This is a summary of the Panel Discussion on the topic “Changing U.S.-China Relations and Their Impact on Chinese In the U.S. and Elsewhere” at the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas (ISSCO) Conference in San Francisco on Nov. 12, 2022. The panelists are Gordon H. Chang (and not Gordon G. Chang), George Koo, K. J. Noh, and Julie Tang, and it was moderated by Don M. Tow. Brief bios of the panelists and moderator are included at the end of this article.

Questions posed to Panelists are:

• What is the reason U.S. and China are heading toward a head-on collision?
• What are the consequences of this head-on collision?
• What can possibly avoid this collision from happening?
• Role of Chinese Americans in this conflict?
• Address generation gaps among different generations of Chinese Americans

The main reason that the U.S. and China are heading toward a head-on collision is because China’s rise is fascilitating the creation of a multi-polar world, but the U.S. wants a uni-polar world following only the U.S.’s rule. This leads to conflicts and instabilities. The consequences of this U.S. desire to maintain hegemony at any cost could lead to regime changes and instabilities all over the world, and possibly leading to wars, including world wars and nuclear wars.

Before the Panel Discussion, the panelist K. J. Noh left a paper underneath each chair in the conference room and asked the audience to show them and read them. Each paper listed the name of a U.S. military base. There were over 200 chairs in the room, and there are over 400 U.S. military bases encircling China, providing a tangible sense of the U.S.’s military threat to China.

As the panelist George Koo pointed out, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a recent visit to China declared in a joint statement with President Xi Jinping that the two countries will promote a multi-polar world and disavow any attempt at decoupling.

We are also seeing other developments in the world. For example, there is great interest in joining BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) which is a grouping of the world’s leading emerging market economies; its purpose is to promote peace, security, development and cooperation. Quite a few countries, such as Algeria, Argentina, Indonesia, and Iran have applied to join, while countries like Afghanistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have also expressed interest.

Also several countries have also expressed interest in joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which focuses on regional security issues and fighting against regional terrorism, ethnic separatism and religious extremism. SCO currently has eight countries (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), four Observer States (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia) with interest in acceding to full membership and six “Dialogue Partners” (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey), with Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia also expressing interest to become Dialogue Partners.

Developments like the above could put geopolitical pressure on the U.S. to change its political position of a uni-polar world. Such a change will not come from U.S.’s good will, but it will be forced to change. As pointed out by the panelist George Koo that the U.S.’s full-blown chips war against China has impacted the U.S.’s semiconductor industry in companies like Applied Materials, Lam Research, Advanced Micro Devices, and Nvidia. Therefore, there will be political pressure from the American people and other parts of the U.S. government to force changes.

If such geo-political and geo-economic pressures are not sufficient to change the U.S.’s uni-polar policy to acceptance of the multi-polar world, then we must mobilize a large-scale world-wide pro-peace or anti-war movement on a scale much larger than the anti-Vietnam war movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The panelist Julie Tang pointed out “The cold war against China is characterized by Obama’s pivot to Asia, Trump’s trade war, and Biden’s all-inclusive economic war against China. We live in a dangerously insane world where our US leaders are increasingly turning warmongering on the unsupported rationale that China is an existential threat. We adopt policies thoughtlessly, such as the trade war that drove up inflation, a chip ban on China that kneecapped our own most productive industry, the US chip manufacturers. Our leaders appeared to be lost and confused. They have lost their reasonableness, common sense, and direction in pushing China close to war.”

U.S. Propaganda Against China:

The panelist Gordon H. Chang mentioned “we are entering a new international geopolitical relationship with far reaching negative consequences for Chinese Americans, with unfair targeting of Chinese American professors, columnists, and other professionals, as clearly demonstrated in the large number of completely unjustified accusations and arrests of such Chinese Americans.” [1]

Gordon H. Chang also said “I see Sinophobia and anti-Asian racism entrenching themselves in American life. U.S.-China relations will never resume to what they were in the early 21st century. This is in spite of what the panelist K. J. Noh said “China is not a threat, China’s rise is peaceful–the most peaceful rise of any great power in history –, and why despite this, the US sees China as a threat.”

Noh also added referring to how the U.S.’s financialized economy lives off of extracting value from productive economies in the global south, ‘A parasite sees the host’s effort to free itself as an existential threat.”

Julie Tang also said “US people have been fed daily that China is a competitor and an enemy, rather than a potential partner in trade, climate change, scientific research, and world hunger. The negative sentiments American people hold towards China represents the massive propaganda, disinformation, and brainwashing taking place in the U.S. mass media. It is no wonder that a 2021 Pew study found that 9 out of 10 Americans believe China is a competitor and enemy.” [2]

The U.S. government is also following such false propaganda by executing illegal, dangerous, and counter-productive measures such as “the China Initiative” in carrying prosecutions against Chinese professors and other professionals, in the process of ruining their lives, their reputations, and their livelihood. [1]

The Issue of Taiwan:

As to the issue on Taiwan, the moderator Don Tow said that all the international agreements, including the 1943 Cairo Declaration [2], the 1945 Potsdam Declaration [3], and the September 2, 1945 Japanese Surrender on the U.S. Battleship Missouri [4] all stated clearly that Taiwan should be returned by Japan to China. Therefore, there should be no issue on Taiwan. If there is any, it is fabricated.

Role of Chinese Americans in this Conflict:

As all the panelists mentioned that the current atmosphere in the U.S. creates great difficulties for Chinese Americans. We are looked upon and treated as enemies. We are on the receiving end of hate crimes. We are being discriminated against, not only by the people, but also by our government. Having been brought up in the atmosphere of demonized China, difference of opinion often surfaced among ourselves, e.g., between 2nd/3rd generation Chinese Americans and 1st generation Chinese Americans.

As Chinese Americans, we all love the U.S. and China, and we want the best for both countries. How to identify and address such conflicts is an important issue for all of us and an organization like ISSCO to address.

At the panel discussion, Don Tow mentioned that a modification of the Peace and Reconciliation Asia Study Tour similar to what organizations like the “Alliance for Learning and Preserving the History of WWII in Asia” (ALPHA) to study and discuss modern Chinese and world history, but instead of orientating toward U.S. high school teachers, our audience should be Chinese Americans.

However, after giving it more thought, the impact of such an approach would be far too small to make a difference. Therefore, we need to write books on this subject. The more books and articles on this subject, the better it will be, because the issue is important and complex. It is important to hear the wisdom from different perspectives and backgrounds.

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** I also gave a talk at this conference. That talk “Perspective on U.S.-China Relationship – War or Peace” was prepared before the conference and that talk can be found in the September 2022 release of this website: https://www.dontow.com/2022/09/perspective-on-u-s-china-relationship-war-or-peace/

[1] Such cases were clearly discussed at the conference with the participation of people like Sherry Chen, Gang Chen, and Xiaoxing Xi.

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/03/04/most-americans-support-tough-stance-toward-china-on-human-rights-economic-issues/.

[3] The 1943 Cairo Declaration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Cairo_Declaration.

[4] The 1945 Potsdam Declaration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potsdam_Declaration.

[5] The September 2,1945 Japanese Instrument of Surrender on the U.S. Battleship Missouri: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Instrument_of_Surrender.

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Brief Bios of Panelists and Moderator

Gordon H. Chang: Gordon H. Chang is a professor of History at Stanford University, the Olive H. Palmer Professor of Humanities, and a former director of the Center for East Asian Studies. He was also the founding director of the Asian American Studies Program at Stanford. In 2019, he published Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic History of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad and The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad. His other books include Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972 and Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China, which studies the long arc of U.S.-China relations from American colonial days to the present. Among his other publications is Chinese American Voices, which he co-edited with Judy Yung and Him Mark Lai. 

George Koo: George Koo retired from a global advisory services firm where he advised clients on their China strategies and business operations. Educated at MIT, Stevens Institute and Santa Clara University, he is the founder and former managing director of International Strategic Alliances. He is currently a board member of Freschfield’s, a novel green building platform. Dr. Koo is one of the leading Chinese-American writers and organizers in regard to U.S.-China policy and on the conditions of Chinese-Americans in the United States, especially the persecution over these last years of Chinese-Americans and Chinese in the U.S.

K. J. Noh: K.J. Noh is a journalist, political analyst, writer and teacher specializing in the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region. He writes for Dissident Voice, Black Agenda Report, Counterpunch, Popular Resistance, Asia Times, MR Online. He also does frequent commentary and analysis on the news programs The Critical Hour, By Any Means Necessary, Fault Lines, Political Misfits, Loud & Clear, Breakthrough News, Flashpoints. K.J. Noh has reported extensively on great power  competition, geostrategic messaging, and the media ecology and its effects on communities. He has also collaborated with various scholars on the geopolitics of global health, Indigenous health rights policy, structural violence, and medical care delivery under neoliberal capitalism. He recently pioneered a study with Dr. Claudia Chaufan on the military transmission of infectious diseases and its implications for Covid transmission. He believes a functioning and healthy society requires good information; to that end, he strives to combat the weaponization of disinformation in the current cold war climate.

Julie Tang: The Hon. Julie M. Tang is a retired judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. Before her judgeship, Judge Tang worked as an Assistant District Attorney in San Francisco and served three terms as President of the SF Community Board. Upon retirement, Judge Tang co-founded the “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition and “Pivot to Peace.” Through these organizations, she actively promotes awareness of the issues of sexual violence against women and the importance of peace between the US and China. Judge Tang was named “Outstanding Chinese American” by the SF Board of Supervisors; she was inducted into Hastings’ College of the Law’s LEOP program’s Hall of Fame and received the “Joe Morizumi Award for Exceptional Legal Advocacy” from the Asian American Bar Association.

Don M. Tow: Don M. Tow is the President of the New Jersey Alliance for Learning and Preserving the History of WWII in Asia (NJ-ALPHA).  He is the Co-Founder of “10,000 Cries for Justice” and the “Coalition Peace Initiative.” Don has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley, and performed Physics research at the Institute for Advanced Study, Brown University, University of Paris VI and XI, and University of Texas in Austin.  He also taught undergraduate and graduate Physics courses at UT Austin, before changing fields from academia to industry working at Bell Laboratories, Bellcore, Motorola (in Beijing), Telcordia, and Raritan Computer. He is the author of the book Mental Aspects of Youth Soccer: A Primer for Players, Parents, and Coaches. He also posts regularly in his website www.dontow.com.