Western media has its blindspots. As their coverage of anti-Asian racism ramps up in the wake of a horrific attack targeting Asian spas in Georgia last March, the media has scrambled for reasons to explain this seemingly sudden rise in violence. A Gallup-conducted poll has found that in the past year, the amount of Americans who consider China to be the primary enemy of the United States has doubled from 22% in 2020 to 45% in 2021. This is paired with substantial drops in previous boogeymen such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, signaling a sudden shift in the public’s primary figure of fear. I found the liberal news media has largely laid blame on the obvious racist rhetoric that arose quickly in the wake of the COVID-19 virus perpetuated by the reactionary right-wing media and the former President Trump. However, very rarely, if at all, have I noticed that news media outlets turn their blame inwards and examine how their implicit bias and harmful rhetoric used in their coverage of China contributes to this rise in anti-Asian racism. In short, the rise in anti-Asian sentiment is a bipartisan issue.
From the earliest days of the virus’s spread, China was portrayed by Western media as simultaneously incompetent, ruthlessly authoritative and deceptive. Despite China’s response to the virus being swift and inarguably effective in containing the spread and protecting Chinese citizens as well as the world at large, Western media on both sides of the aisle quickly denounced the lockdown as a human rights violation, aggressive and authoritarian. The implication given here was that, despite the effectiveness of China’s response, they are essentially holding their obedient or fearful citizens prisoner, and this gross abuse of power could translate in ways that affect the West. In essence, the American media helped reinforce the concept of the individual over the collective, while othering the Chinese people as a submissive hive mind in dichotomy with the free-thinking American.
As the virus crept its ways onto American soil, I began to notice a more subtle, if not casual, form of racism seep into America’s news reporting. The first sign of the mask slipping was a New York Times report of the confirmed cases of the virus in Manhattan. However, the accompanying picture was that of Asians in Queens, despite the fact that the first confirmed case was not an Asian person. This photo was unceremoniously changed without any accompanying explanation or responsibility taken for associating the virus with Asian-ness. Responsibility, however, was instead shoveled onto the backs of the Chinese government, and by association, the Chinese people, who were accused of withholding information or deliberately misleading the rest of the world. This helped shift the narrative from the United States’ sluggish and unprepared response to the virus, despite ample time for preparation, to China’s deceptive nature being the underlying cause of that failed response. It is here that I found the notion being repeated was that China would have to own up to these perceived misdirections, and when distilled, the bottom line seemed to be that “China will pay for what they’ve done” and the inherent violence that can imply.
However, as much as recent articles would like to attribute the rise in violence solely to the pandemic and its fallout, much of the fearmongering involving China predates the virus. With article titles such as “Can American Values Survive in a Chinese World?” (notice the original title: “China Wants to Dominate World, Will U.S. Values Survive?”), Western media has consistently painted China’s mobility in opposition to the United States’ very identity and morals, and pairs them with language that implies an attack. Typically, these types of articles are paired with sinister imagery of China, faceless soldiers and the globe, reminiscent of a haphazard combination of Yellow Peril and Red Scare propaganda of years past.
These articles do not exist in a vacuum, and the United States government itself has played into fears of China not just becoming the top economic superpower, but that their success stands to threaten the American way of life. President Biden himself has stated that he would not allow China to overtake the United States economically. What results from this sort of language and attitude is a sort of cold war, where the media’s portrayal of China should not be seen as purely a critique of China, but also to uphold a sense of American supremacy and exceptionalism.
So, what is to be done about this?
It is hard for me to suggest a solution that doesn’t result in heavily distrusting the motivation of Western media portrayals of China, but at the very least, the public should be skeptical of American intentions when covering China, as past events such as media behavior post 9/11 should warn us to not always take the media’s word as law when it comes to American interest. This also does not mean that I am saying China cannot be criticized, or that their government is to be trusted, but that too much of American news coverage suggests all Chinese are not to be trusted by a transitive property, which veers into racism and stereotypes. A more incremental suggestion would be that Western media needs a heavy shakeup in diversity, from journalists to a full scale structural shift. Polls have found that American journalists are far more distrustful of China than even the American public. This could say a number of things: that journalists’ coverage of China is even further skewed toward criticism, that journalists in general do not reflect the makeup of the country and that predominantly white journalists control a substantial amount of the information being dealt out about China.
I come from a mixed Filipino family, and I often fear for some of the members of my family who do not pass as a white person — they don’t cross that perceived threshold. But most of all, I fear that this rhetoric regarding China will not ease when the media chooses the most obvious causes of Anti-Asian racism and washes their hands of their contribution. In fact, without change, we may see this intensify and eventually they will run out of excuses aside from the structural issues. I hope then, they look at themselves.
Daniel Debuque is a fifth-year English major with a minor in Film Criticism. DD717545@wcupa.edu