US-China conflict risks fueling hate attacks against Asian Americans: Experts

Rights advocates warn that the growing conflict between the United States and China risks further fueling anti-Asian sentiments in the US and could lead to more hate crimes being committed against the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.

The nation is still reeling from last week’s mass shooting in Atlanta, Georgia, that left eight people dead, including six women of Asian descent.

The massacre has highlighted the shocking trend of hate crimes and violence against the Asian American community, which has gotten steadily worse with the COVID-19 pandemic since it was first detected in China.

While President Joe Biden has generally refrained from using his predecessor Donald Trump’s inflammatory language to describe the pandemic—terms like the “China virus” and “kung flu”—and has pressed Congress to address the issue, there are still fears that fresh tensions between the US and China could reinforce negative attitudes towards Asian Americans.

“Unfortunately, we know from history that geopolitical tensions with foreign countries often result in a backlash against our community back home. And this is particularly true for the Asian American community,” John C. Yang, president of the civil rights group Asian Americans Advancing Justice, told The Hill.

“So, on one hand, our geopolitical tensions with the Chinese government are real, and they should be,” he added. “But we need to be very careful not to let those tensions have this effect on our community back here.”

Tensions with China have continued to escalate under the Biden administration that appears to be pursuing the same aggressive China policy as the Trump administration, making allegations against Beijing’s purported “expansionist” intentions in East and Southeast Asia and siding with China’s rivals in territorial disputes.

At his first news conference Thursday since taking office, Biden vowed to prevent China from overtaking the US to become the world’s most powerful country.

“I see stiff competition with China,” the president said. “They have an overall goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world and the most powerful country in the world. That’s not going to happen on my watch, because United States is going to continue to grow and expand.”

Biden has even come under criticism for adopting a harsher rhetoric against China than Trump did.

Nearly a year ago, leaders of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) censured the Biden campaign for running a digital ad that portrayed Trump as soft on China, declaring that Trump “rolled over for the Chinese” and “let in 40,000 travelers from China” at the start of the pandemic.

A Gallup poll this month showed that 45 percent of Americans now view China as the nation’s greatest enemy, up from 22 percent just a year ago.

Incidents of hate crimes against Asian Americans surged between 2019 and 2020, a spike that researchers have attributed to Trump’s scapegoating of China for the COVID-19 pandemic.  

“Politics and the statements of political leaders, particularly the president, do have an impact, as well as catalytic or ongoing events,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

Research by Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit organization that tracks incidents of hate and discrimination against Asian Americans, has recorded nearly 3,800 cases of attacks against the community since last year, including verbal and physical assaults, discrimination and civil rights abuses.

Women made up a far higher share of the cases, at 68 percent, compared to men, who made up 29 percent of respondents.

The Asian American community has long faced a rise in hate attacks after economic uncertainty, political turmoil and war.

“Anti-Asian sentiment has been part of the really terrible racist history” of America, said Democratic Rep. Mark Takano of California, whose Japanese American parents and grandparents were incarcerated during World War II.

“It’s no wonder so many Asian Americans often feel that they are not fully American, that they are outsiders, that people perpetually think of them as foreigners, because it was made so in the law,” the congressman noted. 

Biden has tried to calm battered nerves in the wake of the Atlanta carnage. The president paid a visit to the region and met with leaders of the AAPI community.

“Too many Asian Americans have been walking up and down the streets and worrying … They’ve been attacked, blamed, scapegoated and harassed. They’ve been verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, killed,” Biden said.

“Hate can have no safe harbor in America. It must stop. And it’s on all of us — all of us, together — to make it stop,” he added.

However, analysts believe that anti-Asian violence and discrimination will likely continue to rise as relations between Washington and Beijing remain at their most fraught point in decades.

The Biden administration has imposed sanctions against Beijing over developments in the self-ruled Chinese island of Taiwan and rallied US allies to blacklist Chinese officials and entities for alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang.

Beijing has dismissed these criticisms as interference in China’s domestic affairs and imposed retaliatory sanctions against US officials.

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