It's time for UK and American media to stop perpetuating Sinophobic narratives
Anna Luo
Napoleon Bonaparte once uttered the words, “Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.”
Bonaparte’s quote has since been recalled in many contemporary discussions on China’s influence as a rising global power. In many ways, his words can be interpreted as a self-fulling prophecy. In another way, this quote has been misused repeatedly in news coverage of China and, in some instances, has even helped US and UK media depict China’s power as an inherent threat to Western values such as free market capitalism and individualism.
There is no question that many actions from China's current ruling party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are overtly antithetical to liberal democratic ideals. Investigating human rights abuses by the CCP is called for, such as in the case of the forced detention of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. There are also tense subjects of sovereignty and autonomy in contested regions like Taiwan and Hong Kong.
However, the issue with American and British mainstream news outlets covering these sensitive geopolitical topics is that they can rely, consciously or unconsciously, on Sinophobic (anti-Chinese) narratives that liken the political actions of the CCP with Chinese culture and people.
With rising tensions during the spread of the Covid-19 virus, Western narratives have only become more volatile and have even bordered on warmongering. An op-ed in the UK-based newspaper The Telegraph, published in April 2020 as Covid-19 outbreaks intensified worldwide, insisted that due to the virus’ origin in Wuhan, the UK “must” view China as a “hostile threat”.
The article also claimed that there was a “deepening resentment” among people that “China was to blame for the disruption… on their daily lives”. Not only is this highly antagonistic, but it also translates directly to the violence we have seen against Asian people since Covid-19 began.
Recently, former United States UN Ambassador Nikki Haley attacked Chinese American Olympian Eileen Gu for her decision to compete for China – stating she couldn’t be both American and Chinese and “needed to pick a side”. The xenophobic comments were covered by Insider, and while the article did present statements from Eileen Gu, they did not go far enough in framing Haley’s comments amidst rising anti-Asian sentiment in the US.
Instead, the coverage chose to take Haley’s words at face value and pit Haley, a former American ambassador with significant political influence, against Gu, a rising athlete and college student.
The US and UK are two countries with profoundly influential media systems. We cannot afford to ignore that the representation of China in their media directly shapes not just how large audiences view China, but by extension, Chinese and East Asian people.
Admittedly, covering China as an influential foreign power is a challenging task given today’s current political tensions and crises. It’s also challenging given the circumstances of the Chinese Communist Party’s amount of censorship within the country, which has led to the detention of Chinese activists and journalists as well as hostility towards foreign correspondents.
Despite these challenges, media coverage in the US and UK have no valid reason to rely on orientalist, Sinophobic narratives when reporting on China. The proliferation of these narratives points to a dire need for intelligent, culturally-informed journalism that takes a strong stance in separating China’s government and political elites from Chinese people living both in and out of the country.
Following the recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Fox News political pundit Laura Ingraham stated on broadcast television that the Russia-Ukraine war was “made in China”. Reporting from Fox News also included the term “communist China”, a pointed and intentional way of inherently linking China to its political system.
With this wording, it is impossible to separate China and anything Chinese from communism. In this context, it is also clear to the broadcasters that communism – and by affiliation, China – should be viewed as backwards and anti-American.
In her segment, Ingraham also called to cancel the student visas of Chinese students studying abroad in the US. She suggested that Chinese students are “going to turn against us”, creating an incredibly dangerous suggestion that all Chinese students are linked to the Chinese Communist Party simply due to their nationality – which is not only fundamentally incorrect, but could also put Chinese students at risk of being discriminated against by their peers.
History is a crucial aspect when considering the East-West ideological conflict, and is relevant in many of the modern diplomatic challenges unfolding today. In parallel with the rise of communism in Russia following the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the subsequent rise and fall of the Soviet Union, China has similarly undergone tumultuous transfers of power that at times resulted in civil wars and famine.
While the Chinese Communist Party recently celebrated 100 years since its formation, achieving political control in the country took time. The first communist leader of China was Mao Zedong in 1949, meaning communism has prevailed in the political system for 73 years, during which time the CCP has only seen seven leaders of various lengths. Comparatively, the Second World War ended 77 years ago, yet its effects are still deeply relevant in modern times. The same can be said for China’s modern history.
It is helpful to situate the rise of communism in China by understanding that while China was never formally colonised, it was deeply affected by Western imperialism, namely from Western Europe like Britain and France. Many social and political factors contributed to the creation of the Chinese Communist Party, but in short, it was formed in 1921 as a product of revolutionaries on the basis of Marxist-Leninist and anti-imperialist ideals. The CCP’s rise to power was marked by a series of power struggles within the country, most notably, against the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang).
Communism can be a difficult ideology to cover when so much of modern history has resulted in violent conflict fighting for, or against, political parties associated with communism. The term “communism” itself is associated with emotional responses – in a Western context, it’s often inherently pejorative.
It’s important to remember, however, that while communism has led to a significant amount of harm towards people in different global contexts, capitalism has also inflicted harm in its own ways. Neither ideology has abstained from being wielded as mechanisms of oppression by powerful actors.
Being able to criticise the negative effects of capitalism and communism in productive ways requires an understanding of why people embrace these ideologies in the first place. In countries like the UK and US, however, the understanding of communism has eroded and been replaced with negative sentiment – while capitalism is considered righteous, communism is viewed as an insidious Eastern threat. This is also reinforced when US and UK media coverage frames communist countries and the people within them as fundamentally immoral.
Contemporary news coverage rarely includes historical context in breaking news. While this is wholly understandable due to time and space limitations, media narratives in the Western context run the risk of presenting current portrayals of Eastern countries as ‘backwards’ in both culture and politics – and as always having been that way.
Even so, this is why representation is so fundamental to shaping discourse. Even if coverage cannot include background context, there is still value in acknowledging that entire countries cannot simply be delineated as bad.
Western media also has a bad habit of placing people from Eastern countries into one of two categories: helpless victims of an authoritarian regime, or cronies supporting the state. This not only dehumanises vast populations of diverse individuals, but it also ignores the activists and movements from people within these countries leading efforts towards a more equitable future.
Missing the historical context of current geopolitical conflicts allows room for gross misunderstandings of how we got to where we are today. It also allows room for rhetoric that normalises racism as an appropriate response to certain foreign countries – the narratives surrounding refugee crises in countries like the UK and the US are examples of where this shows through plainly.
In current times, the mounting distrust and negative sentiment towards China in American and British media and political narratives is not without impact. Violent physical and verbal attacks against Asian and Asian American people in the United States have skyrocketed since the outbreak of Covid-19. A poll from NPR in October 2021 found that 1 in 4 surveyed Asian Americans feared attacks on them or on someone in their household.
In the UK, a report found that online anti-Asian hate speech spiked by 1,662% in 2020 in comparison to 2019. The Independent noted that many of the slurs didn’t even exist before the Covid-19 pandemic.
There are also the egregious attacks against people working in Asian-owned massage parlors in Atlanta, Georgia in March 2021. Eight people, six of which were Asian women, were killed by a white man with a gun. The killer was sentenced to life without parole but was not charged with any hate crimes.
Journalism has a contested role within the different societies it operates in. In Western democratic ideals, however, journalism is intended to be a watchdog on power, a source to inform citizens, and a mediator of productive debate.
Perhaps the most crucial thing US and UK mainstream outlets can do in a time of rising tension, and in the face of an increasing amount of volatile world leaders hellbent on maintaining concentrated power, is recommit itself to the role of journalism vis-à-vis democratic values.
This includes criticism of powerful actors that comes with nuance, informed analysis, and room for intelligent debate that simultaneously upholds basic human rights for everyone. Sowing fear and division towards China does not uphold these values – it only serves to increase racist, orientalist, and Sinophobic attitudes that result in harmful actions towards Chinese and Asian people, and drives audiences away from legitimate criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.