The inevitable growth of Sinophobia

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By Bernard Yegiora

Anti-Chinese sentiments or Sinophobia is a deadly trend that is becoming more and more common as China continues to rise. It is defined as the dislike of or fear of China, its people or its culture.

However, xenophobia is widespread in all societies of the world. In Iran, anti-American sentiments is strong, they see America as evil because of their arrogance. America in their bid to create a peaceful world have strongly gone against Iran’s nuclear ambitions, even though, Iran has assured the world that its nuclear program is for peace purposes.

In PNG’s case, we have witnessed the ransacking of Asian businesses in 2009; mostly people of ethnic Chinese origin in major centers around the nation were targeted because of the disparity of wealth. This Sinophobia is dramatically growing day by day and could most probably lead to a major social up rising of far great magnitude than it predecessor.

In retrospect, Chinese entrepreneurs have been in PNG before independence and have contributed immensely to PNG’s development as a sovereign nation; this fact can not be denied if you know your history.

Over the years the new wave of Chinese immigrants and their business activities have moved in a different pattern from the socio-economic development of Papua New Guineans. The Chinese have adapted to the changes that is happening in our society, backed by their popular ‘Guanxi system’ that is similar to our ‘wantok system’. Whilst we on the other hand have failed to evolved in the way we do business. As a result, the lack of opportunity experienced by the middle and low class citizens of this nation have led them to take out their frustrations on foreign owned businesses.

The reasons for this fear of or dislike of the Chinese diasporas is very complex, it is like a triangle with three points of influence, the government, the citizens and Chinese entrepreneurs. It is very difficult to accuse one as the root cause of the problem because all three have in one way or another played a significant part in feeding the growing anti-Chinese sentiment.

PNG is just a needle in the hay stack considering the fact that Sinophobia is widespread. This wide spread phenomena can be view at two different levels, people-to-people level which is the conventional understanding of Sinophobia illustrated by the case of PNG, and state-to-state level.

In the case of state-to-state level, the relationship China has with the different states in the international system shows a sense of Sinophobia. Developed countries in Europe and Asia including the world’s declining hegemon America from a realist perspective are fearful of China’s rise because of the theory of Balance of power.

After the Cold War the bi-polar world ruled by the USSR and the US was disassembled and replace with a uni-polar system controlled by America. But that order is changing due to the remarkable rise of China affecting the balance of power as countries begin to join the Chinese bandwagon. The fear of China challenging America for the leadership position has led America to initiate containment and engagement plans to monitor China.

Furthermore, according to Robert Reich in the New Perspective Quarterly Journal “China wants to become the world’s pre-eminent producer nation”, he draws a comparison between the US economy being an economy oriented to consumption and China to production. This adds fuel to the fire because with high production China will continue to flood the world with ‘Made in China’ products affecting the balance of trade.

In a most recent BBC/Globescan poll of 28 nations shows that China’s global image remains mixed. Only in Africa and Pakistan is it consistently positive, while in Asia, North America, and Latin America it is neutral to poor. Across Europe it is strongly negative. China’s increasing economic and military power is creating anxiety around the world.

Thus, in the 21st century not only individual Chinese traders are victims of Sinophobia but the State is enduring its fare share of anti-Chinese sentiments. This trend is unavoidable and will continue to intensify as China continues on its part towards developing into a developed nation.

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