Welcome to China Elite Politics, a podcast
about Chinese Communist Party elite politics and operations, U.S.-China relations, and
China-related geopolitics. I'm Larry Ong, senior analyst at SinoInsider. This is episode three of
the podcast. In this episode, I'll look at the Chinese Communist Party's effort to leverage
recent focus on anti-Asian hate in America to get ahead in great power competition, and how
America should respond. Alright let's begin. On March 16, a mass shooter killed eig
ht people at
three massage parlors in Atlanta, Georgia. Six of the victims were Asian women, four of whom were
of Asian descent. According to the Atlanta police, the shooter said he was motivated by sex
addiction, not racial bias. Despite the police statement, mainstream media outlets, left-wing
politicians, and Asian-American advocacy groups framed the shooting as a racist hate crime.
They claim that Asian-American hate crimes and incidents are rising due to the coronavirus
pandemic and t
he rhetoric of former president Donald Trump. Trump has described SARS-CoV-2, the
coronavirus that causes Covid-19, as the "China virus" or "Wuhan virus." Chinese Communist Party
propaganda outlets would borrow the arguments of the American mainstream media and political
left in reporting on the Atlanta shooting and subsequent rallies held to protest Asian-American
hate. Nationalist PRC propaganda tabloid Global Times wrote in a March 23 news item that "in the
face of the U.S. government's
increased hostility toward China and the continued festering legacy of
former president Donald Trump, deep-seated hatred toward Asians will continue to loom over America
and further tear it apart." Two days after that, state mouthpiece Xinhua published a commentary
claiming that "unscrupulous Washington politicians and media outlets have been explicitly
manipulating racist rhetoric and sentiments by linking the deadly pathogen to specific ethnic
groups, leading to increasing violence and ha
te against Asian-Americans." Meanwhile, the Chinese
Communist Party spotlighted deep-rooted racial discrimination in its recently released
annual report on human rights in America. The report even opened with a quote from George
Floyd, the African-American man who died during a police arrest in May 2020. But this report
happens to be a specific piece of propaganda that Communist China publishes each year to
counter America's annual assessment of the global human rights situation. It is Beij
ing's way
of deflecting attention away from U.S. findings of gross abuses in mainland China. Beijing also
appears to be playing an active role in supporting the Asian anti-hate rallies in America. According
to a widely circulated screenshot of a WeChat message, the PRC consulate in San Francisco was
encouraging local Chinese Americans to participate in a "Stop Asian Hate" rally on March 27th. At
this juncture, listeners who have been following the news regularly may wonder if the Chinese
C
ommunist Party is correct in criticizing America over anti-Asian racism and other so-called human
rights problems. The short answer is definitely not. Communist China is the least qualified regime
to chastise the U.S. over human rights abuses and racism. Today in the far western Chinese region
of Xinjiang, Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities are forced to learn Mandarin and forget
their mother tongue. Uyghur men who refuse to shave their beards and Uyghur women who wear veils
are arr
ested and locked up in detention centers. There, they are tortured and brainwashed in
Marxism-Leninism and "socialism with Chinese characteristics." They are forced to denigrate
Islam, for example, by being forced to eat pork. Young people are being sterilized and many
prisoners report receiving blood tests. This last point indicates that Uyghurs, like other prisoners
of conscience in China, are probably being killed for their organs. Scholars make a strong case
when they argue that the Chi
nese Communist Party is carrying out cultural genocide in Xinjiang.
Meanwhile, the idea that President Trump's tough on China policies somehow contributed to rising
anti-Asian hate by "white supremacists" can't be supported when we look at the data. According to
FBI statistics, Asian-Americans accounted for just 3.1% to 4.4% of all hate crimes reported
in America between 2016 to 2019, or about 100 plus to 200 cases per year. Breaking down these
figures further, a 2018 Department of Justice
report states that the bulk of violent incidents
committed against Asian-Americans were by Blacks. Asian-on-Asian incidents and White-on-Asian
incidents tied for second. Data, however, is an unreliable and imprecise metric to assess
the level of racial animosity in America. For one, what constitutes a hate crime or a hate incident
differs from state to state. Also, what is hate to one person may not be so to another individual
or the police. Then there are advocacy groups with clear politic
al biases. These have an interest in
finding spikes in racial hate incidents to advance their agenda. For instance, many news outlets
repeat that the California-based non-profit Stop AAPI Hate has tracked over 3,800 cases
of self-reported hate incidents between March 2020 to February 2021. But Stop AAPI Hate's data
also shows that the vast majority of its cases involve verbal harassment, shunning, or avoidance,
not physical assault or crime. Furthermore, news outlets usually fail to mention
that Stop
AAPI Hate is hardly an impartial observer. The organization has a strong anti-Trump, pro-Biden,
pro-Democrat, and pro-progressive bias. Perhaps a better gauge of how Asian-Americans and Chinese in
particular feel about Trump's tough China policies can be glimpsed from the support for the former
president in the Chinese dissident community. Before the 2020 presidential election, mainstream
news outlets published several articles about the phenomenon of Chinese-Americans and dissid
ents
backing Trump, a supposed "white supremacist" and "authoritarian." Perry Link, an Emeritus Professor
of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, explained this a bit further in a recent video
lecture. He notes that Chinese dissidents tend to support Trump because they like his
China policies. These dissidents appreciate that the Trump administration saw the Chinese
Communist Party clearly for what it is, including differentiating between the Party and the Chinese
people. Professor
Link also noted that Chinese dissidents see Democrats drifting too closely
to the extreme leftist style of Chairman Mao, especially their use of moral intimidation to
enforce the politically correct way to talk about racial movements like Black Lives Matter. If
that is the case, then it is unsurprising that no Chinese dissidents spoke at the 2020 Democratic
National Convention, while the famous Chinese human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng declared his
support for President Trump at the Repub
lican National Convention last year. Finally, the idea
that referring to a disease by its place of origin will engender racism is tenuous at best. People
have been talking about Hong Kong foot, Spanish flu, and Ebola for decades. Yet the inhabitants
of those places have not been stigmatized by association with the respective disease. Ongoing
efforts to label as racist references of the coronavirus by place of origin appears to be
primarily motivated by politics and ideology in America, and
regime interests in Communist China.
The Chinese Communist Party wants the world to forget that the virus originated in Wuhan, as
well as its cover-up that led to the pandemic. Meanwhile, the Democrats want to virtue signal
how "woke" they are and find another excuse to call Trump and his supporters racist. There is a
lot of analysis out there about why the Democrats are embracing "wokeism" and other neo-Marxist
theories. However, this podcast is about Chinese Communist Party operations, so
I'll skip over the
U.S. angle and focus on explaining what Communist China is seeking to accomplish by spotlighting
anti-Asian hate in America and encouraging related activism. First the Chinese Communist
Party is looking to divide American society to weaken the United States. A U.S. focused on
domestic troubles will have less time and energy to confront and compete effectively with Communist
China. Less U.S. pressure means more opportunities for Beijing to survive domestic troubles and
a
dvance its world domination agenda. Second, the Chinese Communist Party is playing the racism
card to guilt-trip the Biden-Harris administration into abandoning the tough Trump-era China
policies. Already, American scholars, journalists, and pundits are calling on Washington to scrape
Trump's China policies to lower U.S.-China tensions. Such calls have only grown louder after
the "heated" Alaska meeting, which I analyzed in the previous episode of this podcast. Again, the
Chinese Communist
Party is looking to survive and dominate. Third, the Chinese Communist Party
is exploiting attention on Asian-American hate to avoid being held accountable for causing the
pandemic. Beijing's tactic appears to be somewhat successful. For instance, Secretary of State
Tony Blinken suggested Washington wouldn't punish Communist China over its handling of the COVID-19
pandemic when asked in an interview with CNN that aired on March 28th. However, some Asian-Americans
continue to demand accounta
bility from the Communist Party for its role in the pandemic. In
a widely circulated Twitter video of a "Stop Asian Hate" rally, an Asian man holding a yellow placard
with the words "Hold CCP Liable, Stop Asian Hate" can be spotted in the crowd. The man had to
bob and weave to keep his placard on display as other protesters tried to block him. This scene
is not unusual in considering that Beijing had a hand in amassing support for the anti-Asian hate
rallies in North America. Finally, Beiji
ng is seizing the opportunity to strengthen its rule
over the Chinese people by juxtaposing racial "chaos" in America with "order" and "stability" in
mainland China. Such comparisons make "socialism with Chinese characteristics" look good and
democracy unappealing to the Chinese people. Also, the Chinese Communist Party knows that repeated
propaganda about the strength of its authoritarian communist system versus the weaknesses of liberal
democratic systems will aid the export of its malign
ideology and political system around
the world. After all, people and countries naturally want to learn from success and avoid
failure. Now that we know what Beijing is doing in spotlighting anti-Asian hate in America, let's
look at what Washington can do in counter. First, Washington needs to end its embrace of critical
race theory, "wokeism," and other neo-Marxist theories. Reversing racial balkanization
in America will deny the Communist Party openings to split American society and weak
en the
United States. Also, media outlets, pundits, and think-tanks must be responsible and stick to the
facts in reporting. That means no opportunistic framing of crimes as racially motivated when the
individuals involved happen to match the "woke" narrative, but when available evidence suggests
otherwise. Second, the Biden-Harris administration should consider walking back an executive
order stating that references to the COVID-19 pandemic by geographic location of its origin is
xenophob
ic and racist. As I've explained earlier, diseases have historically been
named after their place of origin. Also, the racial stigmatization argument mostly
helps the Chinese Communist Party "memory hole" its role in causing the pandemic. Washington,
however, may wish to stay politically correct on the matter of referencing the pandemic and
the coronavirus. In that case, the Biden-Harris administration should have no quarrel with the
phrase "CCP virus," which helps people remember that the
regime's cover-up of the epidemic in
Wuhan led directly to the current pandemic. Finally, the Biden-Harris administration ought
to take a leaf out of the Trump administration's book and differentiate between the Chinese
Communist Party and the Chinese people. After all, the Party clings to totalitarian Marxism-Leninism
and does not represent the Chinese civilization and people. Making the distinction signals
clearly to the Chinese people that America's tough actions against the People's Rep
ublic of
China are not born out of "yellow peril" racism, but are aimed squarely at confronting the
malign behavior of the Chinese Communist Party. Distinguishing between the Party and the Chinese
people also blunts Beijing's effort to brand tough U.S. actions towards Communist China as racist.
Seeking to educate Americans about the communist, rather than Chinese, threat may also help to
lower the incidence of anti-Asian hate crimes throughout the country. Let's recap briefly. In
this epis
ode, we explain why Communist China is interested in exploiting fear of anti-Asian racism
for its hegemonic ends. We also looked at how Washington can effectively counter the Chinese
Communist Party's use of the racism card by drawing a clear line between the Communist Party
and the people of China. The Biden administration could reduce misunderstandings about the
U.S.-China relationship. It would also deny Beijing the use of racism as a powerful propaganda
tool to divide American society a
nd turn Americans against one another. That's it for today. If
you found the information and analysis useful, please feel free to share it with
others. See you in the next episode.
Comments
Divide and Conquer at its best