American Political Discourse on China

Michelle Murray Yang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315442587
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Rhetoric
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Despite the U.S. and China's shared economic and political interests, distrust between the nations persists. How does the United States rhetorically navigate its relationship with China in the midst of continued distrust? This book pursues this question by rhetorically analyzing U.S. news and political discourse concerning the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the 2010 U.S. midterm elections, the 2012 U.S. presidential election, and the 2014-2015 Chinese cyber espionage controversy. It finds that memory frames of China as the yellow peril and the red menace have combined to construct China as a threatening red peril. Red peril characterizations revive and revise yellow peril tropes of China as a moral, political, economic and military threat by imbuing them with anti-communist ideology. Tracing the origins, functions, and implications of the red peril, this study illustrates how historical representations of the Chinese threat continue to limit understanding of U.S.-Sino relations by keeping the nations' relationship mired in the past.

1 From Yellow to Red

The Emergence of the Red Peril in U.S. Political and Media Discourse

U.S. senators Charles Schumer (D., N.Y), Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.), and Rob Portman (R., Ohio) were incensed. They feared that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, would enable China to threaten U.S. power and economic interests. Schumer declared, “We need to do more against China.”¹ Stabenow and Portman demanded that provisions targeting currency manipulation by countries like China be added to legislation regarding the TPP agreement.² The TPP is a trade agreement among twelve nations, including the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Singapore, Malaysia, Peru, Japan, Mexico, and Vietnam. While the TPP seeks to bolster the nations’ economic strength and cut tariffs, it also aims to counter China’s influence and economic might.³ Although it is not unusual for international trade agreements to be contentious, the senators’ targeting of China was surprising given it was not a member of the TPP. Additionally, evidence suggests that the extent of Chinese currency manipulation has been exaggerated and that it has significantly decreased.⁴ As Kevin Williamson, a correspondent for the conservative publication the National Review, pointed out, “There is scant evidence that currency manipulation in Beijing is a significant factor in any development in the American economy.”⁵

Why did the senators target China? Williamson connected the senators’ concerns to historical suspicion of Asian peoples as the yellow peril. He explained how “rhetoric from the age of ‘Yellow Peril’ panic was, at its root, not radically different from what one hears from Democrats today.”⁶ “The problem with Asians, this school of thought goes, is that there’s just so damned many of them,” writes Williams, “and they’re so poor and accustomed to low standards of living that no white man could be expected to compete.”⁷

Discourse surrounding the TPP illustrates how yellow peril and red menace memory frames have continually been a prominent feature of U.S. media and political discourse concerning China and U.S.-Sino relations. Yellow peril portrayals depict Asian people, states, and nations as threats to Western civilization.⁸ Four tropes dominated representations of China and the Chinese people as the yellow peril in nineteenth- and twentieth-century political and popular discourse. Chinese immigrants and the Chinese empire were repeatedly depicted as threats to U.S. moral, economic, political, and military institutions. These tropes have been repeatedly revised in accordance with the United States’ evolving military, political, and economic needs. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, yellow peril tropes were infused with anti-communist sentiment and fears of the red menace to portray China as a distinctly red peril.

This chapter examines the origins and evolution of yellow peril and red menace frames to gain insight into their historical significance and discern how these tropes continue to influence contemporary U.S. public discourse. I analyze several key historical texts that represent significant moments in U.S.-Sino relations to trace how these tropes have evolved in conjunction with the changing nature of U.S.-Sino relations. In the pages that follow, I temporally and culturally situate these texts by putting them into conversation with political and popular discourse from their respective time periods. This chapter will begin by examining yellow peril tropes in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century U.S. political and media discourse.

The Chinese Yellow Peril in Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century U.S. Political and Media Discourse

Mark Ellison was deeply troubled. He had recently read Max Kohler’s article criticizing the Chinese Exclusion Act. Kohler, former assistant to the U.S. district attorney in New York City, chronicled the struggles and unfair restrictions faced by Chinese immigrants in an article published by the New York Times.⁹ In response, Ellison wrote a letter to the editor in which he argued that limits on Chinese immigration were desperately needed. Deriding Chinese immigrants as immoral, he claimed “deception” was their “main characteristic.” Arguing that the Chinese were fundamentally different from white Europeans, Ellison asserted, “Their religion, their thought, and their mode of life are entirely different from those of the civilized world.” He warned if Chinese immigration was unchecked, “the United States Government would be a Government of the Chinese, for the Chinese, and by the Chinese.”¹⁰

Ellison’s account is representative of portrayals of the Chinese as the yellow peril in U.S. public discourse during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yellow peril discourse emerged in the United States during a time of great social and economic crises. By the early 1850s, the allure of gold that had drawn tens of thousands to California, including thousands of Chinese immigrants, dimmed as surface gold virtually disappeared.¹¹ In tatters after the Civil War, the Southern economy struggled to regain its footing and establish wages as freed slaves entered the workforce and attempted to negotiate labor contracts with white landowners with the help of the Freedmen’s Bureau.¹² Conflicts involving Native Americans, Western settlers, and the U.S. army continued to deplete resources, disrupt supply lines, and displace workers in post-Civil War America.¹³ Further augmenting economic and social tensions, European immigrants flocked to the Eastern United States, while Asian immigrants arrived in the West. As white laborers struggled to compete against immigrants, and U.S. political leaders struggled with labor uprisings and widening economic depression, immigrants were increasingly faulted for U.S. economic ills.

As the fervor of the Gold Rush dissipated, approximately 70,000 Chinese remained in California, many of whom would serve as labor for the construction of the transcontinental railroad.¹⁴ After the completion of the transcontinental railroad, many Chinese immigrants moved to urban cities, becoming a source of cheap labor for Californian capitalists foraying into manufacturing industries.¹⁵ Others ventured to rural California and became agricultural workers. In the 1870s, planters in Mississippi and Louisiana began bringing Chinese workers to the South both as a form of punishment for black laborers and as a model of the ideal laborer for them to emulate.¹⁶ Chinese workers’ presence was not limited to the West and South; they also gained a foothold in the North during the 1870s as Northern industrialists imported them to counter striking white workers.¹⁷ Willing to work longer hours for lower wages, the Chinese were viewed as a threat to white laborers who feared that the Chinese would eventually usurp the system.¹⁸ In the late nineteenth century, tensions between white laborers and immigrants flared, and violent altercations erupted in the West. Chinese workers were stoned, beaten, and, in some cases, killed. Labor riots occurred in areas including Denver, Tacoma, Seattle, many parts of California, and Rock Springs, Wyoming.¹⁹ Labor groups such as the Order of the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor formed coalitions calling for the barring of Chinese immigration to the United States, which would eventually lead to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

Signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur, the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited Chinese workers from entering the United States and prevented those already here from becoming citizens. With the signing of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the Chinese became the first nationality to be banned from immigrating to the United States.²⁰ While non-laborers were technically not excluded, this legislation placed difficult restrictions on them such as requiring the Chinese government to certify their immigration to the United States and proving that they would not be employed in the mining industry. These regulations effectively barred Chinese immigration for ten years. The 1882 act also made life more challenging for Chinese immigrants already residing within the United States. Those who left the country were now required to have certification in order to gain reentry. The 1892 Geary Act extended this legislation for ten years, and the Chinese Exclusion Act was renewed indefinitely in 1902. In addition to the restrictions put in place by previous legislation, the 1902 renewal required Chinese immigrants in the United States to register and gain a certificate proving their legal residence. Those who failed to do so risked deportation. Nativists would later found the Asian Exclusion League in 1905 to oust Asians from the United States and end immigration from Asia.²¹ Anti-Chinese immigration legislation was repealed in 1943. However, Chinese immigration was limited to a little over one hundred immigrants per year.²² It was not until 1965 that U.S. leaders allowed large numbers of Chinese immigrants into the country.

Characterizations of the Chinese people as a threat to U.S. moral, economic, military, and political institutions can be traced back to anti-immigration discourse during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1902 pamphlet “Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusion,” the American Federation Labor advocated for a second renewal of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Incorporating a variety of evidence such as excerpts from government reports, statistics, and testimony, the organization claimed its account was untainted “by a scintilla of prejudice of any kind.” Throughout the pamphlet, the Federation characterized Chinese immigrants as threats to U.S. moral, economic, and political institutions to support its argument that restrictions on Chinese immigration should be renewed.²³ The American Federation of Labor’s pamphlet demonstrates how fears of the Chinese remained prescient within U.S. political discourse even after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Geary Act of 1892.

Chinese Immigrants as Threatening U.S. Moral and Military Institutions

The Federation claimed Chinese immigration constituted an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Enduring Memories of the Yellow Peril and the Red Menace: Portrayals of China in U.S. Public Discourse
• 1 From Yellow to Red: The Emergence of the Red Peril in U.S. Political and Media Discourse
• 2 The Red Peril as Political Threat: Competing Ideological Systems in U.S. Media Coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics
• 3 The Red Peril as an Economic Threat in Political Ads during the 2010 U.S. Midterm Elections
• 4 Containing the Economic Threat Posed by the Red Peril: Discourse from the 2012 U.S. Presidential Campaign
• 5 The Red Peril as a New Military Threat: Dueling Portrayals of Cyber Espionage
• Conclusion: The Red Peril Endures
• Bibliography
• Index