As political pressure on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mounts, Western media outlets can help avoid hate crimes with better use of language. It’s simple, let’s talk about the CCP, not China.

“China says …” is a popular way to start a story these days; it’s usually the first two words of stories based on angry rants by wolf warrior diplomats, or even reports built around carefully worded propaganda from state media outlets.

“China says there is no genocide in Xinjian …”, “China says coronavirus did not spread as a result of a cover-up in Wuhan …”, and the classic, “China says it has done nothing at all wrong, we are the victims, it is all somebody else’s fault and we will punish them,” or some similar version somehow simultaneously depicting the CCP as victim and all-powerful aggressor in the same headline … but in reality “China”, that is the Chinese people, do not say anything at all.

There is no such thing as “China says ..” as the Chinese people are spoken for by an unelected, corrupt and non-representative regime.

“China” cannot speak while the Chinese people dare not speak, lest they be thrown in a black jail or railroaded through an opaque ‘legal system’ for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.

The media’s incessant use of the word China, rather than CCP, not only misses the mark politically, but it creates unnecessary danger for Chinese living abroad, many of whom despise the CCP and whose families fled persecution decades ago. There are also Hong Kong families who moved because of fears, now fully realized, around handover in 1997. Now joining them is a wave of Hongkongers fleeing their homeland as countries open their borders and dissidents living in exile. The United Kingdom alone has opened a pathway for millions of Hongkongers to move under the BNO passport scheme.

After a Chinese man was stabbed in New York’s Chinatown last week the ugly possibility of an increase in hate crimes due to anti-Chinese sentiment loomed large. Hate crimes were not proven on this occasion – it is being classified as a random attack ­– but there have been numerous reports citing an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes throughout 2020.

This of course is no new phenomenon, throughout modern history right wing rhetoric has had real world consequences and as Coronavirus spread it was Donald Trump fanning the flames of intolerance with his vitriolic use of the term “China virus”.

“It’s not racist at all, not at all,” Trump maintained at the time in the way most racists do when confronted with their language. “It comes from China, that’s why. I want to be accurate.”

Trump might have been right on the second point as it was the CCP’s sick system that gave the virus a head start when it began spreading. That being said, would it not have been more cutting to point out the CCP cover-up and the party’s lack of transparency? “CCP virus” is a more effective, and accurate, description. It was political dysfunction, not the people of Wuhan, who allowed the virus to spread unchecked in January 2020, but it seems some in the media and politics would rather play to fear and division than they would hold China’s unelected leaders accountable.

Even if vaccines ease the effects of Coronavirus, tension between the CCP and the world will linger over ongoing trade battles, the lack of admission of human rights violations and Xi Jinping’s various geopolitical power plays.

If politicians and media cannot strike a more subtle tone – separating the CCP party and Chinese people – we could see the type of post-9/11 attacks that were the result of demonizing of predominantly Muslim nations.

Of course there is the fact that CCP wolf warrior diplomats love to ‘cry wolf’ when it comes to the issue of anti-Chinese racism and use it as a diversionary propaganda tool.

Last year the CCP attempted to contribute to wedge politics in Australia, playing to western sensitivities around racism, with a ministry statement that claimed, without statistical or even anecdotal basis, that “racial discrimination and violence against Chinese and Asian people in Australia have seen a significant increase.”

The CCP attempted similar scare tactics during the 2019 Anti-Elab movement in Hong Kong, state media mouthpieces trying to paint the protesters as anti-mainland thugs.

The truth was that the protest movement was a broad political spectrum all pointed towards common enemies: the CCP and its proxies in Hong Kong, specifically Carrie Lam’s puppet government and the Hong Kong Police Force.

The CCP has no political answers, only blunt force and suppression; that is because it is less a political party than it is a mafia. Sadly, if the CCP continues to seize on any attack as part of a racist agenda or broader anti-China conspiracy it could become self-fulfilling and the wolf warriors could pay the same price as the boy who cried wolf: nobody will believe them.

Even leaving aside the possibilities of hate crimes, this is why it is imperative we talk about the CCP, not China.

The aim should be that Chinese people are liberated from the lash of a ruthless and corrupt regime, not demonized. Being direct and calling the CCP for what it is can help not only bring political pressure, but avoid violence against members of the Chinese diaspora.

It would also be tragic if Hongkongers, having fought so bravely against CCP tyranny, were then the target of persecution on foreign soil having fled to supposed freedom.

(Michael Cox is a journalist and Hong Kong permanent resident currently based in Australia. He has previously written for the South China Morning Post, The Age (Melbourne) and Australian Associated Press.)

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