Opinion | Gordon G. Chang: A China-hater, a self-hater and a fear-monger
By Philip Yeung, university teacher
PKY480@gmail.com
Gordon G. Chang is touted as a China expert. He is not. In 2001 he hogged the headlines with a spectacular prediction that China would collapse in 2011. It did not. On the contrary, China has since become the world's second largest economy. That public error has not exposed him as a pseudo-expert nor dislodged him from the pulpit where he spouts similar China Armageddon predictions. He is a lousy tea-leaf reader, because his prophecies are just wishful thinking dressed up as objective analysis.
The question everyone asks is: why does he hate China so much? Chang is half-Chinese. His father is Chinese, his mother American. As a visible "half-breed", he was badly bullied in school and has been struggling with his sense of belonging ever since. His white-half hates his Chinese-half. He prevents contamination from his ethnicity by being an extreme American patriot and by habitually bad-mouthing China. He has obviously found his niche in the China-bashing market. As a China-hater with a Chinese name, he is a darling to white extremists. He belongs on the psychiatrist's couch.
Often, Chang's gloom-and-doom articles are self-contradictory. In one breath, he declares China "a sick lizard". In the next, he calls China an existential threat to America and the world. He blames China for anything and everything that goes wrong in America, from global supply chains disruptions to Houthi attacks on American forces. As one reader puts it, if we ask Gordon G. Chang, he would say that China is also behind the UFO attacks on America.
They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. How true of Chang. Trading on his Chinese surname, he claims non-existent expertise on Chinese history and culture. As proof of China's imperial ambitions, he cites the ancient Chinese concept of "Tianxia", or "all under heaven", which he promptly takes out of context, twisting it into a desire for world domination. In fact, it is a Confucian ideal promoting humanity's common destiny. Chang is no truth-seeker or impartial analyst. He is a pathetic soul tortured by his own identity crisis, driven by an urge to outdo white supremacists in demonizing a peaceful China.
If you scan the titles of his articles, the evil intent jumps out at you. I get clinically depressed reading his crazy rantings. He is spewing an ocean of venom to drown China in hatred. Here is a partial list from his warped mind and poison pen:
• "China is fueling Hamas attacks"
• "Fresno Lab: China's Operation to Exterminate Americans"
• "The West Must Bring China Down"
• "The Chinese Dream is the Complete Control of Humanity"
• "Our Response to China must be Overwhelming, not Proportional"
• "Preparing for War with China"
• "China's Saboteurs are coming to America"
• "Close all China Consulates. Slash Embassy Staff."
• "Expropriate China-owned Farmland in America"
• "Deterring China: US should arm Taiwan to the hilt—now"
Dripping with venom, these views are calculated to provoke the two biggest powers into a history-ending all-out war. According to European reports, the US is pumping $1.5 billion into the training of Western journalists to bad-mouth China. Chang ought to get a lion's share of this largess. I wonder if someone has desecrated his ancestral graves for him to harbor such bone-deep enmity.
Utterly shameless, Chang dishonestly cloaks his arguments in selective statistics and quotes from self-proclaimed experts. He believes that the US-China conflict is inevitable, and that China is already on a war footing. He is doing his utmost to hasten that inevitability, accusing China of "inciting violence on American streets" and of "stoking racial tensions in the US", and even of "advocating the extermination of Americans with disease" so that "the Chinese people could settle in the vast spaces left uninhabited". He makes the over-the-top, fact-free claim that China is "attempting to take down our government", and of ultimately "overthrowing" the so-called "rules-based international system". These are the unmistakable babblings of a sick mind.
Loved by Fox News and other right-wing outlets, his notoriety is entrenched. Unfortunately, it has made life miserable for another Chinese-American by the same name, Gordon H. Chang, a noted Stanford historian, separated from his namesake by just a middle initial. The former laments that the latter has been "the bane of my life".
Had Chang been a pure white American, his failed predictions would have torpedoed his career. But ironically, his "Chinese half" has come to his rescue, lending him false legitimacy as a born China oracle. He is a bane of peace-lovers on both sides of the East-West divide. He has sold his soul to Satan. If he is not the devil incarnate, who is?
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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