By Carolyn Bick
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Until recently, former Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch said the United States could disagree on government policy “without demonizing an entire people or civilization. That line has dangerously blurred.”
“Today, we are dismantling those channels with China, while calling it our chief competitor, if not enemy—closing doors to exchanges and treating practically every contact as suspect, that is not strategic, and it cannot make the U.S. stronger or safer,” Chang Bloch continued. “It makes us blind and insular. And we see the consequences here at home in rising anti-Asian hate, in the suspicions cast on Chinese American scientists and students who have done so much to make this country strong.”
Chang Bloch—the first U.S. ambassador of Asian descent, appointed by George H.W. Bush to be the ambassador to Nepal—was speaking on Oct. 16 of the current U.S. approach to China, in dialogue with former Washington Gov. Gary Locke and Jessica Chen Weiss, the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. The trio was tackling the worsening state of U.S.-China relations in a virtual discussion put on by APA Justice, the Committee of 100, and the U.S.-China Education Trust.
Both Chang Bloch and Locke said that, from their perspectives, such an approach not only hurts individuals, but also hurts global advancement potential in the realm of science, cultural exchange—and even the future of the planet.
“If China keeps doing great things to reduce carbon emissions, but America does nothing, then all the efforts of China will be for naught,” Locke said. And the same thing, if America significantly reduces its carbon emissions, but China does very little, then all of our sacrifices are for naught.”
The U.S. produces more greenhouse gas per person than any other country in the world, while China produces more in totality, Locke explained. Together, both countries are responsible for an overwhelming amount of carbon emissions, he said. And 100 years from now, the world will not care what either country contributed to the rest of the world, in terms of innovation, technology, and governance, if it has “tipped over the precipice of irreversible climate change.”
“The world and historians and the future population will just blame both China and the United States. … We need to work with each other to solve some of these pressing issues of the world,” Locke said. “When we close ourselves out, it makes advancement in all of these issues—whether it’s going to be finding cures for cancer, to innovation of products—much slower. … People throughout the world will be deprived of that.”
While security concerns are valid, Chang Bloch said, it’s also important to remember that “the line between legitimate security measures and racial profiling is equally real.” The difference between security measures and racial profiling is that security measures are based on evidence, specific, and focus on behavior. Racial profiling “assumes guilt based on what we look like and on our ancestry.”
Chang Bloch pointed specifically to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, and, most recently, the China Initiative, “which cast a huge wide net over Asian American scientists and ruined innocent lives, as well as careers.”
The federal government launched the China Initiative in 2018. A Department of Justice program under President Donald Trump, during his first term, the China Initiative was allegedly meant to combat Chinese espionage, and targeted hundreds of Chinese and Chinese American academics and scientists.
The initiative appeared to be racially motivated, particularly after it was revealed that federal agents knowingly falsely accused people of being spies. At least 250 targeted individuals lost their jobs, while others’ careers never recovered. The initiative also contributed to the overall rise in anti-Asian sentiments in 2019 and 2020.
While the DOJ shut down the program, the federal government has floated starting it up again. Last year, Stop AAPI Hate published a public letter asking Congress not to revive the program, citing its many harms.
Locke also touched on alien land laws, which excluded people of Asian ancestry from owning land. The Trump administration revived those laws this year.
One of the biggest issues, Chang Bloch said, was how the U.S. and China could compete without hate. Chen Weiss agreed, and noted that her colleague, Ho-Fung Hung, wrote in Getting China Right At Home that “[i]t is counterproductive to try to combat anti-Chinese racism while ignoring Beijing’s efforts to weaponize the Chinese diaspora—for influence operations, espionage, and transnational repression. A more collaborative and compassionate approach to national security is needed.”
Chen Weiss asked both Chang Bloch and Locke how the U.S. can work with various Chinese community organizations to monitor Beijing’s efforts to exploit Chinese Americans and help to show individuals and communities that they are needed and wanted here.
“I think our government must work with civil society, because civil society is much closer to the ground, to the people,” Chang Bloch said. “We have to begin by not defunding so much of what civil society contributes, not defunding universities, not defunding nonprofits. But I think, first, we must convince our government that we add value.”
“I don’t have any answers,” Locke admitted. “I’m very concerned about what’s happening in terms of the rule of law, and how the Justice Department is being politicized.”
Though repairing and maintaining a government-to-government relationship may be out of the question in the immediate future, Chang Bloch said that the way the U.S. and China can sustain meaningful relationships is through mutual relationships and cultural exchanges between the peoples of both countries.
Locke said it is important to continue to highlight the damage Trump’s tariffs on China—which translate into taxes that Americans then have to shoulder—are doing to the U.S. economy and individual households. Every tax a major corporation has to pay is passed onto the consumer in the price of the item. And because China does the same thing in response, the Chinese economy and individual households suffer, too.
The tariffs also mean job losses in both countries, because fewer and fewer goods are shipped between them.
Locke gave a real-world example: Until Trump imposed the tariffs, China had bought its soybeans from the U.S. But now, “They’re buying it from Brazil instead. And so a lot of the American farmers are on the verge of bankruptcy, and the list goes on and on. The fact is that no country makes everything that it needs.”
“If we expect others to buy our things, we’ve got to be willing to buy things from them as well. This world trading system—it has some flaws, it has some defects, it has some shortcomings. And those can be shored up and remedied with trade agreements and so forth,” Locke said. “But to cut off all trade between each other would be devastating for the people of both countries, and ultimately around the world.”
Locke said that one way to combat the extreme alienation that many Chinese and Chinese Americans are facing and may continue to face is by being visible in public spaces, like local and state legislatures, city halls, school boards, governorships, and Congress. He also said that it is important to form collaborations with civil rights groups outside the Asian and Asian American sphere.
“All of us concerned about civil rights and civil liberties need to support each other, because we can’t expect that the Asian American groups can do it on their own,” Locke said. “We need allies, and so we need to support their efforts in fighting discrimination and injustice if we want them to also help us in our times of need.”
Chang Bloch posed her answer as a question to those in the audience who were not Asian or Asian American: “How would you feel … if you are viewed with suspicion and hostility in a country you call home? How would you feel? Chinese and Asian Americans have that feeling all the time.”
“None of us … can escape that,” she continued. “Being seen as a potential threat because of one’s ethnicity is a deep violation of trust.”
She encouraged the Asians and Asian Americans listening in to “document our work, use our voice to speak up when discrimination occurs, and support organizations that stand up for our rights—yes, support them with money. … Speak up and stand together.”
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