In this essay, Charles Xu exposes these narratives for the new Cold War propaganda they are. At the same time, he draws from valuable left analysis of the Olympic movement’s historical imbrication with white supremacy to explore China’s fraught relationship with international sports.

As rich nations stockpile COVID-19 vaccines, China is providing a lifeline to Global South nations spurned by Western pharmaceuticals and excluded by the West’s neocolonial vaccine nationalism. So why is China being smeared for its efforts?

During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an exponential increase in violence against Asian Americans: in New York alone, it’s been reported that violence rose by 1900%, fueled by anti-Asian sentiment.

Since 2015, Singapore has seen the rise of a new discourse arguing the existence of Chinese racial supremacy. Influenced by U.S. cultural theories of race, critics of so-called “Chinese privilege” sought to formulate a theoretical framework for thinking about inequality in Singapore.

This multicultural dimension of an overtly white supremacist demonstration is not a contradiction: rather, it reflects the convergence between imperialism abroad and fascism at home. Liberal commentators expressed self-righteous dismay at the vandalizing of “our” “iconic symbol of democracy,” worrying about what the events would do to the U.S.’ hallowed image as the shining “city on the hill.”

The propaganda surrounding COVID-19 and China’s response is only the latest escalation in a long term geopolitical strategy by U.S. imperialism to destroy it. Few people on the left or the socialist movement in the imperial core have been paying attention to the historic breakup of the U.S.-China relationship.

On the domestic front, the U.S. propaganda machine mostly works instead to position China as this great, menacing oriental Other. We’ve seen this during the COVID-19 pandemic in Trump’s rhetoric about the “China virus” and in Biden’s attempts at one-upmanship.

In November of 1967, just months before announcing his entrance into the 1968 presidential race, Richard Nixon outlined in Foreign Affairs what would become a north star for Washington’s orientation towards China for the next half-century.

In the mid-2010s, China launched far-reaching de-radicalization and economic development programs in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Take a deep dive into the inner workings of Sinophobia Inc. to learn how to see through the media machine.