The amygdala is a pair of nerve clusters near the base of the brain that help us assess danger and prompt the fight-or-flight response. Prolonged stress responses can foster anxiety, which can make people feel unsafe in the middle of nowhere and fixate on worst-case scenarios.
The entire nation of America is plagued by chronic anxiety about China. Now, almost anything that starts with the word “Chinese” creates a fear response in our political system, disrupting our ability to properly assess threats and take stock of the situation. This has led the U.S. government and U.S. politicians to pursue policies based on repression and exclusion, reflecting the authoritarian regimes they seek to combat.
Congress has moved to force the sale of TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media application. Some states have sought restrictions on Chinese individuals or entities owning U.S. land and on Chinese researchers working at U.S. universities. And the federal government has banned certain Chinese technology companies from competing in our markets. All of these measures have national security rationales, and I do not intend to weigh the merits of all of them here. But taken together, they are creating an America that is fundamentally more closed and, in some meaningful ways, more like China.
When you are constantly feeling anxious, no threat is small. In January, Florida Sen. Rick Scott suggested that Chinese garlic could pose a threat to U.S. national security, citing reports that Chinese garlic was fertilized with human waste. A bill has been submitted to ban the import of domestically grown garlic. In 2017, scientists at McGill University wrote that there is no evidence that this is the case. Even so, in many countries, including the United States, it is common to use human waste, known as “biosolids,” as fertilizer.
Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Elise Stefanik filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense on the grounds that the U.S.-based tutoring company Tutor.com, which had been acquired by Primavera, posed a threat to national security. He has proposed a bill that would prohibit them from contracting with the company. Capital Group is an investment company based in Hong Kong. Their argument is that this could give the Chinese government backdoor access to tutoring sessions and personal information of U.S. military personnel using the company's services.
This legislation requires that Tutor.com student data is stored in the United States, that we have voluntarily participated in a security review by the Federal Commission on Foreign Investment, and that we have worked with the U.S. government to provide additional levels of data security protections. There is no mention of creating one. US government. The bill also specifies how the Chinese government would access Tutor.com data and how it would actually be used to inform tutoring sessions for U.S. military personnel. is not specified.
Last summer, several Republican lawmakers criticized the movie “Barbie” for including a dashed line in a world map that briefly appeared in the background of one scene. They took this as a reference to China's “nine-dash line,” which Beijing uses to strengthen its territorial claims in the South China Sea. According to Congressman Jim Banks, this “puts national security at risk.” The map in the movie was decidedly fanciful, with only eight dashed lines, which bore no resemblance to the lines of China. Even the Philippine government, which has been embroiled in territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea for years, dismissed the controversy and approved the film's domestic release.
Of course, the United States should actively confront Chinese President Xi Jinping over his repression at home and aggression abroad. As a researcher of China's political system, I worry about how Mr. Xi has made his country even more authoritarian. The rise in human rights violations in China, particularly against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. About Beijing's crackdown on Hong Kong, threats against Taiwan, increasingly friendly relations with Russia, and support for the war in Ukraine. The United States must remain alert to legitimate concerns about China's well-documented activities, including espionage and cyberattacks.
But should our policymakers really focus on Tutor.com, Chinese garlic, or “Barbie”? Or the more serious threat posed by China's authoritarian regime, or Americans' daily lives? Should we focus on the many other issues that have a significant impact?
Perhaps the most alarming effect is that anxiety about China is creeping into discrimination against Chinese Americans, a new “yellow peril” theory. We already know that efforts to target Chinese espionage that began during the Trump administration have led to unwarranted surveillance of Chinese researchers and even Asian American government employees, resulting in the end of the program in 2022. I've seen what happened. We have also seen how xenophobia has posed a threat during the pandemic. and attacks against Asian Americans. There have also been numerous reports that law enforcement authorities are interrogating Chinese students and researchers traveling to and from China on the grounds that they may be spies for the Chinese state. Again, this treatment of being taken away for interrogation by police and government officials is what foreign scholars experience in China, where it is euphemistically called “being invited to tea.” I am.
Last year, Texas state lawmakers initially blocked Chinese (and Iranian, North Korean, and Russian) nationals and entities from purchasing land, homes, and other real estate, citing concerns about the security of the food supply. He proposed a bill aimed at doing so. Aside from the fact that the Chinese people are not the Chinese government, the actual amount of American farmland owned by Chinese companies is negligible, never exceeding 1 percent of the farmland in any American state as of 2021. . The bill ultimately failed, but only after a significant amount of legislation had been introduced. Backlash from the Chinese American community.
This China panic has also been stoked by both liberal and conservative American media, and may be influencing average people's perceptions of their fellow Chinese Americans. Fellow China researcher Michael Cerny and I recently surveyed more than 2,500 Americans on the question of whether U.S.-born Chinese Americans should be allowed to work in U.S. intelligence agencies. . About 27% said Chinese Americans should have less access to classified information than other U.S. citizens, and 14% said they should not be allowed access at all.
This is blatant racism and is not a majority opinion, but it reflects the language used by politicians and is why so many Americans want to blur the lines between the Chinese government and ethnic Chinese people. It is alarming that there are.
China is a formidable geopolitical rival. But there is no world in which Garlic, “Barbie,” or tutoring sites pose a significant threat to America's national security. Labeling them as such reveals a certain lack of seriousness in our policy discussions.
If the United States is to successfully compete with China, it will require sound and balanced policymaking that protects America's national security without compromising America's core values.
Take a deep breath.
Rory Truex (@rorytruex) He is an associate professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, where he teaches courses on Chinese politics and authoritarian governance.
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