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| Rep. Tim Ryans anti-China rhetoric is drawing criticism from the AANHPI community. |
ANALYSIS
As U.S.-China relations get more tense during the upcoming Midterm campaigns, expect anti-China sentiment to ramp up and anti-Asian hate incidents to increase.
While most of the world is still focused on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on the other side of the world, China begins to flex its military and economic power, the US attempts to reassert its influence in Asia after the Trump administration placed nervous neighboring nations on a tightrope between the two superpowers.
With Ukraine and inflation taking most of Biden's attention, he has recently turned his attention to repair relations with Asian leaders. He met with leaders from Souteast Asia at the White House before flying to Asia to meet with the leaders of Japan and South Korea.
“Even as President Putin’s war continues,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “we will remain focused on the most serious long-term challenge to the international order—and that’s posed by the People’s Republic of China.” Relations with China will most likely be a hot topic during Congress' midterm campaigns this fall. Politicians on both sides will have to be careful about their language and tone to reassure that the foreign policy debates don't become more fuel for hate mongers to attack Americans of Asian descent.
There are many within the AANHPI leadership who believe the Trump administration's racist connotations when talking about the coronavirus helped spur the dramatic and troubling surge of anti-Asian attacks throughout the country. Police departments in major cities and the FBI released statistics showing the spike in hate incidents against AANHPI in the last two years.
When the Trump administration took over the foreign policy reins, he launched a trade war with China. As domestic issues took his attention away from Asia, aside from phone calls from strongman leaders in Beijing and North Korea, he allowed the trade war to fester, ignoring China's incursion into the Philippines Sea and continued coddling of North Korea's Kim Jong-un.
As a result of the trade war with China, the Department of Justice launched its China Initiative targetting scientists, students, and business of Chinese descent, further poisoning the general stereotype of the "sneaky" Asians.
When the coronavirus struck US shores, Trump's derisive use of the terms "China virus," "Wuhan virus" or the "Kung Flu" in reference to COVID-19 gave permission for the inner racists to emerge from societal reins among non-Asian Americans.
The anti-China, (and in general, the anti-Asian) attacks have taken a decidedly partisan nature, with most Republican picking up the language and attitude of the previous administration while Democrats denounced the racist rhetoric adopted by Trump's supporters in Congress.
(There are exceptions, of course. Most notably, Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat, has jumped on the anti-China bandwagon in his reelection campaign ads.)
The most dangerous situation continues to be China's claims in the Philippines Sea, which western maps continue to refer to as the South China Sea. China has bullied its way to the Spratley Islands near the Philippiines, which have long been fishing grounds for Filipino fisherfolk. Perhaps more importantly, the Spratleys lies smack dab in the middle of one of Asia's busiest waterways with goods of Japan, South Korea, the US, and all the Southeast Asian countries using the trade route.
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WHITE HOUSE President Biden met with leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations last month. |
Not only have Chinese fishing trawlers been fishing the Spratleys, but the Chinese government has aggressively militarized the islands by building airports and listening posts and daring the Philippines to do something about it. The Chinese Navy has enforced the PRC's claims by warning shots against the Filipino fisherfolk and the Philippine's outgunned Coast Guard.
The US has sent destroyers and entire carrier fleets to the waterway to assert the waterway remains open to all trade and there have been some close encounters between the US and Chinese vessels.
Six years ago, an international tribunal in a landmark ruling dismissed Beijing’s claim to much of the South China Sea. The Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague said on 12 July 2016 that there was no evidence that China had exercised exclusive control historically over the key waterway.
China simply ignored the ruling and continued to militarize the islands. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte's questionable strategy after the ruling was based on the belief that good relations with China would bring in economic benefits and that confronting Beijing will lead to repercussions.
While Duterte has successfully avoided a direct confrontation with China, the expected economic benefits have - thus far - failed to materialize.
The Spratleys dispute is only one flashpoint of contention between the US and China. Despite the racist results of the China Initiative, even Chiniese Americans admit that China has an aggressive espionage strategy that tries to lure Chinese in the US not only with outright promises of economic benefits, but with appeals to their favorable sentiment towards their "motherland" and not-so-subtle hints about their relatives remaining in China.
China also appears to be ignoring the protection of rights pertaining to intellectual property, research and technical secrets, the basis for launching the so-called China initiative, which went askew when federal investigators, college campuses and businesses went down the rabbit hole of racial profiling.
Rep. Ryan's ads blame China for the US economic woes which plays favorably to the blue-collar workers of Ohio but creates an us vs. them climate that will undoubtedly result in attacks against all Asians. The tactic worked for Trump and Ryan mining that racist trope for all its worth.
Asian American lawmakers warned the House Judiciary Committee a year ago that the nation had reached a “crisis point” resulting in a sharp hike in violence targeting the Asian community.
It was the first congressional hearing on this issue held in over three decades came about weeks after a mass shooting in Atlanta that killed six women of Asian descent. It was not long before the committee split along party lines.
“You can say racist, stupid stuff if you want, but I’m asking you to please stop using racist terms like ‘Kung flu’ or ‘Wuhan virus’ or other ethnic identifiers in describing this virus,” committee member Rep. Ted Lieu, D-CA,, told Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas during a House Judiciary Committee hearing last year.
“I am not a virus," Lieu continued. "And when you say things like that, it hurts the Asian-American community. Whatever political points you think you’re scoring by using ethnic identifiers in describing this virus, you’re harming Americans who happen to be of Asian descent.”
Roy's response was chilling; referring to the white tradition of lynching. “There’s old sayings in Texas about, you know, ‘find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree.’ You know, we take justice very seriously, and we ought to do that — round up all the bad guys,” Roy said. “My concern about this hearing is it seems to want to venture into the policing of rhetoric.”
Rep. Grace Meng, D-NY, one of the drivers behind the anti-hate legislation signed by Biden, responded to Roy's remarks
“Your president, and your party, and your colleagues can talk about issues with any other country that you want, but you don’t have to do it by putting a bull’s-eye on the back of Asian-Americans across this country, on our grandparents, on our kids,” she said.
“This hearing was to address the hurt and pain of our community, to find solutions,” she added, “and we will not let you take our voice away from us.”
As Rep. Ryan has demonstrated, it is easy for Democrats to fall into that trap of blaming China for US economic failures. In the controversial campaign ad, he blames China for stealing jobs from the people of Ohio.
"China. It's definitely China. One word, China. It is us versus China," Ryan says in the ad. "China's winning. Workers are losing."
"There's a strong relationship between US-China relations and the treatment of Asians in the US domestically," Asian American Studies Professor at San Francisco State University, Dr. Russell M. Jeung, tells Insider. "That's a historic pattern that we need to decouple. So we've been saying that it's fair to criticize Chinese policies, but don't attack the people or the culture, or you know, the ethnicity, which is what Tim Ryan is doing. He's making these blanket statements that, therefore, have this sort of deleterious impact on us."
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| Words matter. Anti-China rhetoric fuels anti-Asian hate. |
John C. Yang, the president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, testified to the House Judiciary Committee that “the health and economic fears caused by Covid-19 have led people to look for someone to blame.”
“The use of racist terms, the focus on a society or culture as the ‘cause’ for the Covid-19 pandemic, and policies that demonize immigrants all contribute to an atmosphere where racism and xenophobia is legitimized,” he said.
Elizabeth Grossman of the AAPI Victory Alliance cautioned politicians of both parties to be more mindful of their message and how it is being received.
"You have to understand that this is a scary time for Asian Americans and the country in particular," she told Insider. "I think stepping up and taking responsibility and making sure that you're using rhetoric that will not harm people or will do the least harm is really, really important."
Meng said it's important to acknowledge "challenges in the U.S.-China relationship" but when rheated campaign hetoric puts a "target on our backs ... Asians in the United States end up paying the price: We are scapegoated simply because of our skin.'"
The good news for Democrats is that Ryan easily won his party’s nomination for an open Senate seat in Ohio's May 3 primary.
The bad news is that his strong anti-China position worked. You can be sure that the racist scapegoating message will be taken up by other politicians.
Chinese Americans -- and because of misinformation and xenophobia -- we extend our warning to all Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander -- brace yourself for what's to come.
EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.
