OPINION: So Your Parents Sent You a WeChat Article...
Chinese American Trump supporters at a rally. (Flickr Creative Commons)
Claire Cheng (SFS ‘24) is a journalist for Compass World and a guest writer for the Caravel's opinion section. The content and opinions of this piece are the writer’s and the writer’s alone. They do not reflect the opinions of the Caravel or its staff.
In the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Asian Americans overwhelmingly voted for President-Elect Joe Biden by a ratio of 2 to 1. However, the aggregate statistic conceals a rather complicated demographic. This conviction is repeated often, yet never fully reckoned with: Asian Americans are not a monolith. They are ethnically, generationally, socioeconomically, and politically diverse.
I live in a very liberal county in California with a large and growing Asian immigrant population. Throughout the past four years, I have noticed persistent traction towards President Trump and his ideology within my community’s Chinese-American population, primarily among its first-generation immigrants.
While Biden was favored among Asian Americans at large, post-election data shows that Trump has not lost support from his Asian American followers over the past four years, either. This seems counterintuitive. Trump has touted nativist sentiments and actions with his rollbacks of illegal and legal immigration: he severely restricted visas that let in immigrants primarily from China and India. He has espoused harsh and explicitly anti-China rhetoric, framing the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.” Yet, a sizable population of Chinese immigrants still choose to align themselves with Trump. Why?
There are widely discussed ideological reasons for alignment. But, there are also more deeply embedded cultural and historical inclinations that remain overlooked. I intend to focus on the latter.
Like many of you, I have been stuck at home with my family for the past… how long has it been? Consequently, I have been forced to engage in difficult conversations about race and politics in the U.S. with my parents, both of whom are first-generation Chinese immigrants. I have had to seriously question and confront both my own beliefs and theirs under the backdrop of significant social movements sweeping through the country and, frankly, the world.
This piece scratches the surface of some realizations I have had in conversations with family and peers. Admittedly, it is only a limited perspective on a very large, very messy topic. As I struggled to reconcile my values with those of my community, I began to seek common ground and some level of cultural understanding.
For one, Trump’s hawkish stance on China actually resonates with many first-generation immigrants. It is important not to conflate anti-China rhetoric, which incriminates the Chinese government, with anti-Chinese rhetoric, which consists of inexcusable racism against Chinese people. Trump is, no doubt, treading that line very thinly and flagrantly, leaving the door open for ignorant people to equate the two. Nevertheless, many Chinese immigrants, a growing number hailing from Hong Kong and Taiwan, are highly critical of the Chinese government and now live in an environment where they can voice that dissatisfaction. They find themselves in a position to counter what they see as a highly corrupt government; and to them, that is a priority.
The appeal of Trump also derives, in part, from the historical baggage these first-generation cultural groups carry. Having directly experienced life under so-called Communist rule, many Asian American immigrants (in particular, Chinese and Vietnamese Americans) are the first to become wary when there’s a societal movement they perceive as taking the U.S. in that direction. They are more sensitive and resistant to what they see as the United States’ growing coziness with language and policy emulating “socialism.” The Republican party has capitalized on that instinct in the last election and furthered such fear-mongering tactics.
This is not just theoretical. I have witnessed Chinese immigrants within my family’s social circle begin to draw connections between the current political discourse and previous “socialist” regimes that they have fled. Asian Americans are sensitive to social limits imposed on freedom of speech in the form of liberal “political correctness” (PC) culture, more so than the average American. “PC” culture, to many Chinese-American immigrants, hits a little too close to home: some compare it to the type of public shaming that occurred under Mao and the Cultural Revolution for perceived capitalist- or Western-leaning speech.
Additionally, Chinese immigrants place a much heavier emphasis on a government’s role in maintaining law and order. Respecting the law is an ingrained cultural value that undergirds many East Asian countries. Asian countries have, in the past century, heavily penalized and cracked down on protests. In China, specifically, protesting on the streets was and is not a viable way to demand government action: you’d simply be asking for trouble. The Chinese immigrant community is less sympathetic to the idea that violent protests are legitimate catalysts of change; it’s simply not the cultural norm.
Chinese Americans’ natural affinity toward law enforcement has primed the community to be more susceptible to the misinformation and the vocal conservative reporting that flood the popular social media platform WeChat on issues like the Black Lives Matter movement. The lack of understanding of the issues coupled with one-sided narratives have led Chinese immigrants to support the police and to lean more conservative when evaluating ongoing social movements.
The Asian American community is the fastest-growing demographic in the American electorate. It is also a very large and very undecided voting base—almost two out of five Asian Americans are not registered as Democrats or Republicans. However, outside of post-election analyses, we are rarely spoken to, and almost never spoken for. Neither party prioritizes the Asian-American vote, although it can become crucial in states like Texas and Georgia. The absence of attention leaves a gaping hole for Republicans to spin and exaggerate narratives and themes that play on very visceral cultural values and aversions within the community.
The Asian-American demographic has changed its party alignment before, and it can again if neither side refuses to seriously cater to this growing community in their campaigns. While the Democratic Party frames itself as the party of diversity, inclusion, and tolerance, they are isolating the Asian American demographic by failing to speak to them in their language. This will come back to bite them in future elections—especially in ones where the playing field between Democrats and Republicans is more even, and when one party is not deploying deeply corrosive, xenophobic language.
As impersonal as politics sometimes seems, it is very personal. The votes we cast (which I hope you did) are informed by our unique mixture of lived experiences and identities that no one else can ever truly understand. But we have to try. Thanksgiving may be over, but those dreaded, yet reflective, conversations about identity and politics must continue.
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