The far-right website the Daily Caller recently smeared Asian American business leaders in L.A. as stooges of the People’s Republic of China. This portrayal — based on prejudice, not evidence — points to a trend we’re likely to only see expand. Amid widening U.S.-China tensions, American extremists and officials alike are stoking fears that will start another surge of racism toward Chinese people and others of Asian descent.
U.S. government leaders have been clear in their messaging: China, and anyone associated with it, may be a security threat. Lawmakers excoriated Shou Zi Chew, the Singaporean chief executive of the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, during last month’s congressional hearings, at times treating him and the app as a proxy for the Chinese government. During a university talk this month, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray again declared China the greatest “long-term” threat to the United States. “The current Chinese regime will stop at nothing to steal what they can’t create and silence the messages they don’t want to hear,” Wray claimed, “all in an effort to surpass us as a global superpower.” Others in the Biden administration, such as Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, have repeated this message.
Public officials have the right to — and should — critique other nations’ policies. Wray also did well to qualify his statement by saying: “To be clear, that threat stems from the Chinese government, not the Chinese people themselves.” But examples from the past and present tell us that this pattern of widely invoking the China threat has dangerous consequences for Americans of Asian descent, perpetuating long-standing stereotypes of Chinese and other Asian communities as foreign, dangerous and unscrupulous — an existential threat to the United States.
