How a Diverse Joe Biden Administration Can Counter China's Stoking of U.S. Racial Tensions

A more diverse Biden administration would help the U.S. disarm Beijing and stop it from weaponizing racial tensions in America to excuse its own abusive policies in Xinjiang, a member of the Black China Caucus has said.

Chinese Communist Party officials regularly use the killing of George Floyd and last summer's Black Lives Matter demonstrations to chide the U.S. for calling out widely reported human rights violations against Uighur Muslims.

More recently, China's foreign ministry began politicizing the Capitol Hill riots, comparing the storming of Congress to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Beijing's delivery so far has been "awkward," said Bryce Barros, China affairs analyst at the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy. But the narrative that the U.S. has no right to question Chinese policies in Xinjiang has nonetheless been promoted within its borders to great effect, thanks in part to strictly regulated news and social media platforms.

"China tried to co-opt Black Lives Matter as a slogan to in some way get back at the United States," Barros told Newsweek. Hua Chunying, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson and head of the government's Information Department, tweeted in support of demonstrators last year, he recalled.

However, Hua then addressed protesters as "our African friends."

"They have attempted to politicize it, but their attempts have been met with some backlash," Barros said. Still, it has been beneficial for China's domestic audience to be able to put it in that light, he added.

The answer, according to Barros—a member of the Black China Caucus group dedicated to amplifying the voices of Black professionals within the China space—is to ensure more diversity in the government of newly elected President Joe Biden.

The president could start by appointing a person of color to fill the role of U.S. ambassador to China, a post which has been vacant for three months since Terry Branstad's resignation, Barros suggested in Foreign Policy last month.

A Black representative sitting in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, for instance, might deter China's attempts to further politicize America's Black or ethnic minority communities.

Together with the Biden administration's multilateral approach to international relations, a truly diverse foreign service corps would help the U.S. counter malign actors who might try to "stoke racial and social tensions," he said.

Barros called diversity—in race, religion and sexual orientation, too—the U.S.'s biggest strategic advantage against Chinese Communist Party ideology, as well as that of other authoritarian powers.

Beijing's reach

With China under the leadership of Xi Jinping having emerged as America's greatest competitor for forthcoming decades, diversity in government can help the U.S. challenge Beijing in another key area: Chinese soft power in Africa.

During her Senate confirmation hearing last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who is President Biden's pick for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, expressed confidence in her ability to rally African leaders and "push back on China's self-interested and parasitic development goals" on the continent.

Beijing has devoted $1 trillion to Africa as part of its expansive Belt and Road Initiative, convincing poorer nations to take out high-interest loans from Chinese banks in order to fund much-needed infrastructure projects. Critics have labeled it "debt-trap diplomacy."

China's foothold on the continent was largely down to "a lack of attention African policymakers have received from Washington and other Western capitals," said Barros.

Thomas-Greenfield suggested the Biden administration could offer African partners another option besides Chinese support.

The career diplomat, who joined the foreign service in 1982, spoke of serious concerns surrounding the Confucius Institute in American universities and the way it targeted "those in need" in Georgia's Black community. The Chinese government-funded programs are also widespread in Africa.

The Chinese language and culture institute, which also reaches into American elementary and high schools, was designated a foreign mission by the Trump administration last year following concerns over censorship of sensitive topics, such as the status of Taiwan. It led several universities to cut ties with the Confucius Institute in the past year.

"Scrutiny of the Confucius Institute gives the Biden administration an opportunity to think of new ways to promote Chinese language education in the United States in a way that is out of the reach of narratives and messaging that fall in line with the Chinese Communist Party," Barros said.

The U.S. government would need to spearhead funding mechanisms, for historically Black colleges and universities, as well as public education institutes serving other minority communities, so they do not have to turn to the Confucius Institute for Chinese language education, he noted.

"It should be a priority going forward," said Barros. "Even though there's a growing China specialist community in the United States, there still aren't enough people who have an understanding of Mandarin or Chinese culture in an unbiased way—away from CCP talking points."

He added: "It would be immensely beneficial to the brain trust that goes into the foreign policy and national security communities."

A viable alternative

Another avenue for Chinese-language learning is Taiwan. The democratic island nation stood out amid the downturn in U.S.-China relations during Trump's presidency and has been highlighted once more by Biden officials.

Lev Nachman, a former Fulbright scholar now visiting at National Taiwan University, said Taipei need not emulate China's far-reaching Confucius Institute ambitions.

"Taiwan was always famous for its Mandarin education. Even before China reopened, China scholars would come to Taiwan to learn Mandarin—they still do," said Nachman, who is a UC Irvine Ph.D. candidate.

"I would not say the goal should be for Taiwan to create a curriculum for Chinese institutes around the world, but rather to refocus Taiwan as a destination for Chinese language learning for people throughout the world."

He said it would always be better for universities to fund Chinese learning themselves, with federal assistance, and avoid problems associated with the Confucius Institute, which included worries over academic freedom and state-sponsored education.

The shutdown of Fulbright programs in China and Hong Kong, and the added awareness of the Confucius Institute in the U.S., "give Taiwan another opportunity that it didn't expect it was going to get, to demonstrate how it can be an access point for academia," Nachman added.

His assessment was shared by Yeh-chung Lu, a professor with the Department of Diplomacy at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

He told Newsweek it was a "great opportunity for Taiwan," but said the government needed to seize the chance and also cultivate support from the Taiwanese public for the endeavor, given the resources it might require.

President Tsai Ing-wen has pledged to make Taiwan a bilingual country by 2030, Nachman noted. Taipei has also been advised to make significant increases to its defense budget in order to counter the growing threat of a Chinese invasion.

But plans are already afoot to meet some of the demand for Mandarin education in the U.S., as well as English learning in Taiwan, according to the foreign ministry.

"Cooperation on Chinese language learning between Taiwan and the United States has been among the key areas of focus for the government in recent years," spokesperson Joanne Ou told Newsweek in a written statement.

Last December, officials from Washington and Taipei signed a memorandum of understanding on international education cooperation and the accompanying U.S.-Taiwan Education Initiative. The documents mention an expansion of America's flagship Fulbright program and the mutual exchange of language teachers.

It marked the first time the two governments had "systematic and institutionalized cooperation" in the field of education, Ou said.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has earmarked more resources to facilitate cooperation with the U.S. government and expand existing Chinese language learning programs," she added.