The Chinese Exclusion Act being a prime example. Was it just a footnote
of history, or did it carry a serious consequence?
My thesis is the latter.
Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, between 1880s to 1930s,
few ordinary Chinese had the opportunity to live and
work in America and China-US exchange were limited to educated elites (many
thanks to the US inviting and funding China's students in US). After 1930s
, despite close military alliance between the KMT and the USA, the common
people of China remained deeply ignorant of this far-away friend called the
USA.
When American pilots (Doolittle raid 1942) landed
in China, the Chinese villagers helped to evacuate the majority to safety.
The common Chinese supported American war effort not
because they knew anything about American character and friendship,
but simply because an enemy of the enemy (Japan) is my friend.
Even without a deep understanding of their friends the Americans, the
common Chinese made enormous sacrifices for the China-US alliance.
250,000 Chinese villagers were murdered by the Japanese
in retaliation for Doolittle Raids alone and in total 20+ million
Chinese perished and innumerable women were raped during the
Japanese occupation. Most if not all the Chinese's first hand
experience with any foreigner came from their life experience
dealing with the Japanese, a modern people and a courteous people,
who turned out to be mass murderers and rapists.
As a result of this hard lesson in modernity, the common Chinese started
by being mostly ignorant of Americans, ended up losing trust in both
humanity and modernity, and could easily be turned against a far-away
unknown friend like the USA. The Chinese public witnessed the
slow progress of American justice against Japanese war criminals
with bewilderment and incredulity. In 1946, the rumored rape of a Chinese girl
by American soldiers triggered massive anti-US demonstrations in China.
Guess who raped many Chinese women? The Japanese.
The Chinese people were jumpy and angry and still suffered from PTSD of
Japanese occupation, and they did not have enough interaction with Americans to
convince them that Americans were that much different from the Japanese,
both being foreigners, courteous and modern.
In 1943, the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed. But the repeal came too little,
too late. The vast gulfs separating two people, artificially created by an unjust law,
had already done its damage. By 1949, the common people of China turned
away from the KMT, America and the world, they turned inward and towards
the Marxists' doctrines in hopes of salving their incredible suffering under
the Japanese occupation.
This is how the world works in strange and unexpected ways. This is how
the Chinese-Exclusion-Act (1882) indirectly contributed to China's
anti-America policy between 1949-1976.
Back to today, vast overwhelming majority of Americans were good people and
are still good people, trying to make peace and make friends. So are the
vast majority of Chinese. I do not think there's a conspiracy against
Chinese Americans.
But the current foreign policy "Pivot to Asia" is as close to an anti-China
"conspiracy" as tainting the entire Obama Administration
and casting the American role of traditional peace maker in East Asia
into a very suspicious and un-peace-loving light.
This anti-China foreign policy must be renounced and abandoned. It
jeopardizes America's interest and if allowed to continue could escalate
tensions on East Asia and embroil America in a conflict that neither China
and America want.
China and US have worked together before, and must continue to work together
for world peace for as long as humans live. There is no turning back, there is
no turning inward. We must build bridges and build trust and build peace
together. In order to do that, the USA needs to drop the hidden dagger and
approach China in peace, and ask for trust again. True bridge of trust must
be built between two people, a bridge once weakened and corroded by the
unjust Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, but is absolutely necessary for future peace.
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