one who actually supports Dr Paul's principles would have made it".

Huntsman, a former US ambassador to China, described the video as "stupid" at an event in Concord, New Hampshire, on Friday morning.

"Yeah, I lived overseas four times ... I speak Chinese, of course I do. If someone wants to poke fun of me for speaking Chinese, that's okay," Huntsman said.

"The thing I object to is bringing forward pictures and videos of my adopted daughters and suggesting that there is some sinister motive there. I have a daughter from China who was abandoned at two months of age and left in a vegetable market, picked up by the police and sent to an orphanage."

The video, entitled "Jon Huntsman's Values", was uploaded to YouTube on Thursday. It intersperses clips of Huntsman speaking Chinese with images of him with his daughter Gracie Mei, who he adopted from a Chinese orphanage in 1999. The footage is set to east Asian music, and describes Huntsman as "the Manchurian candidate". In the novel and film of the same name, the son of a prominent US political family is brainwashed into being an assassin for China's Communist Party.

"Weak on China? Wonder why?" the video asks, before showing a clip of Huntsman with Gracie Mei. His daughter Asha Bharati, adopted from India in 2009, is also shown.

NHLiberty4Paul did not immediately respond to the Guardian's questions on YouTube, but reportedly responded to a Huffington Post query: "Sorry, campaign has asked me not to speak to reporters."

Paul's spokeswoman for New Hampshire, Kate Schackai, told the Washington Post she didn't know who was responsible for the footage, but said it was not connected to Paul's campaign.

"The video was utterly distasteful and no one who actually supports Dr Paul's principles would have made it," she said.

Huntsman, who also served as governor of Utah from 2005 to 2009, has seven children, two of whom are adopted.

"I have a second daughter who was born in India in a very rural village ... and left for dead the day she was born," he said in Concord.

"And luckily she was picked up before the animals got her, and she was sent to an orphanage for her safety, was raised and now she is in my family. So I have two little girls who are a daily reminder that there are a lot of kids in this world who don't have the breaks that you do and face a very uncertain future ... and now these two girls are on the presidential campaign trail. I say, how cool is that?"

It is not the first time a candidate's adopted children have become an issue in the race for the Republican candidacy.

In 2000 Senator John McCain, whose adopted daughter, Bridget, is originally from Bangladesh, found himself the subject of a whisper campaign implying he had fathered a black child outside his marriage.

Radio stations in South Carolina were inundated with phone calls asking talk show hosts what they thought of McCain having fathered an illegitimate child.

McCain lost in South Carolina and eventually lost the Republican nomination to George W Bush. In 2010 Bush's long-time political adviser Karl Rove denied leading the "whisper campaign" against McCain.

The furore over the video threatened to detract from Huntsman receiving the backing of the Boston Globe on Friday. The newspaper described the former US ambassador to China and Singapore as "a genuine conservative" and praised the amount of time Huntsman has spent in New Hampshire.

"With a strong record as governor of Utah and US ambassador to China, arguably the most important overseas diplomatic post, Huntsman's credentials match those of anyone in the field," the Globe's editorial said. "He would be the best candidate to seize this moment in GOP history, and the best-prepared to be president."