Increasing Cultural Fissures Stalk the Planet

How social and cultural alienation plants the seeds of war

By: Michael Vatikiotis

Does anybody think this is a good idea?

When US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul visited Taipei for the inauguration of incoming President Lai Ching-te, the youthful president was pictured trying on a 10-gallon hat once favored by cowboys in the far west of the United States. The message was deliberate and striking. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, but as a vibrant democracy, the island is claimed by the Western, more specifically American camp.

There are deep cultural fissures and struggles at work in the new era of geopolitical contest and confrontation that stalks the third decade of the 21st century. This is surprising given the past 35 years of globalization that were supposed to erase ideological divides and erode cultural boundaries. As a result, we have grown accustomed to collectively rejecting notions that cultural contrast or prejudice underpins policies and actions in the international space. Yet if anything, the past decade has seen these divides and boundaries reinforced. Why?

The US as the most powerful global superpower helped set this new direction – for two separate reasons. First, the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 unleashed a wave of fear and prejudice towards the Muslim world. The Global War on Terror that the attacks spawned launched the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan that cost millions of civilian lives and has left a legacy of deep suspicion towards Arab and Muslim society. 

A decade later, America’s fear of Chinese economic and military primacy revived long-dormant anti-Chinese sentiment, which in some political quarters has started to assume the same level of cultural and social paranoia as anti-Muslim sentiment post 9/11. 

Today, Chinese students and academics are finding it hard to obtain visas for US colleges. Last year, the US State Department reported issuing 20,000 fewer visas to Chinese students than in 2019. The Chinese foreign ministry has said that some students have been unfairly questioned and sent home after arriving at airports in the U.S.

Not surprisingly, Chinese authorities have stepped up their concern about foreign influence in China. Nowadays, many Western governments advise their nationals to avoid travel to China. Only around 700 American college students were studying in China in 2023 compared to about 25,000 a decade ago, the Washington Post reported.

Serving US military officers no longer travel to China for exchange visits or education; Chinese officers that once attended the Asia Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, a Defense Department Institute, stopped going after the Americans invited Taiwanese officers to attend courses there.

The two countries are not just practicing strategic competition, as the Biden administration likes to put it, they are drawing farther apart and will soon no longer know much about each other. So much for globalization as a great connector.

These two streams of socio-cultural alienation tap deeply into a historical reservoir of fear and prejudice in the European and American psyche. The largely Christian establishment has long felt that the Muslim world is a threat - when Israeli President Isaac Herzog addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland earlier this year he stated that Israel was fighting Hamas in Gaza to stop them “coming your way.”

China’s resistance to Christian proselytization has subtly underpinned suspicion of the world’s most populous country, especially in American minds since the late 19th century. When China’s growth and development started to impinge on American economic primacy, in the past two decades, these historical tropes re-emerged.

Mainstream politicians in America regularly state that China wants to dominate the world, which is a threat to the American way of life because China doesn’t respect or follow the same norms and values that Americans hold dear.

Today, Pew Centre Survey research shows that in America, 83 percent of US adults have an unfavorable view of China, including 44 percent who are very unfavorable. The Chinese situation mirrors this: a survey of Chinese public views on the United States conducted by Tsinghua University measured almost 60 percent of those polled regarding the US unfavorably.

The United States is a relatively insular country with a continental mindset where a lot of uninformed views blend with an innate fear of authority and blind trust in religious faith. It is not surprising therefore to hear the Speaker of the US House of Representatives insist that Israel, whatever it does, has to be defended because it is a biblical injunction. 

Similarly, fear of China is acquiring these nativist characteristics. Yet China’s portrayal as a Godless state misses the point that many different religions thrive in China, including Tibetan Buddhism, in confined but nonetheless active spaces.

In many ways, the facts are beside the point. Americans and by extension many Europeans are being taught to fear China and become suspicious of Chinese. The resulting social and cultural divide brings us closer to conflict and confrontation that will be justified, just as in earlier eras of fear-driven aggression by declaring the enemy “evil”. 

We already see this happening. In recent weeks, perhaps with one eye on the upcoming US elections, some Americans have started referring to a new Axis of Evil. Outgoing US Pacom Commander Aquilino recently described the relationship between China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran as a nascent ‘axis of evil’. “We ought to act accordingly,” he said.

Michael Vatikiotis is a writer and the author of Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern SE Asia.