Source:
https://scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3162391/us-china-war-words-fuelling-rise-anti-asian-hate
Comment/ Opinion

US-China war of words is fuelling rise in anti-Asian hate

  • The ongoing battle between Washington and Beijing is grating heavily on a world already worn down by two years of Covid-19
  • As nationalist sentiment puts Asian Americans at increasing risk of xenophobic attacks, both countries must start acting responsibly
Protesters rally against anti-Asian racism in Oakland, US, on May 15, 2021. Photo: DPA

At a distressing, destabilising time like this, with repeated lockdowns and quarantines, with the collapse of tourism, travel and educational exchange, with jets turned around in the sky and ships turned around at sea, with all the economic dislocation and supply-chain snags, frictions are mounting and tempers getting short.

The underlying tension only gets worse when the two strongest powers on Earth battle it out in public, each playing to a home audience. For now, it’s a ruthless war of words and media images, but the possibility of a kinetic clash is ever present.

The tone in American politics has improved during Joe Biden’s presidency, but many discordant notes continue to sound, and some of his policies regarding China are as tone-deaf as those of his predecessor.

As for the wolf warriors in President Xi Jinping’s administration, they have yet to demonstrate they are serious about diplomacy, let alone tolerance and diversity.

The Chinese internet is censored for many things, but it is brimming with intemperate voices and hate speech in the name of nationalism. Fortunately, acts of violence against foreigners remain rare.

Incidents of anti-Chinese hate in the US, however, are on the upswing and have become everyday news. The new year is only days old and already a number of anti-Asian hate crimes have been reported from Oakland to New York City.

Why the senseless violence? At least some of the random hits seem to be fuelled by the lingering influence of the intemperate rhetoric of Donald Trump and more generally a reaction to neuroses and anxieties attendant to a pandemic with apparent origins in Wuhan, China.

“Fear of strangers” is a concept that applies universally, but the term xenophobia tends to crop up in particular reference to China.

US President Biden addresses ‘vicious’ hate crimes against Asian-Americans during pandemic

04:07

US President Biden addresses ‘vicious’ hate crimes against Asian-Americans during pandemic

Whatever you call it, the perception that anti-Asian hate is on the rise in the US is backed by statistics. News outlets report over 9,000 cases of anti-Asian discrimination since the pandemic began in March 2020.

New York’s new mayor, Eric Adams, in a recent meeting with Chinese-American civic leaders, made the unusual demand that Biden apologise for Trump’s hate speech.

Adam’s response is a somewhat muddled one, perhaps, but he was trying to reach out, and it speaks to the urgency of the moment.

New York Mayor Eric Adams recently called for US President Joe Biden to apologise for Donald Trump’s anti-Asian rhetoric, which led to an increase in hate crimes. Photo: AFP
New York Mayor Eric Adams recently called for US President Joe Biden to apologise for Donald Trump’s anti-Asian rhetoric, which led to an increase in hate crimes. Photo: AFP

It goes without saying that the White House is a prominent bully pulpit in American life. Things said by the commander-in-chief and the so-called leader of the free world carry weight and influence behaviour.

Trump started his term under criticism for being soft on China but he ended it issuing a cascade of hateful comments, blaming China for causing the pandemic and demanding reparations.

His incendiary populist speeches used terms like “Kung Flu”, “Plague from China” and “China Virus”. His supposedly diplomatic secretary of state Mike Pompeo echoed this, calling Covid-19 the “Wuhan Virus” and he deployed Mathew Pottinger to promote the lab leak theory.

In the very least, though, it can be observed that some people, often very troubled people, take cues from powerful leaders and do stupid, hateful things as a result.

It is said that nationalism offers a refuge for scoundrels and that’s surely the case for Donald Trump Jnr, who boosted his own social network profile by posting incendiary things such as the “Kung Flu Kid”, a doctored video showing his father, in the guise of a karate expert from a popular film, beating up an Asian character emblazoned with the Chinese flag.

End of Trump presidency leaves Chinese-American community deeply divided

05:17

End of Trump presidency leaves Chinese-American community deeply divided

A new book on xenophobia offers some unexpected insights into how the media plays a key role in all of this.

George Makari, a psychiatrist at Cornell University’s medical school, writes in Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia that despite the Greek roots of the ancient-sounding term – “xenos” for stranger and “phobos” for fear – the term is of recent coinage.

Scouring for the earliest printed mentions of the word, he finds it first gained journalistic currency in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion in China when hate-filled believers in the martial arts attacked foreigners at random.

He writes: “Political commentators worried that modern nation-states, stripped of Crown and Cross, now sought to maintain internal unity by stoking hatred for a common enemy.”

Whipping up internal unity by invoking fear of the other is as craven now as it was in 1900, but in its latest incarnation, innocent Chinese are falling victim to the pushes and punches of irrational American “Boxers”.

Everyone hates Covid-19 and with the pandemic grinding on, frustrations are mounting. At a time when responsible people on both sides of the US-China divide can’t seem to stop saying irresponsible things, there remains the troubling possibility that a single spark could light a wildfire of hate.

Philip J. Cunningham has been a regular visitor to China since 1983, working variously as a tour guide, TV producer, freelance writer, independent scholar and teacher