The Chinese in America - Iris Chang [199]
In May 2001, David Wu, the first Chinese American ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, was stopped when he tried to enter the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. “Most strikingly I was asked a couple of times whether I am a U.S. citizen or not,” Wu later said. “This was both after I showed my congressional ID and after Ted Liu [Wu’s congressional aide] showed him his staff ID.”
In 2001, Elaine Chao, a Harvard Business School graduate who had served as chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission and assistant secretary of transportation, made history as the first Chinese American to accept a Cabinet position when President George W Bush named her secretary of labor. When her critics attacked her business ties with China, her husband, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saw “subtle racism,” “yellow fever,” and xenophobic attitudes in the media.
Time and again, the question is posed within the Chinese American community: How many hoops do we have to jump through to be considered “real” Americans?
These episodes of racism do not occur by accident, in a vacuum. Nor do they arise solely on the basis of physical differences. Throughout American history, and indeed the history of most societies, the ruling class has carefully exploited differences in race and ethnicity as a mechanism of control—as a convenient smokescreen to make their own control more palatable. Racism has often divided and diminished American labor—by thwarting the union of white and colored workers to help them win on issues that affect them all—and has enabled the government to expand its scope of authority during emergencies, such as economic depression, or war. At such times, entire ethnic groups can be vilified and sacrificed as scapegoats to rally other people behind a leader’s solution. Such was the fate of the Chinese in America on the eve of the exclusion era.
As this book neared completion, anti-Chinese sentiment rose again, in a resurgence of hatred reminiscent of the pre-exclusion days. This time, it derived its energy from popular fear of sweeping international forces: the globalization of the economy and the rise in power and prestige of the People’s Republic of China.
At the dawn of the third millennium, China emerged, both economically and militarily, as a global superpower. Chinese industrial and technological development rushed forward at such breathtaking speed that some economic experts anointed the twenty-first century as the “Chinese century.”67 In September 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization, signifying its full legitimacy in the international marketplace and resuscitating fears that American jobs would be lost to Chinese hordes willing to work for very little. At the same time, the decline of the former Soviet empire stoked American fears about China’s armed forces, which command the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world as well as the greatest military in Asia. Washington has wavered between depicting China as our newest tradingpartner and market and, with the demise of the Soviet bloc, as the successor enemy in the post-cold war era.68
A telling incident occurred in April 2001, when a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea, apparently flying too close to an American navy spy plane on a routine U.S. surveillance mission, caused the American pilot to take sudden evasive action, resulting in a midair collision. The Chinese pilot was killed and the Chinese government detained the twenty-four American crew members of the spy plane after they made an emergency landing on China’s Hainan Island. After eleven days of tense negotiations and a carefully worded apology from the United States, the PRC released the crew, but by that time the Chinese American community had suffered a fierce backlash from their fellow Americans. Patrick Oliphant, a Pulitzer Prize—winning cartoonist, published a shocking caricature of a Chinese man, complete with buck teeth and thick glasses, serving cat gizzards. The National Review complained that the Chinese