Modern Sinophobia in Canada: The Yellow Peril Meets The Red Menace
Photo Credit: (Global News / Google Images)
Written by: William Ging Wee Dere
Ng Weng Hoong, the Vancouver Straight’s resident commentator on things related to China, wrote his latest article on Sinophobia and its effect on Chinese Canadians. He deftly combines the fears of both the ‘Yellow Peril’ and the ‘Red Menace’ in one session.
Ng correctly points out “Sinophobic sentiments are at their highest levels in decades, fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic and years of Chinese-scapegoating for the (B.C.) province’s housing, money-laundering, and opioids problems.” Then he diverts by saying, “China’s president, Xi Jinping, has worsened anti-Chinese sentiments around the world as his government has antagonized Canada, the United States, …” As if, it is Beijing’s fault that there is racism towards Asians in the Western world, which, actually, is not a too far-fetched assumption with the current fear and loathing of China.
After months of intense anti-China rhetoric by Western countries led by the US and articulated by their mouthpiece, the Western mainstream media, the average citizen is no match for this onslaught and can easily succumb to these sentiments.
The Guardian (Oct 7, 2020) headlined an article, “Negative views of China soar in western countries, poll finds” . but it does not mention an independent poll by Edelman Trust Barometer in 2020 found that 82% of people in China expressed support for their government, whereas only 47% of Americans trusted their government. According to Edelman, “Countries like the UK, France and Japan were also listed among the least-trusted countries.”
Another British tabloid, the Express (Oct 10, 2020), invokes fear with the headline, “China plans to rule the world.” . Sinophobia and the demonization of China has reached fever-pitch, resulting in negative consequences with Anti-Asian racism in Canada and the Western world.
Canada and particularly, B.C.’s approach to Chinese immigrants living here has historically been tied to the West’s colonial and imperialist attitude towards China.
First, the Yellow Peril.
European colonialism and later imperialism developed the ideology of white supremacy to justify the genocide of the indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans in America and elsewhere. Racism towards Chinese and Asian peoples took the form of the Yellow Peril with the image of the Yellow Hordes invading our shores and carrying away our women. It is no accident that the first wave of Chinese immigration to Canada was in the 1850’s. The British drug lords waged two wars on China in order to sell its opium there. The Opium Wars (1839-42, 1856-60) won by the British resulted in the first of the unequal treaties imposed on a weak and defenceless China by the West. Many impoverished Chinese from the villages of Southern China migrated to Gold Mountain (North America) to eke out a living for themselves and their families. China was called the “sick man of Asia.”
Yellow Peril in Canada resulted in 62 years of systemic state-sponsored racism in the form of the Head Tax (1885–1923) and the Chinese Exclusion Act (1923-1947). The fate of the Chinese in Canada and in other areas inhabited by the diaspora is inexorably linked to the adopted host countries stance toward China. Chinese Canadians after WW2 enjoyed a few decades of peaceful coexistence with the dominant society, as Canada maintained a benign view of its citizens that immigrated from China. After all, China was an ally in the war against German fascism and Japanese militarism. Once it got over the Red Scare of the Communist Revolution in China, Canada’s diplomatic relations with China resulted in mutual benefit.
October 13 is the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Canada and China. Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was one of the first Western leaders to recognize the People’s Republic of China in 1970. Canada’s relations with China started long before 1970 with Canadian missionary, James Endicott and diplomat Chester Ronning, among others who worked to have the Canadian government normalize relations with the People’s Republic of China. This diplomatic relationship of peaceful coexistence lasted until the turn of the 21st century. China is Canada’s second largest trading partner after the US. Trade with China increased from $11B twenty years ago to $75B in 2019.
During this period of coexistence for mutual benefit, Canada helped China to develop its economy, technology base and trade relations, all in the hope of making a profit and with the foreign policy goal of changing internal Chinese society to be more respectable to Western attitudes. Canada, along with other Western countries wanted a Western-style society through economic and diplomatic pressures on China for a regime change. However, China has its own social system and its own independent developmental plan. China came through the Western economic meltdown of 2008 relatively unscathed, with year-after-year of double-digit growth, while the West is still recovering from that capitalist economic crisis. The Western world, especially the leader of that world order, the United States became alarmed and the doctrine of containment of China and treating China as an adversary took hold and dictated Canada’s foreign policy.
Now for the Red Menace as we veer into modern day Sinophobia.
The Chinese Canadian community like any other ethnic community reflects the larger Canadian society, with its class and political divisions. Fifty years ago, the Kuomintang (Guomindang) was still a going concern in Canada as it tried to prevent Canada’s recognition of People’s China and to maintain the hoax that Taiwan represented the Chinese people internationally.
The Vancouver Chinese Cultural Centre reflected the tension between the various factions in the community as they vie for leadership of the CCC in the 1980’s. That was natural as not one entity in Chinatown can speak for the whole community, as the larger society may naively desire. The left/right divisions still exist in the community. Only today those divisions are exacerbated by the geopolitics being played out by the US State Department in blatant anti-communist hysteria, reminiscent of the red scare of the 1950’s cold war against the Soviet Union.
The China bashing and anti-China sentiments extends into the Chinese Canadian community. Much of which plays upon the residual anti-communist politics of the Kuomintang era (1950 – 1970) to the British colonial attitudes of Hong Kong immigrants who fled the return of the colony back to China (pre and post 1997).
As Ng points out, the common narrative feeds the language borrowed from the anti-Soviet cold war period, such as “One of the most disturbing narratives to emerge from the pandemic is that Beijing controls the diaspora in Canada and other countries.” and then he editorializes “Xi is consciously developing and exporting a form of Sinofascism that is incompatible with a diverse, multicultural society like Canada.” Ng draws the conclusion that, “In recent years, the image of the Chinese in Canadian society has deteriorated from outsider to threat, and now, potential enemy.” This kind of language makes it difficult for the community to come together to fight the racism that we all face.
Here are the false points of attack made by the Western governments and media:
China’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Suppression of the colonial democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Genocide of the Tibetan people.
Cultural genocide of Mongolian minority.
China’s warlike stance towards Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
China’s theft of intellectual property and pilfering of foreign technology, this is the narrative that China is not capable of developing its own industries. And last but not least,
Totalitarian, authoritarian, and dictatorial Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party are suppressing and oppressing the Chinese people who have no human rights nor freedoms.
Each of the above points would require a separate analysis, which I will present in due time. These arguments present the Western foreign offices, security networks, and the US State Department plenty of talking points for the Cold War against China and to instill fear among their population of the Chinese Red Menace and Yellow Peril. The Western left takes glee in using these issues to attack China and to show how superior Western socialists are compared to the CCP.
Pierre Trudeau’s son Justin does not have the gravitas as his old man in navigating the complexities of a modern world where that world order is in a state of transition from unilateral domination to a multilateral world of cooperation. How Canada develops its foreign relations with China will influence how it deals with the rest of the world.
Those in the Chinese Canadian community need to unite, as in the past, against the current danger of anti-Asian racism. No matter what our position is towards the Beijing government, the anti-racist struggle is on Canadian soil. Don’t let the anti-communists and China-bashers divert from the principle struggle at hand.
William Ging Wee Dere is the author of the award-winning “Being Chinese in Canada, The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging.” (Douglas & McIntyre, 2019). He was a political organizer and a leading activist in the 2-decade movement for redress of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act.
More Articles
