US media follows orientalist tradition of not defining China as it actually is, but rather in its perceived relation to the West, so that China never fully exists on its own terms, but is instead held up as a foil to Western civilizational superiority 1/
This orientalist representation operates on two axes, the political & the cultural:
political: as a gov’t, China is imagined as an authoritarian regime, a human rights disaster, lying/deceitful, a political crisis to be solved thru implementation of West. liberal democracy 2/
Cultural: as a people, China is imagined as morally inferior, a “backwards” civilization, barbaric, filthy, diseased, so cruel that they will eat anything that moves 3/
Best thing about this NYT article is the way it gives “global backlash” an agency of its own, as if this backlash happened organically rather than being spearheaded by the world’s most belligerent superpower, lmao
In March Daily Beast obtained a WH cable instructing State Dept officials when speaking to media to focus on CN orchestrating a cover up. Soon after, we got pieces like these from Marc Thiessen of AEI/Shadi Hamid of Brookings Inst. This is how the levers of power work
Republicans also recently released a 57 pp memo instructing GOP candidates to aggressively attack CN, stressing 3 talking pts:
1. CN covered it up 2. Dems are “soft on CN” 3. Repubs will push for sanctions (This is why you see states announcing they plan to sue for reparations)
Attributing rise in hate crimes on Trump calling it the "China virus" is insufficient in 2 ways:
1. It's ahistorical--working class Chinese in US have long been associated w disease & pestilence, dating back to late 19th cent
2. It ignores the geopolitical moment we're in 1/
Mass immigration of Chinese workers to US in late 19th cent to build railroads resulted in extremely dense population of SF’s Chinatown & it was considered to be an incubator of infectious illnesses. Chinese ppl were seen to be more likely to carry smallpox and cholera 2/
Chinese immigrants were seen to be more likely to carry certain infectious illnesses, particularly smallpox and cholera. In fact, a smallpox epidemic was the one of the primary reasons used as justification for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. 3/
One point I’ve repeatedly made is that that the media often uses COVID-19 as a heavy handed metaphor for China’s (and now Iran’s) emerging political/economic influence.
This dovetailing of disease discourse and geopolitics can actually be traced back to the 1950’s... 1/
Though scientists first observed viruses in the 1930's, it wasn't until the 50's that they were able to graps how they functioned--unlike their germ or bacterial counterparts, viruses penetrate the cells of living organisms, taking over all functions to reproduce themselves 2/
Media often invoked metaphors of war and invasion were to discuss viral infections. Viruses "attacked," "devoured," and "destroyed" cells. Viral infections were often "battles" between human hosts and viral "invaders" 3/