Anti-Asian Violence in the USA
Anti-Asian Violence and Discrimination in the United States
The Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy condemns the oppression and mistreatment of ethnic and racial minorities and the suppression of civil rights wherever they occur, including in China and the United States. We are deeply troubled by credible reports of the brutal repression of the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang Province by the Chinese government, as we are of police violence against peaceful protestors in Hong Kong and numerous American cities.
We are equally distressed by the recent surge in violence directed against Asian-Americans in the United States. We believe that both this violence and the intensified repression witnessed in China have been inflamed by the Cold War rhetoric that has permeated leadership discourse in both countries. Countering this trend is the principal objective of the Committee, as noted in its founding Statement.
Consistent with this objective, the Committee will post articles and documents that help shed light on anti-Asian violence and discrimination in the United States and highlight efforts to combat these abhorrent phenomena.
Useful Resources:
Confronting Anti-Asian Racism: A podcast by Russell Jeung, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. In the presentation, Prof. Jeung examines the racist beliefs that often motivate perpetrators, discusses the influence of social media, and offers a hopeful look at how Asian American communities and their allies are standing up to injustice nationwide. View at: https://www.ncuscr.org/media/podcast/russell-jeung-confronting-racism
Stop AAPI Hate National Report, May 6, 2021, by Russell Jeung, Aggie J. Yellow Horse, and Charlene Cayanan. Stop AAPI Hate, a project that tracks reports of anti-Asian racism, recorded 6,603 incidents between March 2020 and March 2021, with almost 40% of those reports occurring just between February and March of 2021. Access the report at: https://stopaapihate.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Stop-AAPI-Hate-Report-National-210506.pdf
U.S.-China tensions are feeding a new wave of anti-Asian hate
Russell Jeung, Los Angeles Times, April 17, 2023
In this opinion article for the Los Angeles Times, Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, argues that with U.S.-China tensions on the rise, American extremists and government officials alike are setting the stage for 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.
Public officials have the right to—and should—critique other nations’ policies…. 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.
This message is coming after a couple of years of racist scapegoating of Asian Americans for COVID-19, and at a time when Americans’ view of China is the lowest it’s been in at least a decade. In 2022, 8 in 10 Americans polled by the Pew Research Center held an unfavorable opinion of China. That opinion can translate into more suspicion of Chinese individuals. A recent study by Princeton University researchers found that Americans who perceived China as a threat were also more likely to stereotype Chinese people as untrustworthy and immoral.
Yet despite these consequences, U.S. officials have long stoked xenophobia to serve a political agenda. In the 19th century, politicians blamed the American recession on Chinese migrants, who they charged stole white workers’ jobs and brought diseases to the West…. The animus against Chinese people is repeating in proposed policies today. Prompted by a Chinese developer’s proposed land purchase for a wind farm in Texas, the state banned infrastructure projects from entities with direct ties to China, and Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed expanding the ban to outlaw any property ownership by Chinese residents who aren’t U.S. citizens.
Interview with Sane Steering Committee member Tobita Chow on anti-China bellicosity in Washington and the rise in anti-Asian violence in the United States
In a new video interview led by Arun Kundnani of the Transnational Institute (TNI) in Amsterdam, Holland, Tobita Chow argues that the rise of China as an economic power has become a clear threat to U.S. hegemony. While the pandemic served as a catalyst for anti-Asian racism, it was not the root cause: Increasingly hostile foreign policy towards China leads to increasingly hostile domestic policy towards people perceived to be Asian. But AAPI communities are fighting back.
Tobita Chow is the founding Director of Justice Is Global at the People’s Action Institute, a network of state and local grassroots power-building organizations united in fighting for justice. He is an organizer, a political educator, and a leading progressive strategist and critic regarding U.S.-China relations and the rise of Sinophobia in the U.S.
Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/YYgJMQI5nkQ
Hate incidents against Asian Americans continue to surge, study finds
Edwin Rios, The Guardian, July 21, 2022
[This article reports on a new report by Stop AAPI Hate on incidents of violence, hateful acts, and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States.]
Between March 2020 and March 2022, more than 11,400 hate incidents against Asian Americans have been reported across the United States, according to a report by Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that tracks such incidents and advocates for combatting hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
The findings signaled a persistent rise in harassment, verbal abuse and hate speech that have plagued Asian communities since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, the group identified more than 9,000 hate incidents in the pandemic’s first year.
Two-thirds of the incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate between March 2020 and 2022 involved some form of verbal or written harassment, and two in five incidents occurred in public spaces. Women were twice as likely to report hate incidents as men. Physical assaults accounted for 17% of incidents, and nearly one in 10 occurred on public transit.
To view the new Stop AAPI Report, “Two Years and Thousands of Voices What Community-Generated Data Tells Us About Anti-AAPI Hate,” click here
U.S. Drops Its Case Against M.I.T. Scientist Accused of Hiding China Links
By Ellen Barry and Katie Benner, New York Times, Jan. 20, 2022
[In this article, Barry and Benner report that Federal prosecutors in Boston had dropped the government’s charges against Gang Chen, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. Dr. Chen was arrested on Jan. 14, 2021 and charged with omitting affiliations with Chinese government institutions in grant applications to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) in 2017. He pleaded not guilty to all the charges. However, officials at the DoE told prosecutors that Dr. Chen had no obligation to declare the seven affiliations, calling into question the basis of the federal charges.]
The case against Dr. Chen was among the most visible of the China Initiative, an effort started in 2018 under the Trump administration. China has made aggressive efforts to steal American technology, through methods including the recruiting of overseas scientists as “non-traditional collectors.”
But many of the prosecutions of researchers that resulted, like the case against Dr. Chen, did not allege espionage or theft of intellectual property, but something narrower and highly technical: failing to disclose Chinese affiliations in grant proposals to U.S. funding agencies.
The prosecutions have come under criticism for singling out scientists based on their ethnicity, and for overreach, blurring the line between disclosure violations and more serious crimes like espionage. Critics in academia say it has instilled a pervasive atmosphere of fear among scientists of Chinese descent.
* * *
In response to the decision to drop charges against Dr. Chen, the Committee of 100, an organization aimed combatting discrimination against Americans of Chinese origin, issued a statement condemning the China Initiative, saying it unfairly targeted Asian-Americans and produced unnecessary harm and suffering. Excepts from the statement are provided below.
Statement from Committee of 100 on the Dismissal of All Federal Charges Against MIT Professor Gang Chen January 20, 2022
“The China Initiative has had chilling effects on U.S. academic research and unjustly targeted Chinese American researchers through racial profiling,” said Zhengyu Huang, President of Committee of 100. “The China Initiative has ruined the lives of innocent Americans and hurts America’s ability to lead in scientific research and innovation. Even when cases are dismissed, many Chinese and Asian Americans have their lives, careers, and health greatly affected…. Committee of 100 supports the protection of our national security, but not at the expense of our cherished civil liberties. For too long, Chinese Americans and the AAPI community have been seen as the perpetual foreigner – strangers in our own homeland. Today, we are all Gang Chen and stand united.”
Committee of 100 has long contended that the China Initiative, originally formed as an effort to combat economic espionage against American industry, had been distorted into a campaign to unfairly and mainly target Chinese American researchers in U.S. universities. With few convictions and multiple dismissals, the China Initiative has tragically damaged the lives and careers of too many innocent Americans and has actually hurt the nation’s ability to lead in global scientific research and innovation. Committee of 100 has urged – along with many leading AAPI community organizations, civil rights groups and others in higher education – the China Initiative should be ended because the program is misguided and causes far too much collateral damage to individuals and institutions.
The New McCarthyism in Academia:
Harvard Chemist Found Guilty of Lying About Ties to China
In a Boston Court, a Superstar of Science Falls to Earth
Ellen Barry, N.Y. Times, Dec. 21, 2021
[In this article, the N.Y. Times reports on the FBI investigation into allegations that Prof. Charles Lieber of Harvard, identified as “one of the country’s top research chemists,” had been found guilty by a federal grand jury of two counts of making false statements to the U.S. government about whether he participated in Thousand Talents Plan, a program designed by the Chinese government to attract foreign-educated scientists to China. They also found him guilty of failing to declare income earned in China and failing to report a Chinese bank account. Though it is not illegal to participate in Chinese recruitment programs, scientists are required to disclose their participation to the U.S. government, which also funds their research and may view it as a conflict of interest. No date has been set for sentencing; a charge of making false statements carries a maximum sentence of five years.]
Dr. Lieber’s conviction is a victory for the China Initiative, an effort launched in 2018, under the Trump administration, to root out scientists suspected of sharing sensitive information with China. Among the cases opened against academic researchers, most, like the case against Dr. Lieber, do not allege espionage or intellectual property theft, but failure to disclose Chinese funding, and the effort has been criticized for prosecutorial overreach.
Peter Zeidenberg, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who represents around a dozen researchers who are under investigation, said Dr. Lieber’s case stands out because he was specifically asked about his participation in the Chinese program, and denied it. “The reason people like Lieber lie is because they are afraid,” he said. “It’s really sad. They are afraid to answer truthfully, ‘Are you a member of the talent program?’ I’m sure during the Red Scare, people said they were not a member of the Communist Party.”
Brian Timko, who worked under Dr. Lieber as a graduate student and now heads his own laboratory at Tufts University, said he believed China Initiative had strayed from its original focus on espionage toward disclosure violations that, a few years ago, “would have been handled at the university level.” “I think these cases are about scaring the scientific community,” he said.
For more on the chilling effect of anti-China paranoia on American university campuses, see:
As U.S. Hunts for Chinese Spies, University Scientists Warn of Backlash
Amy Qin, N.Y. Times, Nov. 29, 2021
[In this article, Amy Qin discusses the harsh impact of the FBI’s China Initiative on scientists of Chinese descent, particularly Anming Hu, who was prosecuted for illicit ties with China despite the FBI’s inability to produce evidence of espionage; his trial ended with a hung jury.]
Dr. Hu was the first academic charged under the China Initiative to stand trial. So far the F.B.I. has brought 12 prosecutions at universities or research institutions in three years, but none have involved charges of economic espionage or theft of trade secrets or intellectual property. Most involved allegations like wire fraud, lying to federal investigators and failure to disclose ties with China.
In interviews with several scientists of Chinese descent working in American universities, a picture emerged of a community on edge. Some described being humiliated by mandatory training on foreign interference that featured only examples of ethnic Chinese scientists, and unexplained delays for visa renewals. They were all concerned that seemingly anything — a collaboration with another scientist from China, a slip-up on a disclosure form — could provide an opening for federal investigators to come knocking.
The Dilemma of the Chinese Diaspora in the Decoupling Era
By Rong Xiaoqing, Asia-Pacific Journal / Japan Focus, Dec. 1, 2021
[In this article, Rong Xiaoqing, a New York-based journalist who covers the Chinese diaspora in the U.S., reflects on the impact of growing U.S.-China tensions on the Chinese community in the United States. She begins by citing a speech given by Elaine Chao, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation and Labor Secretary, at the annual gala of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, held in the Plaza Hotel in New York on Nov. 9th.]
“We must ensure that the difficult relations between our two countries do not turn into anti-Asian hate or negative sentiments or violence that harm the Asian American community,” said Chao, a Chinese American herself.
With anti-Asian hate crimes triggered by the Covid 19 pandemic showing no sign of subsiding, Chao’s warning resonated. But even against this backdrop, it still evoked a different era, a time associated with something like the “Japanese internment,” a period I thought had been cemented in the tomb of history.
After all, many in my generation of Chinese immigrants who came to the U.S. in the new millennium had thought we were merely helping to fortify already built bridges and participating in the perpetual trajectory of an amicable relationship between the two countries.
Now the bridges seem to be collapsing while many Chinese immigrants stand on the top of them, watching in shock….
The rosy picture [of U.S.-China friendship] was shattered rather abruptly after President Donald Trump came to power. The trade war initiated by Trump, including higher tariffs from January 2018, was only the start. That year was a turning point in the relationship between the U.S. and China and the life of Chinese living in the U.S.
The following month, Christopher Wray, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informed a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that all Chinese living in the U.S. are potentially informants working for Beijing, and recommended “a whole-of-society response" from the U.S. side. And in November, the U.S. Department of Justice launched the “China Initiative” to counter intellectual property espionage emanating from China by, among other tactics, fending off “non-traditional collectors” working as researchers and scholars and educating American universities about the risk of working with Chinese scholars.
These cemented the new role that the Trump administration had assigned to China at the end of 2017 -- “strategic competitor.” Although China has rejected this title, a more euphemistic term “decoupling” seems to have been accepted on both sides as the inevitable fate of the U.S.- China relationship….
In the U.S. Chinese students, scholars, and scientists have been placed under tight scrutiny. Some were labeled as spies only to have the charges against them dropped when the prosecutors couldn’t prove their cases. During the pandemic, Chinese became easy scapegoats for the havoc the virus has wreaked. To make the situation more ironic, some victims of anti-Asian violence that I’ve talked to were helping to donate PPEs to local hospitals and senior centers when they were attacked.
[NOTE: Posted below are excerpts from a press release distributed by the Committee of 100, a non-profit membership organization of prominent Chinese Americans, concerning the publication of a report by that Committee and the University of Arizona focused on race and ethnicity in science and research.]
The white paper “Racial Profiling Among Scientists of Chinese Descent and Consequences for the U.S. Scientific Community” showcases survey results and data which demonstrate a consistent pattern of racial profiling in science and research. Scientists of Chinese descent and of Asian descent report far greater racial profiling from the U.S. government, difficulty in obtaining research funds, professional challenges and setbacks, and fear and anxiety that they are surveilled by the U.S. government, compared to non-Asian scientists.
The Committee of 100 and the University of Arizona administered a nationwide blind survey to scientists both of Chinese and non-Chinese descent, including faculty, postdocs, and graduate students, at top U.S. colleges and universities over the Summer of 2021. The final sample consisted of 1,949 scientists across the country.
The survey data also shows that the China Initiative [a U.S. Dept. of Justice program to block Chinese theft of intellectual property] is producing a wave of fear among scientists of non-Chinese descent as well, where scientists have described cutting ties with their collaborators in China, no longer hiring Chinese postdocs, and limiting communications with scholars in China, even at the expense of their own research projects.
Scientists of Chinese descent indicate in the survey that they have purposely not pursued federal funding for projects for fear of increased scrutiny, compared to scientists of non-Chinese descent. This can lead to smaller teams, downsizing of projects, and working with reduced resources. Scientists of Chinese descent have also started to consider working in less hostile climates outside the U.S., which could affect talent retention. The enrollment of new international graduate students from China has already been declining.
“What is clear from this research is that U.S. scientists and researchers of Chinese descent and non-Chinese descent experience the world and their work very differently because of racism, stereotypes, xenophobia, and government policies,” said Dr. Jenny J. Lee, Professor in the Center for the Study of Higher Education, College of Education, at the University of Arizona. “We thank the Committee of 100 for teaming with us at the University of Arizona to help shed light on a significant issue that directly impacts how research across the U.S. is conducted and advanced.”
“The U.S. is the global leader in scientific research, yet suspicions of scientists of Chinese descent in the U.S. have made progress and exchange more difficult,” said Zheng Yu Huang, President of Committee of 100. “Government policies have a direct correlation with and impact on advancements in life-saving innovation and technological breakthroughs. We need to move beyond the stereotypes of the perpetual foreigner and halt the xenophobia being directed at Chinese Americans and the entire AAPI community.”
Key data points pulled from the report:
Overall, scientists of Chinese descent and non-Chinese descent both recognize the value of scientists of Chinese descent and support collaboration with China.
42.2% of scientists of Chinese descent feel racially profiled by the U.S. government, while only 8.6% of scientists of non-Chinese descent feel so.
38.4% of scientists of Chinese descent experience more difficulty in obtaining funding for research projects in the U.S. as a result of their race/ethnicity/country of origin, compared to only 14.2% of scientists of non-Chinese descent.
50.7% of scientists of Chinese descent feel considerable fear and/or anxiety that they are being surveilled by the U.S. government, compared to only 11.7% of scientists of non-Chinese descent.
39.7% of scientists of Chinese descent believe the U.S. should be tougher on China to prevent the theft of intellectual property, while 74.8% of scientists of non-Chinese descent feel so.
Among those who had reported conducting research that involves China over the past 3 years, a higher percentage of the scientists of Chinese over non-Chinese descent reported limiting communication with collaborators in China (40.6% vs. 12.8%), deciding not to involve China in future projects (23.8% vs. 5.8%), and deciding not to work with collaborators in China in the future projects (23.2% vs. 9.7%).
Among those whose research with China was prematurely suspended over the past three years, 78.5% of scientists of Chinese descent wanted to distance themselves from collaborators in China due to the China Initiative, compared to 27.3% of scientists of non-Chinese descent.
Among non-U.S. citizen scientists in the sample, 42.1% of the scientists of Chinese descent indicate that the FBI investigations and/or the China Initiative affected their plans to stay in the U.S., while only 7.1% of the scientists of non-Chinese descent report so. [END]
To read the full research findings, click here!
[About Committee of 100: Committee of 100 is a non-profit U.S. leadership organization of prominent Chinese Americans in business, government, academia, healthcare, and the arts focused on public policy engagement, civic engagement, and philanthropy. For over 30 years, Committee of 100 has served as a preeminent organization committed to the dual missions of promoting the full participation of Chinese Americans in all aspects of American life and constructive relations between the United States and Greater China.]
The Anti-Asian Roots of Today’s Anti-Immigrant Politics
Mari Uyehara, The Nation, August 9, 2021
[NOTE, In this essay, Mari Uyehara, a culture and politics writer whose work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and other publications, writes that the anti-Asian violence we are witnessing now has its roots in decades of hostility aimed at Asian immigrants in the U.S. by white politicians for political and economic gain. “Anti-immigrant bias has long been exploited for political gain,” she writes. At first, this was largely directed at Irish and Italian immigrants and other white populations despised by the Anglo-Protestant majority, but eventually was turned against Chinese and Japanese immigrants by opportunistic white politicians. The article provides an excellent overview of this historical process. Here are a few excerpts.]
Anti-immigrant bias has long been exploited for political gain. In colonial America, “swarthy” German immigrants were the targets of animus from British settlers. Later, the distinctively vicious Know-Nothing or American Party, beat and shot German and Irish Catholic Americans—who were believed to be criminal and papist elements infiltrating the country—at polling places during elections. But it was the anti-Asian movement, along with the oppression of Indigenous and Black Americans, that helped unify previously fractured European immigrant groups, binding them together in a cross-class identity of whiteness and inventing the entirely new and racialized concept of the “illegal immigrant.”
Major events like the Chinese massacre of 1871 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 are often presented as isolated instances. But they were just the peaks in a century-long pattern of organized white terror that presaged this past year’s cataclysm of anti-Asian menacing and violence as well as Donald Trump’s virulently anti-immigrant 2016 presidential campaign. While Asian exclusion was broadly popular, politicians and labor leaders employed it for the specific purpose of winning over working-class whites and elevating their status in the American racial hierarchy; in the process, they helped redefine white European settlers as “native” compared with invasive Asians, appropriating Indigenous Americans’ historical stature along with their land. And while this strategy was a distinctly regional one at first, ruthlessly operationalized in the West, its adherents were successful in forcing it into mainstream national politics.
The Western strategy, as I call it, was a distinct but reinforcing immigrant corollary to the Southern strategy (both the ethos of the post-Reconstruction South and, later, the explicit program of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon). It was crystallized in California, Washington, and Oregon as they entered statehood and as Jim Crow laws swept the South. If the Southern strategy pursued pure political power in its first iteration and later brought about party realignment by stoking white racial animus toward Black people…the Western strategy achieved bipartisan agreement by whipping up resentment toward Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian immigrants, aided by propaganda of foreign invaders who could never be assimilated and abetted by policies of race-based exclusion.
Amid U.S.-China tensions, Democratic lawmakers warn colleagues over ‘xenophobic rhetoric’
David Nakamura, Washington Post, July 16, 2021
NOTE: In this article, David Nakamura of the Post discusses a letter sent by leaders of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus asking their colleagues to speak responsibly about U.S.-China relations amid concern that the escalating geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and China is contributing to the rise in anti-Asian violence in the United States.
In a four-page letter sent to all House members Friday, caucus chair Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and six fellow Democrats say that as lawmakers attempt to confront the Chinese government on U.S. security and economic interests, they should refrain from “xenophobic rhetoric that exacerbates bigotry and racism facing Asian Americans.”
In an interview, Chu cited reports of increased hostility toward Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic, which President Donald Trump repeatedly blamed on China, the country where the virus was first reported.
“It is incumbent on all of us to be careful about the rhetoric that is being used,” Chu said. “This is what we want our colleagues to be aware of — that in their zeal to show they are doing something about China, they also don’t stoke the flames of xenophobia.”
Democratic Reps. Grace Meng (N.Y.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Mark Takano (Calif.), Ted Lieu (Calif.), Andy Kim (N.J.) and Marilyn Strickland (Wash.) also signed the letter, which cautions lawmakers to speak specifically about the ruling Chinese Communist Party rather than painting China and the Chinese people with a broad and critical brush.
How China Threat Narratives Feed Anti-Asian Racism – And How to Fight Back
By Tobita Chow, Justice is Global, June 2021
NOTE: This valuable report, by Tobita Chow of Justice is Global, a Steering Committee member of the Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy, shows how the anti-China rhetoric pouring out of Washington is inflaming the sharp rise in anti-Asian hate crimes being witnessed around the United States. It clearly demonstrates that a new Cold War with China will have ugly and painful repercussions at home. Below are excerpts from the report. (AAPI = Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.)
Anti-Asian Violence Is on the Rise: A major turning point came with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. Stop AAPI Hate, a project that tracks reports of anti-Asian racism, recorded 6,603 incidents between March 2020 and March 2021, with almost 40% of those reports occurring just between February and March of 2021.[1]
Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University and a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, connects this to rising US– China tensions. “When America China-bashes, then Chinese get bashed, and so do those who ‘look Chinese.’ American foreign policy in Asia is American domestic policy for Asians.”[2]
There are a number of narratives about China that feed anti-Asian racism. Attracting the greatest amount of attention is former President Trump’s use of phrases such as “Chinese virus” or “Kung flu.” This was part of a broader narrative strategy to scapegoat China for the pandemic and to displace blame for Trump’s catastrophic mishandling of this public health crisis. The point was not only to claim that COVID-19 came from China, but also that China should take all the blame for its impacts on the US. This contributed to many people in the US blaming anyone in the US who is of Chinese descent, or who “looks Chinese.” A significant proportion of incidents of anti-Asian racism have included language from the perpetrators that assign blame for the pandemic on the victims, or otherwise identify the victims as sources of disease.[3]
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….
Towards a Counter-Narrative Strategy: In order to resist this combination of escalating “China threat” narratives and anti-Asian racism, we need a counternarrative strategy…. Such an alternative must confront the underlying narrative structures: the dehumanizing and deindividualizing narratives about people of Chinese descent and others who are perceived to be Chinese, and the US-China binary that portrays the US and China as the embodiment of incompatible principles that are doomed to conflict.
* Counter the notion that all Chinese people form a homogeneous collective by portraying a diversity of identity, opinions, etc. Promote narratives of solidarity showing that people in China and people in the US of Chinese descent experience similar problems to the majority of Americans, and that we can solve our shared problems through shared struggle.
* Counter “China threat” narratives and break down the US–China binary with narratives that show the biggest threats to most people in the US to be those shared across borders, which require international cooperation to create shared solutions. This includes the climate crisis, the pandemic, global poverty and inequality, and a global economy based on the oppression and exploitation of working people everywhere.
How to Criticize: There are many valid criticisms of the Chinese government and Chinese businesses that should not be suppressed. These include the repression of labor and feminist activists across China, human rights abuses in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China, the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, military threats against Taiwan and military expansion in the South China Sea…. However, even valid criticisms sometimes unnecessarily feed into the US–China binary. That can be avoided in the following ways:
* Be precise: Identify the “Chinese government” or specific Chinese businesses or individuals as the target of criticism, rather than “China” or “the Chinese.” This is to avoid feeding into the narrative that all Chinese people are assimilated into the Chinese government as a homogeneous collective.
* Apply criticisms universally: Most valid criticisms of the Chinese government or Chinese businesses could also be extended to other bad actors in other countries…. Rising authoritarianism is a feature not just of Chinese politics, but of the politics of countries around the world, including in the US. Abuses of labor rights are systemic in the neoliberal global economy, and have long been embedded in the business model of multinational corporations. A progressive narrative will oppose such practices because they violate human rights and human dignity, not because they are perpetrated by a particular government.
To view the entire report, click HERE
Endnotes:
[1] Russell Jeung, Aggie J. Yellow Horse, Charlene Cayanan, “Stop AAPI Hate National Report,” StopAAPIHate.org, May 6, 2021, https://stopaapihate.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Stop-AAPI-Hate-Report-National-210506.pdf
[2] David Nakamura, “Beyond the pandemic, Asian American leaders fear U.S. conflict with China will fan racist backlash,” Washington Post, March 17, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/biden-chinaasian-american-racism/2021/03/17/69eb4bc6-873d-11eb-82bc-e58213caa38e_story.html
[3] Russell Jeung, Tara Popovic, Richard Lim, Nelson Lin, “Anti-Chinese Rhetoric Employed by Perpetrators of AntiAsian Hate,” StopAAPIHate.org, October 11, 2020, https://stopaapihate.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/StopAAPI-Hate-Report-Anti-China-201011.pdf
The group Stop AAPI Hate (for Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders), reported in May that hateful incidents towards members of the AAPI community in the United States doubled in March 2021 from 3,795 to 6,603 reported incidents. The data includes all reported incidents between March 19, 2020 and March 31, 2021, so the spike in March 2021 is striking.
According to the report, types of discrimination include:
● Verbal harassment (65.2%) and shunning (18.1%) — i.e., the deliberate avoidance of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — continue to make up the two largest proportions of the total incidents reported.
● Physical assault (12.6%) comprises the third largest category of total reported incidents.
● Civil rights violations — e.g., workplace discrimination, refusal of service and being barred from transportation — account for 10.3% of the total incidents.
● Online harassment makes up 7.3% of total incidents.
To view the complete report, click here
The Rising Tide of Violence and Discrimination Against Asian American and Pacific Islander Women and Girls
By Drishti Pillai, Ph.D., MPH Aggie J. Yellow Horse, Ph.D. Russell Jeung, Ph.D.
A Report of Stop AAPI Hate and National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, May 20, 2021
From the Report: Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women and girls are prime targets of hate and discrimination against the AAPI community. The recent shootings across several Atlanta spas that claimed the lives of eight people, including six Asian American women, came on the heels of a staggering increase in hate incidents targeting the AAPI community. Hate incidents, which include both hate crimes and incidents of violence or discrimination, against AAPIs rose sharply over the past year, with over 6,600 reports collected by Stop AAPI Hate between March 2020 and March 2021. In particular, AAPI women and girls report these hate incidents 2.2 times as often as AAPI men; and AAPI non-binary people have also reported experiencing heightened incidents of hate.
To view the complete report, click here
National Security Professionals Call for Action on Hate Crimes and Racism Against Asian-Americans, by Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in National Security
DefenseOne, March 18, 2021
This statement began as informal conversations among Asian-American and Pacific Islander friends in the national security community. We shared personal experiences and, frankly, vented to each other about discriminatory and racist incidents. Last month, we began consolidating our thoughts into something more productive: publicly calling out the problems and gathering policy recommendations.
Our broader objective is to advance a much-needed discourse on combating the surge of hate crimes and racism against Asian-Americans in the United States — including the deadly March 16 shootings in Atlanta. We are hardly the first to call for action; our efforts build on an open letter published last summer that called for U.S. leaders at every level to take action against anti-Asian racism as well as many other letters, statements, and commentaries on these critical issues. Our target audience here, however, is much narrower: the national security community. This community faces additional unique challenges, such as ethnic profiling in security clearances, that require swift solutions but are esoteric to the general American populace.
This statement is meant to start conversations. We will soon host a series of private Zoom roundtables under Chatham House rules, so that various stakeholders are able to more openly express their views and give suggestions on next steps, including policy recommendations. We also want to discuss best practices and lessons from similar initiatives to push through real change while simultaneously moving towards the greater mission. We invite readers to co-sign our statement and to sign up to participate in the Zoom conversations.
STATEMENT
Throughout our collective history, Americans have stood in the face of, challenged, and overcome foreign oppression. Many of those who shouldered this burden were new American citizens, immigrants, and refugees who found their way to the United States to escape atrocities abroad. They fought to defend America’s ideals because they most reverently cherished the value of American freedom; indeed, they knew all too well the alternative: the lack of fundamental rights, the oppression that arises from tyranny, the fear of not knowing whether survival can be expected from one day to the next, and the horrors of abject poverty. Freedom—our Nation’s highest ideal—can never be taken for granted. Our freedom was won and ultimately secured by individuals who, throughout history, profoundly appreciated its value, fragility, and imperfections. They carried with them—and continue to carry with them—an unwavering resolve to defend America’s democracy.
We are foreign policy and national security professionals, including active and retired military members, diplomats, civilian government employees, government contractors, intelligence officers, investors, scientists, and academics. We are Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, or AAPI, who come from diverse backgrounds, from third-generation Chinese-Americans whose ancestors sought more opportunities and labored to build the vital infrastructure of America’s westward expansion, to first-generation immigrants whose parents wanted to achieve the American Dream. We are allies and community members united by our commitment to America, and we are bound by a collective mission to make our country a better and more secure place.
As a community, it has been heart-wrenching to hear—and personally experience—the latest surge of hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans across our beloved country, the same country for which thousands of Asian-Americans have fought and died. The perpetuation of this prejudice has only intensified under the COVID-19 pandemic and the geopolitical and economic strains and racial polarization it has surfaced. Simultaneously, the xenophobia that is spreading as U.S. policy concentrates on great power competition has exacerbated suspicions, microaggressions, discrimination, and blatant accusations of disloyalty simply because of the way we look. Many of us have been targeted because we are either ethnically Chinese or simply look Asian. This is not to dismiss credible counterintelligence concerns as evidenced through indictments of U.S. citizens—some of whom are White—spying for China. Treating all Asian-Americans working in national security with a broad stroke of suspicion, rather than seeing us as valuable contributors, is counterproductive to the greater mission of securing the homeland. As members and allies of the AAPI community, we acknowledge that Asian-Americans are intrinsic to the fabric of American society.
What the Fear of China Is Doing to American Science
A campaign against Chinese scientists threatens the openness that defines U.S. universities
Rory Truex, DefenseOne, Feb. 16, 2021
In what is becoming a familiar scene in American higher education, a Chinese-born scientist at a high-profile university was recently arrested for his ties to the Chinese government. About a month ago, Gang Chen, a naturalized American citizen and highly respected professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, was indicted by a grand jury for “failing to disclose contracts, appointments and awards from various entities in the People’s Republic of China.” Authorities say that Chen, who received U.S. Department of Energy grants for his research in nanotechnology, did not properly inform the agency about contracts entitling him to “hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct payments” from entities in China. Chen’s lawyers have responded aggressively, accusing U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling of making “false, highly inflammatory” comments that questioned Chen’s “character and reputation.” MIT has agreed to fund Chen’s defense, and hundreds of his colleagues have signed an open letter testifying to his character.
Chen’s case is part of a broader U.S. government crackdown on scientists that has targeted both Chinese citizens and Chinese Americans—and has challenged the leading role American research institutions play in global science. Trade battles, human-rights abuses in Xinjiang, and the militarization of the South China Sea are what usually come to mind when Americans think about the growing friction with China. But in many ways, U.S. universities are a more immediate battleground. They are centers of basic research—studies about the underlying foundations of natural phenomena conducted without specific commercial or military applications in mind. According to existing U.S. government policy, such research is meant to be kept as open as possible. The concern of many U.S. policy makers is that Beijing is using so-called non-traditional intelligence collectors—students, faculty, and other researchers—to steal secrets from American labs and gain a competitive edge.