Global competition rhetoric fuels anti-Asian hate in the U.S.

There are also a number of other narratives that, in different ways, identify China as a threat to the US and to ordinary Americans, and thereby feed racism. In addition to blaming China for the pandemic, leaders in US politics and media speak about China as an economic threat and/or a national security threat (through military power, espionage, or so-called “influence” campaigns), and accuse China of “cheating” the US. These narratives are not limited to Republicans or figures on the right like Trump, but are also popular among many Democratic and liberal figures. When these “China threat” narratives are repeated by leaders here in the US, it creates an environment in which many Americans feel encouraged to imagine that these threats are emanating not only from China (as in the country or the government) but also from individual people who are of Chinese descent, or who are perceived to be so. And it creates a sense of license for people to express these racist sentiments in both words and actions. First, it is a long standing feature of racism against people of Chinese descent (as well as people of many other Asian ethnicities) that they are imagined as being part of a single homogeneous collective, lacking in individuality. This implies that if the collective (“China”) is a threat, then any individual member of that collective is also a threat. In addition, connecting individuals of Asian descent in the US to a threat posed by China is sometimes an explicit feature of these narratives. For example, narratives about the supposed threat of espionage or “influence” from the Chinese government consistently portray individuals of Chinese descent in the US as part of the threat. For example, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified in a 2018 Senate hearing that the espionage threat from China is “not just a whole-of-government threat, but a whole-of-society threat.” He named students and academics from China as part of this “whole-of-society threat,” language that casts anyone of Chinese descent as a potential national security threat. Wray was severely criticized by Asian American civil rights organizations but has continued to make similar sweeping claims.4 Originally appointed by President Trump, Wray was kept in place by President Biden. Not just language but also actions communicate “China threat” narratives that can translate into. There are legitimate reasons why many in the US have become increasingly critical of the Chinese government, including escalating human rights abuses. But it has also become regular practice for figures across the political spectrum to exaggerate and inflate the threat that China poses to the US and to the vast majority of Americans. For example, in a speech on June 23, 2020, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo portrayed the threat of China in almost apocalyptic terms, warning that “If we bend the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party,” and claiming that the Chinese Communist Party aims to destroy freedom worldwide. These ideas are echoed in the Strategic Competition Act, led by Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), a bill that currently has broad bipartisan support in the Senate: “The [People’s Republic of China] is promoting its governance model [worldwide] and attempting to weaken other models of governance by undermining democratic institutions.” It’s now common to hear US politicians and other leading figures say that China is “an existential threat” to the US, or “a threat to the American way of life.” These are all great exaggerations and distortions of both the power and the intentions of the Chinese government, and they serve to feed anti-Asian racism