Thread by @BethanyAllenEbr

Strongly agree. It's difficult, from the outside, to distinguish genuine nationalist sentiment among Chinese students abroad, from Chn govt incentives to display nationalism.

Best approach: Be aware of these incentives AND that many Chinese students genuinely very nationalist.

https://twitter.com/Yaqiu/status/1396824869497720835

There's a risk here, though. We always try hard to distinguish between the CCP/Chinese govt and Chinese people, to avoid blaming innocent people for a bad govt.

But when those people strongly support that govt's bad policies and decisions--things get real complicated real quick

In some ways—if the goal is to prevent average Americans from thinking all Chinese people are scary, and IF we know that only simplistic messages will trickle down to average ppl—I'd almost rather that simple message be: Chinese people are victims and govt is bad.

In an ideal world, of course, there is room for nuance. And hopefully nuanced messages trickle down as well.

To draw an imperfect parallel with Islamophobia, the dire concern for years was to get ppl to stop believing all American Muslims are terrorist sympathizers.

Getting ppl to understand some Muslims may have complaints about western imperialism = much lower down on priority list.

The complexities & risks here become very apparent when some Chinese students proudly and angrily deny the Xinjiang genocide.

I personally try to avoid loudly proclaiming that some Chinese students genuinely support genocidal policies, even though some do.