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US-China relations
OpinionComment
Stephen Roach
Stephen Roach

Opinion | Sinophobia in the US is off the rails and blocking paths to progress

  • Myths and exaggerated claims about China are pervasive in American political discourse, with growing anxieties about technology and trade
  • Instead of focusing on self-reflection, politicians adopt an aggressive stance on China out of expediency but risk inciting accidental conflict

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Illustration: Craig Stephens
Stephen Roach
The current wave of anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States has been building for years. It started when US policymakers raised national security concerns about Huawei. China’s national technology champion, the market leader in developing new 5G telecommunications equipment, was accused of deploying digital back doors that could enable Chinese espionage and cyberattacks.
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But Huawei was just the start. The US has since spiralled into a full-blown outbreak of Sinophobia – a strong word that I don’t use lightly. The Oxford English Dictionary defines phobia as an “extreme or irrational fear or dread aroused by a particular object or circumstance”.

Indeed, China threats now seem to be popping up everywhere. The US government has imposed export controls to cut off China’s access to advanced semiconductors – part of its concerted effort to stymie the country’s artificial intelligence ambitions. The Department of Justice has just indicted a state-sponsored Chinese hacking group for allegedly taking aim at critical American infrastructure. Much has also been made of the purported risks of Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), construction and dock-loading cranes, and now TikTok.
Nor are the fears confined to technology. The US government misdiagnosed a multilateral problem – a trade deficit with more than 100 countries – as a bilateral problem and punished China with tariffs. Others have warned that Washington’s exaggerated claims of the Chinese military threat have, at times, bordered on hysteria as tensions mount in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.

Of course, this is only half the story. China is equally guilty of its own strain of “Ameri-phobia” – demonising the US for its accusations of Chinese economic espionage, unfair trading practices and human rights violations. Both phobias are related to the profusion of false narratives that I address in my most recent book, Accidental Conflict.

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Notwithstanding this tit-for-tat blame game, my point now is different: there is good reason to worry about an increasingly virulent strain of this phobia spinning out of control in the US.

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