by MARTIN POWERS
Recently the Brookings Institute held a panel on “The national security implications of anti-Asian racism.” Noting that Asian peoples worldwide tend to link U.S. China policy with anti-Asian violence, Brookings scholars explained how those policies can weaken U.S. influence abroad.
But those views are not mainstream. In the U.S. Congress, China-bashing is welcomed by Republicans and Democrats alike, not much different from 130 years ago. Two years before the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act a Puck columnist wrote “What possible difference can it make to John Chinaman whether Democrats or Republicans have the upper hand? Both parties are his enemies.”
Unlike America in 1880, liberals these days pride themselves on sensitivity to racist memes. Calling black protestors criminals would be vigorously denounced; smearing all Muslims as terrorists likewise; labeling Hispanics rapists didn’t get far with liberals either, any more than Jew-baiting would, but China-bashing has a way of working its way into the most liberal habitats without detection.
Take the PBS series “Around the World in Eighty Days,” which displayed plenty of good, liberal credentials. Almost every episode was imbued with a keen sensitivity to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In the South Asian village episode, we met with many sympathetic characters, including a beautiful pair of young lovers and an intelligent Brahmin woman who deftly countered Mr. Fogg’s colonial biases.
But when it comes to the Hong Kong episode, there are no Chinese loving couples; no intelligent men or women; no one who comes across as “human just like me.” The only Chinese person we meet is a sneaky, ruthless gangster with an obsessive obedience to something I think was supposed to be “Confucian ritual.”
In India Ms. Fix was happy to eat with her hands, but in Hong Kong she shouts in disgust (paraphrase) “Thousands of years of civilization and they haven’t learned to use knives and forks!” Of course, what White people do is always better than what dark people do, and those dark folks had better catch up.
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