Rising Sinophobia brings back bad memories in US

By Dr Christina Lin

The Donald Trump administration has created an atmosphere of racism, against all and everybody else, including Muslims, Black people, Hispanics, and now Chinese.

Here we present you an article that recently appeared in Asia Times titled: “Rising Sinophobia brings back bad memories in US”.

The writer is Dr Christina Lin, a California-based foreign and security policy analyst of Chinese origin. She has extensive US government experience working on China security issues, including policy planning at the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the Department of State, and her current focus is on China-West Asia/Mediterranean relations.

Over the past year, there has been a crescendo of international opprobrium condemning China’s internment camps for Uighurs in Xinjiang. Simultaneously in the US, there has been a growing chorus condemning xenophobia and racism against Mexican-Americans and Muslim Americans, with Japanese-Americans leading the choir. They have a platform. In World War II, Japanese-Americans were rounded up in shipped off to internment camps throughout the US.

In 1942, US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that paved the way for the World War II incarcerations of Japanese-Americans. Over the next five years, more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans, two-thirds of whom were Nisei (second generation) native-born US citizens, were forced to leave their homes and livelihoods for military enclosures – described by various terms from “reception centers” and “relocation centers” to “internment camps” and “concentration camps.”

This was despite the fact that during the intervening years, Japanese-Americans fought bravely in the US Army’s 44th Infantry Regiment, which became one of the most decorated units in US military history and was made up entirely of Nisei soldiers. Yet in 1942, the US War Department classified Japanese-Americans as 4-C: enemy alien.

Now, there is growing concern in the US that history may be repeating itself not just with Muslims and Hispanics, but also with Chinese-Americans.

In a June 2017 Foreign Policy article, Thomas Ricks warned that the US government’s current anti-Chinese vitriol is reminiscent of the toxic environment that led to internment of Japanese-Americans, and would similarly lead to violence against the Chinese-American population.

This fear is echoed by Asian-Americans, who are increasingly experiencing racism and discrimination due to the inflammatory Sinophobic language from the US leadership.

Georgetown University Professor Chi Wang has said that Chinese-Americans are now caught in the crossfire of Sino-US enmity, and witnessed his “Chineseness” being used to make him somehow less American or untrustworthy, despite being a US citizen and having lived in the country for more than 70 years.

Yun Sun, senior associate at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, has also said, “The US seems to have a policy that is at least skeptical or suspicious of all ethnic Chinese,” while Chinese-Americans have often endured the “perpetual foreigner” syndrome in the US and faced the repeated question of “where are you really from,” observed Professor Frank Wu from the University of California Hasting College of Law.

And as Sino-US relation enter a period of newfound hostility, China- and Chinese-bashing has become in vogue, with negative consequences for Asian-Americans.

In April Magazine, an online publication for Asian women based in Seoul, a July 2018 article noted how the US government’s anti-Chinese policy is harming Asian-Americans. It cited a 2016 study conducted by the Chinese-American organization Committee of 100, which found that Asian-Americans are the most likely minority group to be falsely accused of espionage, and receive longer sentences than defendants with Western last names.

This is also impacting their everyday life. For example, the article cites 28-year-old Alexis Lee, who having lived in Los Angeles all her life was surprised when she began to hear anti-Chinese slurs for the first time walking down the street. Lee lamented that “Sinophobia feels pretty real,” and said it reminded her of Japanese internment camps and McCarthyism during darker times in US history.

Likewise in Australia, there is already increasing racism and violence against ethnic Chinese and other Asians. In 2017, two Chinese high-school students were beaten in Canberra, while four Chinese students and a tutor in a Canberra university classroom were injured by a student wielding a baseball bat.

At the University of Sydney, “Kill Chinese” and Nazi Swastika graffiti were found on campus grounds, while in another instance a man attacked seven people on a street simply because of their Asian appearance.

Sadly, this is similar to the 2015 anti-Chinese and anti-Asian attacks in Turkey, when after Western media hype on the repatriation of Uighurs from Thailand who were en route to Turkey or Syria, many Turks began to attack all Asians – whether Uighur in restaurants in Istanbul or Korean tourists – also because of their Asian features and “slanted eyes.”

Meanwhile back in the US, the “all Asians as Chinese” narrative seems to be getting worse. A Japanese-American colleague recently told this author, “I get racially harassed in New Jersey a block from my house by Trump Americans,” while on university campuses ethnic Chinese students are also increasingly harassed and treated with suspicion.

Unfortunately, Asians do not have much political representation in Western countries, whether in Australia or the US, and so long as Sinophobia and anti-Chinese sentiment continue to grow, so will violent incidents against the Asian population.