The current wave of anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States has been building for years. It started when US policymakers raised national security concerns about Huawei. China’s national technology champion, the market leader in developing new 5G telecommunications equipment, was accused of deploying digital back doors that could enable Chinese espionage and cyberattacks.
But Huawei was just the start. The US has since spiralled into a full-blown outbreak of Sinophobia – a strong word that I don’t use lightly. The Oxford English Dictionary defines phobia as an “extreme or irrational fear or dread aroused by a particular object or circumstance”.
Indeed, China threats now seem to be popping up everywhere. The US government has imposed export controls to cut off China’s access to advanced semiconductors – part of its concerted effort to stymie the country’s artificial intelligence ambitions. The Department of Justice has just indicted a state-sponsored Chinese hacking group for allegedly taking aim at critical American infrastructure. Much has also been made of the purported risks of Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), construction and dock-loading cranes, and now TikTok.
Nor are the fears confined to technology. The US government misdiagnosed a multilateral problem – a trade deficit with more than 100 countries – as a bilateral problem and punished China with tariffs. Others have warned that Washington’s exaggerated claims of the Chinese military threat have, at times, bordered on hysteria as tensions mount in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.
Of course, this is only half the story. China is equally guilty of its own strain of “Ameri-phobia” – demonising the US for its accusations of Chinese economic espionage, unfair trading practices and human rights violations. Both phobias are related to the profusion of false narratives that I address in my most recent book, Accidental Conflict.
Notwithstanding this tit-for-tat blame game, my point now is different: there is good reason to worry about an increasingly virulent strain of this phobia spinning out of control in the US.
Not since the red-baiting of the early 1950s has America so vilified a foreign power. Back then, a two-pronged congressional approach, led by US Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), spearheaded an assault on alleged Communist sympathisers under the guise of protecting Americans from Soviet espionage and influence.
Today, another politician from Wisconsin, Representative Mike Gallagher, led the charge as chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which, in an eerie parallel to the dark days of HUAC, has levelled a series of unsubstantiated charges against China. While Gallagher will retire from Congress in April, his legacy will live on, not just as co-sponsor of a bill that could lead to an outright ban of TikTok, but also as the leader of a congressional effort that has cast a long shadow over those who support almost any form of engagement with China.
The litany of US allegations is a manifestation of unproven fears wrapped in the impenetrable cloak of national security. Yet there is no “smoking gun” in any of these cases. Instead, it is all about circumstantial evidence of an increasingly aggressive China. At work is an unmistakable bipartisan politicisation of deductive reasoning.
For example, US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, a leading Democrat, asks us to “imagine” what could happen if Chinese EVs were weaponised on American highways. FBI director Christopher Wray, a Donald Trump appointee and member of the conservative Federalist Society, warns that Chinese malware could disable critical US infrastructure “if or when China decides the time has come to strike”.
A former US counter-intelligence officer has compared sensors in Chinese-made cranes to a Trojan horse. There are many “what ifs” and mythical parallels, but no hard evidence on intent or verifiable action.
Everything Chinese is a national security threat to the United States
Everything Chinese is a national security threat to the United States
What is it about China that has generated this virulent US reaction? The US has long been intolerant of competing ideologies and alternative systems of governance. The claim of “American exceptionalism” seemingly compels us to impose our views and values on others. That was true in the Cold War, and it is true again today.
Excessive fear of China conveniently masks many of America’s own self-inflicted problems. Bilateral trade deficits may well reflect the unfair trading practices of individual countries – China today, Japan 35 years ago – but broad multilateral trade deficits stem more from chronic US budget deficits that lead to a deficiency of domestic saving.
Similarly, the technology threat is not only an outgrowth of the alleged Chinese theft of US intellectual property; it also represents underinvestment in research and development and shortfalls in STEM-based higher education. Rather than taking a long, hard look in the mirror, it is politically expedient for US politicians to blame China.
How the US, home of trailblazer Tesla, lost the EV race to China
How the US, home of trailblazer Tesla, lost the EV race to China
As Sinophobia feeds on itself, fear starts to take on the aura of fact and the dangers of accidental conflict with China intensify. By acting on these anxieties, America risks inciting the very outcome it wants to deter.
The US can and must do better. Rather than excusing the excesses of Sinophobia as justifiable reactions to the China threat, US leaders need to think more in terms of being the adult in the room. Global leadership requires nothing less.
In his first inaugural address in 1933, US president Franklin Roosevelt underscored the ultimate risk of this dangerous pathology with the memorable line, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Amid today’s Sinophobic frenzy, that message is well worth remembering.
Stephen S. Roach, a faculty member at Yale University and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, is the author of “Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China” and “Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives”. Copyright: Project Syndicate
