Are “anti-CCP” politics a new form of Orientalism?

Political discourse continues to “otherize” the Chinese people, which undermines effective policymaking. It’s also bigotry.

In my last post, I made a case that the MAGA movement was on track to align with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), citing commonalities of preference for strongman rule and social and cultural conservatism. But I also gave a reason why it might not. This piece explores that reason and the dark element it reveals, based on American history and politics.

When I use the term ‘anti-CCP politics’ I am referring to those voices, from politicians and beyond, who habitually substitute “CCP” for “China” and deploy “CCP” in their political rhetoric. This can refer to U.S. foreign or domestic policy, or be used as a synonym for something they don’t like.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with being “anti-CCP.” The Party runs a government that is the worst abuser of human rights in the world. It surveils its citizens and denies them the ability to question or seek to change their government. I have many friends who themselves, or their family and friends, have suffered greatly under repressive CCP policies. I don’t like them and they don’t like me.

Let’s start with a series of questions:

When politicians talk about authoritarian behavior, why do cite China disproportionately more than other countries?

China rightly gets a lot of attention. The U.S. and China are big powers competing in a number of realms: economic, security, influence, prestige. When policymakers bring up China, they tend to ground their arguments in opposition to its authoritarian governance and repressive behavior. This inserts a values-based element to the rhetoric and adds a dimension of ideological competition to the debate.

China is the biggest authoritarian state in the world, but it is not the only one. It is not the only country that represses its people, commits human rights abuses, including crimes against humanity and genocide. The U.S. calls some of these allies and even gives one billions in military aid to commit some of the same violations it criticizes China for. 

(Authoritarianism manifests across and within countries, including our own, and is not limited or confined to select countries. I think U.S. policies in defense of democracy and human rights would be better if they reflected this reality, as I argue though a concept I call International Relations Heuristic Bias.)

And yet when policymakers debate malign behavior, they seem to singularly focus on China. As an example, there’s a bill in Congress to re-establish the “China Initiative” (Renamed the “CCP Initiative”), ostensibly designed to stop Chinese spying on U.S. academic and research institutions. The Department of Justice already covers China in its counter-espionage activities. What is the purpose of name-checking China, again? The China Initiative was shut down following disclosures that it led to discrimination against Asian Americans. Why are they trying to revive that?

Is authoritarian or malign behavior somehow different or worse it is committed by Chinese people?

Why do so many politicians substitute CCP for China, and why only for China?

There is only one country in the world where U.S. policymakers refer to it by the ruling party rather than by the county’s name: China.

I once asked a colleague why. His answer: “because it accurately describes who wields power.” I asked why he did not do the same for other one-party states: “Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party” for Syria, “United Russia” for Russia or “Rwandan Patriotic Front” for Rwanda. He didn’t have an answer.

A common explanation is that “CCP” distinguishes the rulers from the people. A noble goal. But politicians don’t afford this consideration to the people of Iran or Russia or North Korea. Why only China?

Maybe this is a communist state thing? Nope. Since 2019, there have been zero bills that refer to about North Korea, Vietnam or Laos by the name of its ruling communist party. Cuba just once.

So why does China get this exclusive treatment? One obvious answer is domestic politics: it offers a pathway for politicians to try to link their opponents to “communism,” as Trump is doing with Harris now. But that raises the question of why politicians think that association with communist China is a political opportunity. Not communist Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea. Just China. Why?

Why is MAGA drawn to the strongman rule and social and cultural conservatism of Russia and Hungary but not (yet) to that of China?

As discussed in my previous post, many indicators suggest a coming MAGA-CCP convergence: Trump’s praise of Xi, MAGA affinity for strongmen, common social and political conservatism, preference for Party-dominated governance. 

This hasn’t happened yet. And it does not happen, why? These commonalities brought MAGA into alignment with rulers in Russia and Hungary. Is there something particular to China that MAGA sees differently?

Orientalism

“Orientalism” is a broad term that describes the lens through which “Western” (European and North American) people see “Eastern” (Middle East to East Asia) societies and cultures. The “Orient” is viewed as exotic and esoteric. This can take on both appealing and threatening auras. Edward Said's eponymous book analyzed Orientalism as manifestation of a patronizing Western attitude toward “Oriental” people, whose societies were something less developed, less rational, less capable than Western ones.  Essentially, Orientalism “otherizes” people of the East, subjecting them to stereotypes and caricatures.  

Does the concept of Orientalism provide a way to answer these questions?  Does it help us understand why politicians make China the near-exclusive selling point for broad policy approaches? Or why policies are targeted at the PRC but not at other countries that engage in the same behavior?

History provides a clue. Chinese people were the first national group ever explicitly banned from immigrating to the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act was in place for 70 years, creating a substrate in American culture of “otherizing” people of Chinese descent.

This bias found new life in the 1950s. The CCP’s takeover of China, the Korean War and the McCarthy Red Scare energized perceptions of Chinese people as alien and dangerous, exemplified by the expulsion of rocket scientist Qian Xuesen in 1955. The dehumanizing nature of Communism served to accentuate a sense that Chinese people were something less than autonomous individuals. It’s probably not a coincidence that the allegorical communists in Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959) were hive-mind insects.

Then anti-Chinese prejudice re-emerged from under a rock in 2020, when Trump and his MAGA friends described the coronavirus as “China virus” and Kungflu.”

And now MAGA has put it in writing: Project 2025 (p. 180) declares that the Chinese people are not like us. It claims that the people of China, due to their culture and history, are unable to create a “normative nation.” That’s race essentialism.

Prejudice undermines an effective U.S. China policy

If MAGA ends up not aligning with CCP-run China, despite all the similar authoritarian traits they admire in other countries, I think the reason would be this: they fundamentally do not see the people of China as people like themselves. MAGA adherents are part of a long tradition in American politics that “otherizes” the Chinese people, which treats them as fundamentally different, if not inferior. 

Again, is it legitimate to oppose the CCP. And to call out violations and aggression by the Chinese government. But we must recognize that those who foreground “anti-CCP” rhetoric in their political agenda are both drawing on and perpetuating dehumanizing attitudes about the people of China, even if they don’t realize it, and regardless of whether that is their intent.

I write this because an effective U.S. policy to compete with the PRC on economics and security, to counter its bad behavior, and to encourage it to respect the basic rights of its citizens, will be undermined if U.S. policymakers treat the people of China as something different than themselves, deserving of the same dignity, rights and aspirations. Politicians can use “CCP” to emphasize that their differences are with the rulers not the people, but if their underlying policies and rhetoric dehumanize the people of China, then their explanation is meaningless. We must do better.

This is second in a series on the MAGA effect on China policy. Part 1, The coming MAGA-CCP alignment, looked at indicators suggesting the MAGA movement was on track to align with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).