Chinese Texans fear they are being punished by the state's lawmakers bills affecting home ownership, social media use

EVAN L. ROY / TEXAS TRIBUNE 

Asian Americans are getting affected by anti-Asian legislation in Texas.

BY ALEXA URA
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE TEXAS TRIBUNE, APRIL 3,, 2023

A mid-January Twitter post by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott alerted Chinese Americans across the state that their rights might be trampled as state lawmakers rushed to burnish their geopolitical credentials.

On Jan. 15, the Republican governor told his 1 million followers he was ready to sign into law a proposed bill that would ban “citizens, governments & entities” of China, Iran, North Korea and Russia from purchasing land in the state, in effect blocking some immigrants from becoming homeowners.

The bill restricting land ownership was followed by kindred proposals to ban international college students from those same countries and to cut off Texans’ access to TikTok and another social media platform that’s become crucial for the Chinese diaspora living in the state to communicate with family in China.

The legislation came amid escalating tensions between the United States and the four targeted countries, but also tracked the increasing political scrutiny by Republicans, and some Democrats, of China’s reach in the country.

As the Legislature’s work has ramped up, the political headwinds have drafted Chinese Americans into defending their foothold in a state where many have lived for decades, and where Asian Americans have reliably made up the fastest-growing segment of population for years. They’ve grown fearful of a legislative culture that could feed challenges to the rights of Asian Texans, as well as Texans from the other targeted countries.

“You can target foreign governments, you can target [the] foreign Chinese Communist Party, but you have to separate that from the individuals that are already in this country and protected by the Constitution,” said Hugh Li, president of the Austin Chinese-American Network and a naturalized citizen of 18 years. “This is our land too. This is our home too. So for the Texas Legislature to want to pass these kinds of bills targeting us and strip away our rights, it’s just not right.”

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Republican lawmakers say their efforts are rooted in national security concerns. In February, state Sen. Lois Kolhorst of Brenham described the provisions of Senate Bill 147, the land ownership bill, as “commonsense safeguards” against authoritarian regimes. The senator said she was spurred to file it after it ranked among the top concerns she heard throughout her district, though she later agreed to modify the legislation after it faced loud outcry from Chinese Americans.

TARGETING TIK TOK AND WECHAT

More recently, state Rep. Jared Patterson of Frisco said that House Bill 2206’s proposed ban on social media platforms “developed or provided” by entities in the four counties is meant to protect Texans personal information from being “collected by bad foreign actors.” The social media bill echoes federal efforts to scrutinize popular platforms like TikTok and WeChat over security concerns related to China’s access to Americans' data.

“This does not seek to harm individuals from these countries, but seeks to ensure that information cannot be collected from Texas and distributed to potentially dangerous countries,” Patterson told a House committee considering his bill.

The proposals have left it to Chinese Americans to delineate for lawmakers that their lives in Texas exist far apart from geopolitical considerations.

At a House hearing in March, a contingent of Chinese Americans waited more than six hours to testify against the legislation that would ban social media platforms, detailing how they rely on WeChat to stay in touch with family. They held up screenshots of video chats between grandparents and grandchildren. One Texan grew emotional as they described how the bill would sever the “bridge for emotional connection” for many Chinese Americans.

WeChat is used by 1.3 billion people every month. In China, the platform is reportedly heavily censored and serves as an instrument for mass government surveillance. In households across the state, however, Chinese Americans primarily rely on the messaging and calling tools available through WeChat to connect with family members and friends back in China, where the use of the app is ubiquitous and where other social media or messaging platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp are banned.

In 58 pages of testimony submitted in writing to the committee, Texans described WeChat as an “indispensable lifeline connecting us to our families, friends, and culture.”

“Imagine moving to a foreign country where one social media app is the only platform that your parents and family can use to video chat with you and your children,” Weihua Zhao of Pearland wrote to the committee. “If such social media is banned by the local government, how would you feel, and how would your parents and family feel? Please put yourself in our shoes so you can understand how sad we are about this bill.”

Ironically, Li said, the opposition was organized over WeChat where groups have emerged among Texans concerned about the legislation being considered.

Some described how the use of WeChat in the U.S. has grown into an important tool for businesses connecting with supplies overseas. It was crucial for Chinese restaurants fighting to stay afloat at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s used by day cares to send notifications to parents and by community groups to distribute news, notifications and even weather warnings that otherwise would not be translated from English. The app even serves as a platform for Bible studies among Chinese-speaking churches.

Patterson’s office did not respond to a request for comment regarding the concerns raised during the hearing.

Others raised claims of unconstitutionality and questioned why Chinese Americans would be targeted in what they described as an affront to their First Amendment and equal protection rights. Federal courts blocked the Trump administration’s 2020 efforts to block TikTok and WeChat in the United States through executive orders, though the effort has more recently gained bipartisan support in Congress, where national security concerns have reverberated among lawmakers from both parties.

Members of Congress recently grilled the TikTok’s chief executive, questioning China’s influence over the video app, while the Biden administration has been hardening its position against the platform. Last year, Abbott banned the social media platform on government-issued cellphones and computers, which later led to restrictions on the use of the app on university campuses’ networks.

The hearing on the social media bill came months into a growing outcry among Asian Americans spurred by Abbott’s endorsement of the land ownership bill, which originally included broad language that would have prohibited many immigrants from buying homes. That included green-card holders stuck in the sometimes drawn-out process of applying for citizenship and even naturalized U.S. citizens who retained dual citizenship in one of the four targeted countries. There are roughly 155,000 people living in Texas originally from China — the largest count of Texans among the four targeted nationalities. Census data shows slightly more than half are naturalized citizens, but tens of thousands are not citizens.

Though they still make up a small share of the state’s population, Chinese immigrants are part of the state's fast-growing Asian population. In the last census, Texas gained three times the number of Asian residents as white residents. And Chinese is the fourth most spoken language in Texas homes behind English, Spanish and Vietnamese.

CHINESE AMERICANS PROTEST

Abbott’s tweet was circulated and recirculated over social media, raising alarm among Chinese Americans across the state, including some who had not previously paid much attention to the Legislature’s work in Austin. Some of them turned out at large rallies in the state’s largest cities. Some showed up to the state Capitol in droves in early March to protest the consideration of legislation that would’ve kept many of them from becoming homeowners.

Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

At the Senate committee hearing — at which more than 100 people packed the Senate chamber, mostly to criticize the bill — Kolkhorst pushed back on accusations of racism, but acknowledged that her initial proposal was not “clear enough.” She indicated the bill language would be changed to make clear that the land ownership ban would not apply to U.S. citizens, including dual citizens, or lawful permanent residents.

(That substitute language has not been formally adopted since the hearing, when the legislation was left pending.)

Even with those changes, the bill would have kept Christina, who asked to be identified by only her first name out of safety concerns, and her husband from becoming homeowners. The Dallas-area residents first came to the United States on student visas and purchased their first home in 2000 while on H-1B visas, which allow U.S. employers to employ foreign nationals in what the government describes as “specialty occupations.”

That modest suburban house is where they raised their two daughters and marked the point at which they made Texas home — even before they became legal permanent residents and eventually naturalized citizens.

“To be honest with you, up until SB 147, I was just really minding my own business,” said Christina, who testified at the Senate’s hearing in March. “I vote during elections, but I just haven't been really active in the political arena. But I came down to Austin to attend that hearing because I think what they’re proposing fundamentally is really against what America is.”

CHINESE FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Asian Americans stage a protest in Houston.

The proposals under consideration this year are not necessarily breaking new ground. They are shaped in the same mold as a 2021 law written in response to a Chinese billionaire’s purchase of roughly 140,000 acres near the Texas-Mexico border for a wind farm. That law, passed unanimously, banned Texas businesses and government officials from making infrastructure deals with interests from the same four countries.

Various states in the midwest have restrictions on foreign ownership of farmland, according to the Council of State Governments. A 2021 land report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found Canadian investors own the largest share of foreign-held land, most of that being agricultural land, in both the United States and in Texas. Chinese investors, meanwhile, own less than 1% of the nation’s foreign-held acres. Just 3% of the more than 167.5 million acres of land in Texas is foreign-held agricultural land.

But in targeting homeownership, many of those who have voiced their opposition to the bills worry the Legislature will further perpetuate the anti-Asian sentiment and targeted violence that’s been on the rise in recent years. At the state Capitol and in interviews, Chinese Americans have raised the prospect of having their citizenship questioned in ways prospective homebuyers of other national origins or races would not face.

More broadly, they see the legislative session as a threat to their bonds to the state based solely on their national origin. By failing to make distinctions between foreign governments and Texans from those countries, Asian Texans have said, the bills continue a long trend of the government making immigrants feel like “others.”

“It’s just a reminder that to a lot of people, you'll never be American enough,” said Nabila Mansoor, the executive director of Rise AAPI, a progressive grassroots organization. “It doesn’t matter if you were born here or came here at a really young age and you’'re following all the legal requirements to get citizenship. You will always be considered as someone that is looked at with suspicion.”

“It’s just a reminder that the place of immigrants in this country and this state is so tenuous, and it can all be taken away so easily,” she said.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Beware fake news; disinformation campaigns seeks to confuse, divide, dampen and anger AANHPI voters

ANALYSIS

As the 2022 Midterm election on Nov. 8 draws nearer, fake news has ramped up seeking to nullify the growing influence of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities.

As the political influence of Asian Americans increases, bad actors have worked to build sprawling misinformation networks, including a vast media empire bankrolled by Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui, targeting members of the Asian American diaspora, says community advocates such as Advancing Asian American Justice (AAAJ).

“The conservative right-wing are better organized, and they know how to manipulate the concerns and fears of the Chinese-speaking community,” says Elaine Peng, president of the Mental Health Association for Chinese Communities. “It is easy for the community to believe and trust them. The right-wing rely heavily on misinformation and disinformation to advance their conservative agendas."

Harmful narratives are one of the greatest challenges facing Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in today’s world. They are making communities less safe, our trust in the election systems weaker, and even tearing some families apart.

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Disinformation is explicitly designed to expose the frictions, fault lines, and tensions within and across our various diasporic communities while also working to deplatform AANHPI communities from democracy and create divisions with other communities of color.

Dis/misinformation exposes frictions, fault lines, and tensions within and across our various diasporic communities, according to a report by Asian American Disinformation Table,  a coalition of AANHPI organizations that coordinates research, strategies, policy recommendations, pop culture, messaging interventions, & corporate accountability around issues of domestic & transnational misinformation and disinformation impacting Asian Americans.

The Table's study found problematic narratives span three key themes: 

1. Using Asians as ‘wedges’ against other communities of color; 

2. Exploiting internal divides and hierarchies within Asian communities; 

3. Weaponizing current and historical traumas. W

So where is all the fake news coming from? In all the articles read by Views From the Edge, no one was able to point fingers at any single entity. The mis/disinformation is coming from multiple sources with multiple agendas, from foreign entities who wish to destabilize US society to radical Republicans who want to dominate Washington politics to advocates of a single issue like abortion or affirmative action. 

Certainly most of the messaging of fake news leading up to the Midterms is coming from the radical right. However, their conservative political goals easily leak into other issues that -- in their perspective -- are all interconnected: affirmative action, social security, Medicare, what histories and books are being taught in the US schools, anti-abortion, the role of big government on social issues to advocates of any number of strategies that fatten the pockets of billionaires. And we cannot forget the White racists who are afraid of losing their dominance and influence on US society.

Self-proclaimed newscasters on YouTube have become a primary news source for some Chinese speakers in the US, offering political hot takes that often slide into misinformation, says Jenny L., who helps track disinformation and misinformation for AAAJ.

She asked Medium that her last name be withheld to avoid online harassment. “It’s pretty easy for them to skirt the minimal moderation YouTube has in place for non-English content,” she says.

The AANHPI communities, particularly first-generation immigrants who are English-language learners, are among the most vulnerable to false narratives often due to limited language access to available resources and information. Many rely on community-translated content for important information such as voting and the election process, leaving room for bad actors to inject falsehoods.

Falsehoods spread range from harmful health misinformation to lies about the 2020 presidential election. Through translations of false claims and original content creation, these well-resourced groups have made mis/disinfo “accessible” to in-language communities, carefully exploiting home country biases and sensitive topics such as the Chinese Cultural Revolution to cater their messaging to vulnerable diaspora communities.

These efforts have not been effective. A growing subset of the Asian American community — largely first-generation immigrants for whom English is not their native tongue — subscribe to “the big lie,” question the integrity of electoral processes in the United States, and believe their children are being “indoctrinated” by “critical race theory” in public schools.

The success of this misinformation helped propel politicians to victory in elections, including in the 2021 Virginia governor’s race, and if left unchecked, this infodemic has dangerous implications for the 2022 midterms.

Chinese-language content on Twitter, YouTube, and WeChat leading up to and immediately after the 2021 California recall election and the 2021 Virginia governor’s race was rife with false claims and misleading information.

Unfortunately, attempts by social media platforms to monitor false information  have failed to stop the spread of fake news. When it comes to monitoring the misinformation in a foreign language those efforts are even less effective.

In response to growing mis/information, several groups have emerged to fact-check and counter the misinformation.

Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) launched its pioneering Chinese Digital Engagement program in 2019 to provide accurate information to the Chinese American community about issues related to social justice such as immigration reform, racial justice, and affirmative action. Its work includes three WeChat channels and the websites JusticePatch.org and PiYaoBa.org. Launched in early 2022, “PiYaoBa” means “let’s fact-check it” in Mandarin Chinese and is the first centralized Chinese-language fact-checking website to combat right-wing disinformation.

“We saw how people were being manipulated by fake news and rumors,” says Vincent Pan, CAA’s Co-Executive Director. “It is imperative that there be trusted sources providing factual information. As a civil rights organization with a long history serving our community, CAA stepped up to fill the need.”

The Chinese Digital Engagement team at CAA systematically researches and documents misinformation and disinformation. As detailed in the report, from April 1 to September 15, 2022, the team found 320 major disinformation narratives from 138 different social media accounts and channels. Some examples of the rumors being spread include the false assertion that the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago is a Democratic Party conspiracy to rig the midterm elections. The most popular conspiracy theories push the narrative that election fraud is prevalent, threatening the very foundation of our democracy.

Jinxia Niu, CAA’s Chinese Digital Engagement program manager, warns that Chinese-language mis/disinformation poses an even greater challenge than English-language disinformation because WeChat’s closed nature and censorship makes it difficult to share accurate information.

“Although we monitor disinformation daily and have published more than 900 Chinese-language articles across our WeChat channels and websites, this is not nearly enough — and we can’t do this alone,” Niu says. “The public, policy makers, social media platforms, and community partners need to be aware of the threat of disinformation so that we can address it together.”

To counter the mis/disinformation trying to confuse AANHPI voters, a number of community advocates have created fact-checking sites.

Fake news targeting older Indian immigrants was widespread on WhatsApp, including claims that ballots would not count if voters selected Democrats for every post or if election officials signed dropped-off ballots.

“There’s just a lot of inaccurate information for an already confusing process and this year is different for everybody because we’re relying on virtual connections more than ever,” North Carolina Asian Americans Together Executive Director Chavi Khanna Koneru told Reuters in 2020.

Desifacts, a project of the advocacy group Indian American Impact, began publishing explainers on relevant topics focusing on South Asian American communities in Hindi, Bengali and Tamil this year.

“The pervasive spread of mis- and disinformation exacerbates partisan disagreement, erodes trust in our democracy, stifles or prevents voter participation, and has tremendous consequences on health outcomes such as personal decisions around getting vaccinated,” read a statement on the Desifacts website. “In South Asian communities, misinformation has fueled Islamophobia and racism against other communities of color.”

Viet Fact Check, one of the few multilingual groups that debunk false information, has observed an uptick in falsehoods targeting Vietnamese American communities online.

“There’s definitely a hyper-targeting of messaging,” said Viet Fact Check co-founder Nick Nguyen. “This is where a lack of English-language fluency can make populations vulnerable.”

To further combat the spread of mis/disinformation within AANHPI communities, Advancing Justice — AAJC has been tracking messaging trends on social media to gain a better understanding of how bad actors will likely amplify their disinformation campaigns leading up to the November midterms this fall. This is what they found:

Twitter

Several tweets, many with hundreds of likes or retweets, were direct translations of false claims from individuals like former president Donald Trump and Sidney Powell or news organizations like Newsmax; these tweets (see example below) often linked to original English-language videos or posts that perpetuate false claims, such as referencing the presidential election scam or baselessly asserting mail-in ballot fraud. 

In Virginia, tweets the day before and the day of the election sought to sow distrust in the election results before polls even closed. The following tweet made false accusations about Democrats “stealing” the election. Others stated that the Republican candidate should win and any other election outcome would indicate fraud, disregarding the fact democratic electoral systems give each candidate a fair shot.

NBC

Additional tweets both leading up to and after the recall election of California's Gov. Gavin Newsom attempted to falsely attribute various perceived ills of California, such as homelessness and crime, to one candidate. Not surprisingly, several popular tweets surrounding the recall originated from in-language media outlets known for promoting fake news and baseless conspiracy narratives. 

YouTube

Another common feature in disinformation targeting Chinese Americans and immigrants is showcasing anti-CCP, anti-communism narratives that incite fear among Asian American communities. Similarly, the video below posted at the beginning of September included various pieces of misinformation concerning existing California laws, including a false assertion about Proposition 47 despite facts stating the law does not end prosecution of thefts under $950 in the state, and misrepresentations of the effects of affirmative action. The video also made incorrect claims about perpetrators of anti-Asian violence. Though some high-profile videos have attempted to paint a different picture, most anti-Asian attacks are perpetrated by white people whose hate is driven by white supremacy and racism.

For example, in Virginia, education-focused topics, especially surrounding critical race theory (CRT), dominated election-related misinformation narratives on YouTube, reflecting the broader campaign on the right to misinform the public about the true nature of CRT. In the video below, a Chinese American volunteer for a political candidate was interviewed to speak about how opposition to CRT, which the individual incorrectly stated “caused discrimination,” helped galvanize Chinese American support for the candidate. In the months leading up to the election, the following video of a Chinese American mother of a Loudon County public school student falsely conflated CRT with the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

WeChat

WeChat misinformation was used to successfully organize Chinese American voters against San Francisco's progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin and prematurely end his term. 

This social media site based in China and flew under the radar for years until right-wingers began using it to garner political support and organize. Despite polls showing Asian America's overwhelming support of affirmative action, in 2014 conservative Chinese were able to garner headlines in mainstream media and distort the narrative to defeat a California measure attempting to overturn the state's anti-affirmative action law. 

“There was no such mobilization [among the Chinese American] community before WeChat happened,” says Steven Chen, a Los Angeles–area computer engineer who immigrated to the United States from mainland China in the late 1980s.

WeChat articles available to the public also showed extensive mis/disinfo narratives. A WeChat article  detailed reasons for supporting the Republican candidate and promoted disinformation including “irregularities” and “fraud” in the 2020 election relating to unfounded claims. Similar to mis/disinformation trends on Twitter and YouTube, several WeChat articles contained various misrepresentation of the current governor’s policies and statistics regarding crime and economic growth in California. 

These articles repeatedly made false assertions and perpetuated lies that seek to incite fear and anxiety among first generation immigrant communities and fuel division between communities of color, who have been working in solidarity to dismantle racism and white supremacy throughout our nation’s history

Virginia saw similar misrepresentations of its former governor’s policies and beliefs. Some WeChat articles made baseless claims that he introduced “CRT” into Virginia schools as early as 2015 and lowered academic standards, when the truth is critical race theory is not a part of the K-12 curriculum in the state. Others continued to perpetuate conspiracy theories and false assertations on the integrity of our electoral system, further galvanizing voters.

Chinese-language mis/disinfo related to the recall and the Virginia governor’s race appeared to be largely recycled mis/disinfo narratives from certain English-language channels, with additional emphasis on areas especially important to a Chinese American audience, such as crime, education, and anti-Asian hate. These mis/disinfo stories played on the Chinese American and immigrant community’s fears that California and Virginia would “turn into China” and heightened anxiety around perceived threats of socialism and communism.

Disinformation is also being used to direct hate towards AANHPI communities, and pit those ethnic groups against other people of color. This issue will only continue to grow if big, structural changes are not made, making it critical that we are prepared and able to respond.

“WeChat is a monster,” says Janelle Wong, a political scientist and professor of Asian American studies at the University of Maryland. “There’s nothing like it on Earth,” she told The Atlantic.

What can be done?

Valiant efforts by grassroot organizations trying to counter or expose the spread of mis/disinformation is not enough.

Tech companies, social media platforms, and politicians alike need to take more concrete actions to protect AANHPI communities from mis/disinformation in their native languages; content in different languages cannot continue to be treated as a “foreign” problem. Steps such as hiring more content moderators with appropriate language and cultural competency, banning the use of discriminatory algorithms, and creating greater platform transparency could make a large difference in shielding communities from harmful mis/disinformation narratives that pose tangible threats to US democracy.

“A growing subset of the Asian American community — largely first-generation immigrants for whom English is not their native tongue — subscribe to 'the big lie,' question the integrity of electoral processes in the United States, and believe their children are being 'indoctrinated' by 'critical race theory' in public schools,” AAJC explained.

“It’s not that we only have a WeChat or a WhatsApp problem; these platforms are accelerants,” said Vincent Pan, executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action and co-founder of Asian Americans Against Trump, who is familiar with misinformation on WeChat. “It accelerates a lot of vulnerabilities that Chinese and other Asian immigrants with limited English proficiency have. They live in (an information) scarcity, under tremendous social and economic pressure and uncertainty.”

“Tech companies, social media platforms, and politicians alike need to take more concrete actions to protect Asian American communities from mis/disinformation in their native languages; content in different languages cannot continue to be treated as a 'foreign' problem,” AAJC pointed out.

Social media's false information poses dangerous implications for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Island voters this year in the Midterm elections when AANHPI voters can tilt the scales in key races deciding whether  Democrats or Republicans control the House and Senate.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.