‘If US sees China as enemy…’: Xi-Trump summit proves a testing time for Chinese-Americans
Some members of the Chinese community in the US are fearful Donald Trump could sour ties with China if he treats the nation as an enemy, writes Robert Delaney
Few Chinese-Americans tuning in for news of this week’s summit meeting between presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump have ever had to make a choice over where their national loyalties lie. Many were not even born in the years when each side branded the other enemy number one and racial epithets were acceptable even in polite society.
China and the US have enjoyed nearly 40 years of relatively stable diplomatic relations. Tensions have flared, to be sure. The pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the deployment of an American aircraft carrier in the Taiwan Strait in 1996 and the US bombing of China’s Belgrade Embassy in 1999 were some of the biggest tests, but these tensions proved manageable through patient diplomacy.
Not even jingoistic and protectionist rhetoric from China’s Global Times newspaper or US President Donald Trump’s National Trade Council Director Peter Navarro have managed to spark any kind of broad-based rancour in the US or China.
This long stretch of relative stability has made the use of a hyphen to describe the community as Chinese-American far less common, or as culturally loaded as say Muslim-Americans.
But US President Donald Trump could test the depths of this steady and level-headed attitude among the Chinese-American community when he meets his Chinese counterpart.
