The mainstream media is struggling to reconcile its attacks on Donald Trump for speaking harshly about nations like China and Iran with its approval of (or at least non-judgmental posture towards) Joe Biden doing the same thing. To this struggle, we can add the task of defending Biden’s anti-China rhetoric while continuing to blame Trump’s rhetoric for “hate crimes” against Asian-Americans.
Two Asian-American professors, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Janelle Wong, have written an article for the Washington Post called (in the paper edition) “This is what happens when you vilify Asia.” “This” means the murders of Asian sex workers in Atlanta.
The article is silly at several levels. First, there is no evidence I’m aware of that the Atlanta shootings were motivated by anything other than a loathing of prostitutes (a form of self-loathing, given the shooter’s penchant for frequenting massage parlors).
Second, no U.S. official has “vilified Asia” per se. Particular Asian regimes have been criticized based on their policies. China’s and North Korea’s are the modern examples. But in recent times, U.S. officials and politicians have also been highly critical of Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, and even Israel.
Third, U.S. officials and politicians should continue strongly to criticize our adversaries, including Asian ones. We cannot conduct foreign policy based on the extent, if any, to which our policies and pronouncements might affect the treatment of citizens with roots in a given nation or conduct. Wokeness and political correctness cannot override legitimate foreign policy objectives.
Nguyen and Wong acknowledge that there are grounds on which China fairly can be criticized. But then, they quickly resort to good, old-fashion moral equivalency arguments.
They note that “China has not routinely used bombings and drone strikes as tools of foreign policy, or established military bases in dozens of nations,” as America has. They also claim that, like China, the U.S. “uses widespread surveillance against its own population,” and goes even further to employ “espionage and covert action, on foreign populations — including in efforts to weaken and overthrow governments with which it does not agree, from Iran to Guatemala [note: almost 70 years ago].”
These are Red China’s talking points, including some of the very ones used by China in its 20 minute anti-American harangue in Anchorage.
If you believe that the U.S. and China are about equally horrible, then, yes, it is hypocritical (though perhaps still in the national interest) to criticize the Chinese communists. But if you understand that China is a deeply repressive, expansionist dictatorship and that the U.S. isn’t, then our leaders should not feel constrained in criticizing China, even if it could be demonstrated (and I doubt that it can be) that their criticism is producing an appreciable increase in offenses against Asian-American.
Nguyen and Wong manage to get one thing right. They emphasize that criticism of China by American officials and politicians is bipartisan. Indeed, they say that China is “one of the few issues about which Democrats and Republicans agree.” That’s true, at least when it comes to talk.
The question becomes whether, now that Biden and his Secretary of State are harshly calling China out, the media will blame crimes against Asian-Americans on the administration’s anti-China rhetoric. I think we know the answer to that one.
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