Fifty Shades of Yellow
The image of China in Germany and the US ranges from silly clichés to fear of a powerful economic competitor.
“Yellow peril” or a bizarre wonderland like the China chapters in Michael Ende’s “Jim Button” books? China is one of the best-known nations in the West, and yet almost no one seems to really know much about this vast country. When Germans or Americans consider their relationship with China, the West almost always appears as the victim of an Eastern “flood” of cheap goods or a rather vague sense of threat. Little is known about the devastating effects of European imperialism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which can be summed up under keywords such as “century of humiliation,” “Opium Wars,” or “gunboat diplomacy.” In addition, US cinema in particular cultivated clichés such as the sinister Chinese criminal, the vulnerable Asian beauty, or the lovable but somewhat dim–witted Chinese man. Current political developments are once again heading toward a clash of two worlds that could well become dangerous. Statements by the US right wing in particular are fueling concerns about a trade war or even military conflict.
[This article posted on 7/31/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/fifty-shades-of-yellow.]
China in the German perception
When Chancellor Konrad Adenauer famously said, “I only say Kina, Kina, Kina” (original quote) in the late 1950s, he was referring to the Federal Republic’s ties to the West and its ideological rejection of socialism. After the communists’ victory in China, socialism seemed to pose an even greater threat to the Soviet Union. For older Germans in the post-war period, this fit in with their memories of Nazi propaganda, which had highlighted Asian elements among the ethnic groups of the Soviet Union as a particular threat to European culture. In the general perception after the Second World War, China was far away, traditionally trivialized by the children’s song about the three Chinese with the double bass and popular carnival costumes with conical hats and artificial braids.
Virtually erased from the collective memory is the German Empire’s participation in the colonial exploitation of China after the devastating Opium Wars.
With considerable military force, Germany had seized an important port and a model colony in what is now Qingdao in 1900, but lost it again at the end of the First World War. What remains is one of the largest breweries in Asia. But anyone drinking a Tsingtao beer in Germany today is unlikely to think about its colonial past.
German black-and-white television screens showed the Chinese Cultural Revolution in disturbing images and reports of chaotic conditions and the incomprehensible cult of personality surrounding Mao Zedong. Economically, China was forgotten for a long time after this period of crisis, until Deng Xiaoping ushered in the Chinese economic miracle in the early 1980s. According to the World Bank, around 800 million Chinese have emerged from poverty in the last 40 years and become consumers who are increasingly traveling the world as tourists. Above all, however, hard-working Chinese people earning far less than their German counterparts have turned useful items into export hits through mass production. These items are often dismissed as “Chinese junk,” but this has hardly hurt their sales.
Less noticed, even by the German media, was the rapid technological catch-up process of the Chinese economy. In some respects, it is comparable to Germany’s industrial rise after the founding of the German Empire in 1871 or the catch-up of Japanese industry after World War II.
When Great Britain recognized German competition as a threat to national security, it accused Germany of unfair trade practices. These are still the arguments commonly used in the EU today to justify punitive tariffs. The West was more lenient with Japan because it was considered an ally against Soviet and Chinese communism.
Meanwhile, the successful modernization of China and its export economy can no longer be overlooked. The fact that Western corporations, especially in the electronics sector, have themselves contributed significantly to technology transfer through contract manufacturing of computers and smartphones has long been ignored because it was so profitable. In recent years, however, contract manufacturing has given rise to an astonishing innovative strength in Chinese industry. State support for the education system, which was already based on a traditional appreciation of learning and education, has also contributed to this.
Hundreds of thousands of Chinese students who studied at elite Western universities and brought what they learned back to their homeland to contribute to the modernization process also played a role. All of this has now contributed to a leading role in various areas of technology and research, such as fusion reactors, quantum computers, and many others. In Germany, the emerging technological leadership in electric cars is becoming a dangerous dilemma, as German premium manufacturers have so far generated a significant share of their profits through sales in China.
Other European manufacturers are in the same boat, but without comparable experience and cooperation with Chinese partners such as Volkswagen and Mercedes. The usual reflex of Western free trade apologists is, as always, to introduce punitive tariffs, somewhat milder in the EU than in the US, but with the same intention of protecting their own auto industry. In doing so, Western manufacturers have almost all neglected to secure the raw materials needed for battery production and have been rather hesitant to follow the political guidelines imposed on them for environmental reasons.
Statista recently provided impressive figures showing the extent to which China has become the world’s workbench. In 2023, a full 71 percent of the goods sold by Amazon worldwide came from China, with only 6 percent coming from Germany. There will be no way around economic cooperation with China in the coming decades, while the EU’s “de-risking” guidelines seem more likely to lead to risk. Political and economic interests are currently far apart, with Brussels’ approach apparently heavily influenced by American positions.
The US and China
The American view of China differs significantly from the German view, even though the German Empire and the emerging US pursued very similar colonial interests in China after the Civil War. With the fastest sailing ships of their time, the legendary clippers, American traders on the east coast took over a significant portion of the lucrative opium trade with China from the British. Trade and Christian missionary interests led the US to pursue an open policy toward China after the Opium Wars. The Burlingame Treaty of 1868 granted China “most favored nation” status and opened the borders to migrants from the impoverished areas of the weakened Qing Empire. In several waves, more and more Chinese immigrated to the US, reaching more than 300,000 by 1882. At first, they were welcomed as willing and largely underpaid workers. They contributed significantly to the development of the Wild West by building transcontinental railroads or making a living with small laundries and inexpensive restaurants.
However, the mood among Americans who had immigrated earlier from Europe soon changed. The numerous caricatures from this era available on the internet drastically reflect the racist demands to kick the Chinese out of the country with a symbolic kick. This had political and legislative consequences surprisingly quickly. As early as 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited Chinese people from entering the country. Businesspeople, teachers, students, tourists, and diplomats were exempt. Originally limited to ten years, the law was repeatedly extended until the time limit was lifted in 1902. It remained in force until 1943 and was then gradually relaxed until the respective national immigration quotas were completely abolished in 1965.
However, discrimination continued. Since the 1930s, the film industry in Hollywood had reduced Chinese actors to negative roles as criminal “dragon ladies” or helpless “lotus flowers” or characters such as the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu. Wong Liu Tsong made her breakthrough under the stage name Mae Wong in numerous “femme fatale” roles, partly because she vehemently protested against discrimination. The selective immigration policy had also discriminated against certain groups among Europeans, especially Irish and Jews. However, they were able to assimilate in the medium term, while psychologists and racial biologists denied the descendants of African slaves and, to a large extent, Asians the ability to integrate.
The period after the end of World War II was marked by a cold war between the US and the People’s Republic of China, especially after the victory of the communists in 1949. President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972 ended 25 years of no communication, but it was not until 1979 that the US established official diplomatic relations with China and broke off those with Taiwan. The visit, which Nixon himself described as “a week that changed the world,” was indeed accompanied by ideological discord and political alienation between China and the Soviet Union. The visit, diplomatically prepared by Henry Kissinger, and its consequences represent a pragmatic policy without ideological considerations and differing values, which was welcomed equally by both Republicans and Democrats at the time.
Economically, the People’s Republic was anything but competitive at the time, but rather a potentially growing market for American products due to its population size.
In recent decades, students and visiting scholars at elite American universities, numbering almost 290,000 in 2023, have initiated a process of learning about China that has contributed significantly to its economic catch-up.
While manufacturing in the US and Europe has lost massive ground to the service industry, China currently produces practically everything that is in demand worldwide. In addition to its sales success, China benefits from low prices that correspond to the level of domestic living costs but are criticized in the West as dumping and exploitation of workers. At the same time, the Chinese export industry is responding flexibly to demand and preferences among its trading partners and is increasingly moving toward high-quality goods with cutting-edge technology.
Enormous advantages include the labor pool of 1.4 billion people, the school system, and many traditional skills from old crafts. Dutch economist Albert Winsemius, who advised Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, spoke at the time of the Chinese people’s nimble fingers. German entrepreneurs know the difference between the grandchildren of the Black Forest clock industry and the shipyard workers on the North and Baltic Seas. Such different qualifications and talents play a significant role in the electronics industry in particular, and perhaps even more so in the expansion of automated production using robots.
The extent to which growing industrial competition may have played a major role in the increasing anti-China sentiment among Americans remains an open question. The latest Pew Research Center polls in May 2024 show that over the past five years, 80 percent of Americans have developed a negative attitude toward China, with 43 percent holding a very negative view. And 42 percent see China as an enemy of the US. US military planners, however, see the Chinese armed forces’ rearmament as a direct threat to American interests and, in the broadest sense, even as a military threat to the US territory nearly 12,000 km away.
Strategically, of course, it is about American dominance in the Pacific, which the US has maintained and expanded since its victory over Japan. Around 100 naval and air bases, 300,000 soldiers, and 60 percent of the war fleet are stationed here. The competition for allies is in full swing, from the Philippines, a former US colony (1898 to 1942) and the largest country in the region, to tiny island states in the vastness of the Pacific.
The historical complications between China and the US certainly no longer play a role in the Pew poll results mentioned above. For many years, the warnings of the “China Hawks,” disseminated in intensive media campaigns, conferences, and publications, have had a decisive influence. The latest in a series of anti-communist lobby groups, the “Committee on the Present Danger: China” was formed in 2019. It sees the US as existentially and ideologically threatened by the totalitarian regime in Beijing and interprets the relationship between the two countries as a new Cold War. Its board includes controversial politicians such as Steve Bannon and military theorist Frank Gaffney with his Center for Security Policy.
Influential “China Hawks” also work in academia, such as Harvard political scientist Graham Allison. In 2012, he presented his theory of the Thucydides Trap in the Financial Times. This theory states that a war between the US and China is as inevitable as the war between Sparta and the rising power of Athens was 2,500 years ago. The theory is also controversial in the US, but it is one of the many pieces of the mosaic that makes up the American image of China.
Extreme enemy stereotypes and threat scenarios are dangerous because they can make it easier for politicians and the general public to cross the threshold to military force.
James David Vance, who has just been nominated by Donald Trump as his running mate for the vice presidency, is also considered a “China hawk.”
If Trump wins the election, there is therefore a risk that his claim that “the Chinese are stealing American jobs” will continue to strain relations.
Wolfgang Sachsenröder, born in 1943, has worked as a political advisor in Asia, the Middle East, and Southeast Europe and has lived in Singapore again since 2008. He is particularly interested in Southeast Asia, whose politics he has observed and commented on for a total of 25 years. In his latest book, he describes the history of the opium trade and its political consequences to this day: “From Opium to Amphetamines — The Nine Lives of the Narcotics Industry in Southeast Asia,” published in April by WorldScientific. In his blog partyforumseasia.org, he highlights political developments in the region.