China accuses US of ‘white supremacy’ ethos

The United States has been trying to “blur” discrimination against Asian Americans, a report by a Chinese NGO has claimed

Chinatown, East Broadway, New York City. © Getty Images / Guido Cozzi / Atlantide Phototravel

Anti-Asian sentiments are on the rise in the US and they are being covered up by the country’s authorities, China’s largest human rights NGO has claimed.

On Friday, the China Society for Human Rights Studies published a report entitled, ‘Increasing Racial Discrimination Against Asians Exposes Overall Racist Nature of U.S. Society’. 

Noting that while the problem of discrimination and violence against Asian Americans cannot be considered a new one, the authors of the report argue that the coronavirus outbreak, which supposedly started in China before turning into a global pandemic, “has exposed various racial discrimination problems existing in the society.”

According to the AAPI Hate, a national coalition that tracks and responds to racially motivated hate crimes towards Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, more than 9,000 anti-Asian incidents took place between March 2020 and June 2021, during the peak of the pandemic. 

However, the health crisis isn’t the only thing that should be blamed for the “sufferings” which the US allegedly caused to Asian Americans, the authors of the report claim.

“The racial discrimination against Asian Americans that has continued to the present time is probably a built-in and natural product of American colonialism, and it also reflects a mindset of the United States: bullying the weak,” the report said.

Some of the other causes of anti-Asian sentiments listed by the NGO are an “upsurge of xenophobia” and “white supremacy,” which, as the report claims, “is embodied in the racial structure and social atmosphere of the United States.”

The stereotypical representation of Asian Americans as “well-educated with high incomes” has prevented many of them from “enjoying favorable policies for US ethnic minorities,” the report said. Another factor contributing to negative sentiments towards Asian Americans is their long-standing antagonism with other ethnic minorities, reflecting, according to the NGO, “the complex racial relations and conflicts within the United States.” Finally, the researchers pointed out that “the tension between the United States and a foreign country frequently led to discrimination and racist attacks against the immigrants from that foreign country.”

Considering the strained relations with China, the report suggests that even if the racial discrimination against Asian Americans in the post-pandemic era subsides, “the racial attacks against Chinese Americans will continue to rise.”

“The United States has never compensated for or reflected on the sufferings it has caused to Asian Americans, and even tries its best to cover up or blur relevant facts. As such, the deep-rooted malice toward Asian Americans in U.S. society can never be eliminated,” the report stated.

The researchers justify this accusation by claiming that Asian Americans are portrayed in the US as “outsiders in racial conflicts; the mainstream society denies the history of racial discrimination against Asian Americans and refuses to admit that there are racist attacks against Asian Americans at present.”

On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian addressed the problem of racial discrimination in the US. During a regular press briefing, he was asked to comment on the State of Black America report, published on April 12 by the National Urban League. Lijian said the report “again exposes the persistent systemic racial discrimination in the US, which has seeped into all aspects of social life.” Underlining that “the sufferings of African Americans are not unique to them, but experienced by other ethnic minority groups as well,” the foreign ministry spokesman went on to urge the US government to take “a hard look at the country’s own human rights issues.”

These remarks came just a day after India made similar accusations against the US. Following a New York incident in which two Sikh men were assaulted with fists and a stick, Nikki Singh, a senior policy and advocacy manager at The Sikh Coalition, pointed to an increase in the number of hate crimes against members of the religious community in the US. Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said that his country was tracking human rights abuses in the US, including those targeting Americans of Indian origin.

Jaishankar’s statement came in response to comments by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken who said that Washington was “monitoring some recent concerning developments in India, including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police, and prison officials.”

On April 12, the US State Department published its own annual report on human rights around the world, in which it blamed both Beijing and New Delhi for “significant human rights issues.” China is accused by the State Department, among other things, “of arbitrary or unlawful killings by the government,” tortures, arbitrary detentions, and life-threatening prison conditions.