Even as his government was making red-carpet plans to host US President Barack Obama this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) praised a young blogger whose writing is best known for its anti-US vitriol.
In one widely circulated essay published by state news outlets, titled Nine Knockout Blows in America’s Cold War Against China, the blogger, Zhou Xiaoping, said that US culture was “eroding the moral foundation and self-confidence of the Chinese people.” He compared unfavorable US news coverage of China to Adolf Hitler’s treatment of the Jews.
In another essay, he said the West had “slaughtered and robbed” China and other civilizations since the 17th century and was now “brainwashing” it.
Xi, at a forum last month aimed at tightening political control of the arts, said the blogger exhibited “positive energy.”
His embrace of Zhou, who has been hailed by propaganda officials, but widely mocked by academics, is just the latest sign of rising anti-Western sentiment, bordering on xenophobia, that has emanated from the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and sent a chill through Chinese civil society and academia.
Using ideological language reminiscent of the Cold War, Chinese officials have voiced conspiracy theories with relish, accusing foreigners, their companies, government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) of plotting to weaken or overthrow the party. Chinese institutions with ties to Western entities, no matter how benign, have also come under attack.
Meanwhile, state-run papers have taken to blaming “hostile foreign forces” for any major disturbance, whether it is ethnic violence in western China or student-led pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong.
The vilification of foreigners as enemies of China has been a staple of CCP propaganda since before the party’s rise to power, and analysts say the leadership tends to ramp up such rhetoric when it feels under pressure at home.
“Historically, during every period with many deep conflicts within the country, there has been a surge of antiforeign sentiments from the party,” historian Zhang Lifan (章立凡) said, pointing to Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) disastrous Cultural Revolution as an example.
At the moment, he said, “the political establishment needs the public to turn their rage toward foreign countries” because anger over the widening gap between rich and poor in China has reached “crisis levels.”
However, unlike earlier campaigns targeting the West, the current wave of nationalism comes as China is ascendant.
Xi presides over a country that is on the verge of overtaking the US as the world’s largest economy and that enjoys influence around the world, especially in Asia, where it has sought to expand its territorial footprint.
In speeches, Xi has openly called on other nations to push back against the US on specific issues. In July, for example, he told Brazil’s National Congress that developing nations must “challenge US hegemony on the Internet.”
Two months earlier, Xi suggested at a conference in Shanghai that the US should cede power in Asia, saying: “It is for the people of Asia to run the affairs of Asia.”
The surge in anti-Americanism extends beyond speeches. Over the summer, for example, the Chinese government began a security review of foreign NGOs operating in China, as well as Chinese NGOs that receive foreign support, scrutinizing their finances and freezing bank accounts.
A strident, 100-minute anti-US propaganda film made by the People’s Liberation Army last year laid out the case that US NGOs were out to undermine the party. (It used the martial theme music from the HBO series Game of Thrones.)
The campaign has reached into academia as well. An employee of a US organization that promotes dialogue among academics said that some Chinese professors who work on international relations were no longer writing or saying anything in public that casts the US in a positive light, for fear of being accused of spying.
The employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to antagonize Chinese partners, added that one Chinese university had barred visiting US academics from lecturing if their research did not conform to the party line.
Casting blame on the “black hand” of foreign forces has become more common in the state news media as well.
The People’s Daily has published 42 articles this year blaming China’s domestic problems on “Western,” “foreign” or “overseas” forces, nearly triple the number of similar pieces from the first 10 months of last year, according to a count by the Christian Science Monitor.
The pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong have been a favorite target. On Friday last week, Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Pao seen as close to the CCP, ran a front-page article under a headline that said the newspaper had found “ironclad evidence” that the US had been secretly plotting the local Occupy movement since 2006.
The government has also targeted major Western companies with high-profile investigations and imposed record fines for what officials call monopolistic practices. Some foreign businesspeople and officials say the investigations are a form of protectionism.
As a result, US executives have tempered their optimism about doing business in China, said John Frisbie, president of the US-China Business Council, a trade group in Washington.
Some have questioned the sincerity — or pointed out the hypocrisy — of the party’s tirades against the West, noting that many party officials have children or other family members living and even applying for citizenship overseas.
Xi’s daughter, Xi Mingze (習明澤), attended Harvard University under a pseudonym.
“How can Chinese officials really be anti-American?” Beijing Foreign Studies University media studies professor Zhan Jiang (展江) said.
“Anti-foreign sentiments will always be present in China, because of China’s unique history,” he said. “However, the public’s opinion of the West will not change because of what the party says.”
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