As suspicion and accusations grow that China is behind a series of hacking attacks directed at the United States, could Chinese Americans suffer greater discrimination?
That’s an issue brought up by the International Herald Tribune in an interview with noted Chinese American scholar Frank Wu. Wu is dean at the University of California Hastings School of Law(pictured here). He is also a member of the Committee of 100, a group of Chinese Americans dedicated to building a bridge between the US and China.
“Thank goodness in the current controversy there has not yet been very much racial imagery or stereotyping,” Wu told IHT via Skype. “The cyberthreat however is the perfect scenario for scapegoating a Chinese-American. It’s perfect because China looms large as an economic or even military threat in the eyes of many Americans, and cyberattack fits perfectly with the stereotype of Chinese and Asians generally as not only untrustworthy, but also technologically talented.”
Wu says as a “loyal American” he is as opposed to a Chinese cyberattack on the United States as much as any other citizen of this country.
“But Chinese-Americans have a particular concern, different from other Americans,” he added. “That concern is that Chinese-Americans, regardless of their loyalty or how many generations their families have been in the U.S., or how assimilated they are, will be blamed wrongly for the actions of foreign individuals with whom we have no relationship.”
You can read more of the interview with Frank Wu in the International Herald Tribune.