This is the first part of a series.

Twenty years have passed. The memories from 2001 are somehow still fresh, constructing a clarity that out-orders the blur of the early 2000s. Whether or not 9/11 continues to drive America, its memories continue to fade in and out of our present consciousness; affecting and entrenching America’s perception of itself and its place in the world.

Much has been written about the after-effects of 9/11. Some may believe that after twenty years, the post-9/11 world has finally moved onto new concerns. Climate change, the pandemic, political polarization, culture wars, domestic extremism, anti-intellectualism, technological disruptions, Great Power Competition – an expanding list of growing unease. But when the United States was suddenly made vulnerable that September, that sense of endangerment never truly ceased. The trauma inflicted on American society, culture, and institutions latched onto new and more scattered fears, exacerbating policies and norms that weaken the ideals of what America should be.

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A Glance Back

This section is not about 9/11, but it provides some context for revisiting the threads of the past.

It has been three years since I moved from New York to Beijing. In a place where I had no friends or family, my first few weeks consisted of living in a cramped AirBnB as I sought to adjust to an unfamiliar land. I attempted to consume the staple materials on China, which included Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor, Kissinger’s On China, and two of Peter Hessler’s books – River Town and Oracle Bones.

I was a sloppy reader. In the transitory chaos of that first month, words and phrases intermingled with another, the Chinese and English languages picking and pulling at each other until my mind, already lightly fried by this point, preoccupied itself with the stress-inducing inanities of a public relations job. Even after completing Hessler’s books, much of his experiences were placed on a shelf and forgotten, only to be briefly glanced over in my mind when I stumbled upon the odd street or neighborhood that he mentions. 

Three years later, I reopened Oracle Bones for a fresh read. Revisiting the book affected me in ways I did not anticipate, as the names, references and experiences that he puts to paper suddenly held vigorously deeper impressions on me. Much has changed since my first time around. Jobs have changed, relationships have changed, and many new friends have been met. My experiences in Beijing are in many obvious ways different from Hessler’s China of the early 2000s, but a few shared threads remain between our two periods.

This is not about me, however. Similar to the way Hessler writes, my experiences may be best seen as simply a lens to view broader developments.

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October, 2001

This section is about 9/11.

Twenty years ago, on a mid-October morning, I visited Lower Manhattan. It was an urge that I had relayed to my mother, who accompanied me on the trip. There must have been a remarkable amount of patience and courage within her to take a six-year-old to one of the most haunting places in the world at the time, a recognition that the curiosity of a child had to sometimes be indulged. She was calm on the subway ride there, her soft smile looking on as I kneeled on the seats to peer out the window, gazing at the rooftops of Queens before the 7 Train descended under the East River.

When we emerged from the station, the atmosphere had changed. Haze, tension, emptiness. I don’t remember which station we exited, but it was likely the closest one that the public could access at the time. As we walked south, the air grew heavier, yellowing and thickening in scent. We were approaching Ground Zero.

I was excited. We were getting closer, and confirmation was growing as the streets began to desaturate into grayscale. I picked my pace, paddling my small feet on the thin layers of either dust or ash that had blanketed the roads, signs, buildings- 

“Stop.” 

My mother called out to me. I tried to take her hand, telling her we were so close, we could see something historic, we could-

“No.” She grabbed my arm with finality, the warmth on her face dissipating into a strict assertiveness. It was time to go back.

Being a six-year-old is interesting. You’re lucid enough to remember events with a large degree of clarity, but you might not understand why certain things happen as they do. Years later, when the memories are reconstructed with more weathered experiences, you gain a new appreciation of occurrences that you were incapable of processing at the time. The memory of returning home that day is an example of such.

To get to Manhattan from where we lived in Queens, my mother had driven to a nearby subway station (“To avoid traffic!”), and upon returning, we had to pick up the car from where it was parked. After 9/11, it became the norm to decorate your vehicle with patriotic iconography, and for us, we had two small American flags tucked behind the rear-view mirror. As the locks on the doors popped up and we entered the car, a nearby gaggle of young men took notice.

“Why do they have American flags?” One of them loudly questioned. “I’ve never seen a patriotic Asian before.” A sound from the others followed; an emission of chuckles and jeers. I looked at my mother in puzzlement. She was ignoring them, and even as we drove away, she didn’t answer my question of why we would be seen as beings incapable of patriotism.

I didn’t understand it at the time. Unlike the grayish-yellow haze that hung over Lower Manhattan, a bright and blue afternoon now shined over Queens. It was my first memory of casual racism.

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Ershi Nian Hou

Twenty Years Later

Upon reading Hessler describe the reactions to 9/11 among ordinary Chinese, it is remarkable to see the rhymes to these reactions in 2021. Afghanistan is once again a topic of discussion around Chinese dinner tables, and American power is once again taunted and disparaged here. However, concerns of regional instability and questions of China’s role going forward have also arisen amongst Chinese citizens once again. Is China in a position where it can take on America’s burden and foster regional stability – albeit with Chinese characteristics? Even if it can, should it? Beijing presently appears to be taking a kinder and hands-off approach to the new Taliban government, but these are broader questions that permeate discussions across various levels of Chinese society, from its leaders to its taxi drivers.

These questions have also led to new debates over America’s ability to affect China’s future. In the lobbies of office buildings and chat rooms, some remark that Afghanistan is the latest decline in American influence, giving further room for China to establish itself globally. These are met with scoldings from more cautious viewpoints, afraid that the withdrawal may better allow America to reallocate resources and increase its backing of Japan, Taiwan, and China’s rival claimants in the South China Sea. Both perspectives may appear to be knee-jerkish, but they reflect a constant that has remained the same since 2001 – global developments pertaining to America are still closely followed in China. This is not a reverence of the United States, but rather a continuous perception – if not an increasingly entrenched one – that the US remains the greatest obstacle to Chinese glory and security.

I am troubled yet unsurprised by this. Nor is the cynical side of me nonplussed that in America, the fuels for the War on Terror from twenty years have not been drained but merely diluted and mixed into new substances. Like their evangelical foundations, American neoconservatism has been born-again to become a more durable form of nationalism. I see this as a strategic application of populism, a yearning for a more advanced Cold War that can provide the American nation with the impetus to pursue greater competence and unity – a unity not seen since the autumn of 2001.

I’ve briefly written about this before: despite the cries of the loudest China hawks emanating from the American right, this strategic populism is a bipartisan project. Whether it is a Hundred-Year Marathon or a Long Game, and whether it is a Democrat or a Republican in the White House, the logic and motivations align because the insecurities are the same. In many ways, this is understandable, as the United States is looking to tackle the unaddressed concerns that have come with China’s growth – the pendulum looking to reorient itself after years of preoccupation with the War on Terror.

Nevertheless, there is a danger to this approach, a mistake that may potentially repeat the mistakes of post-9/11 America.

Twenty years ago, Americans of Arabic heritage or Muslim faith were suddenly forced to prove their loyalty, love, and adherence to American ideals – even as they were assaulted and discriminated against. In some of the lowest displays of cultural recognition, people of the Sikh faith were even blindly attacked as they were confused with Muslims. This was not a mere phase where tensions spiked before gradually returning to normal over time. It imprinted a lasting definition on what it meant to be Muslim in America. Twenty years later, the same may hold true for Chinese-Americans or even Asian-Americans who are perceived to have Chinese heritage.

I was recently contacted by a successful Chinese-American who didn’t see a future for Chinese-Americans in America. They turned to the first half of the demographic’s hyphen for an alternative – they wanted to move to China for good. They had served America, but they realized that the American Dream for them was only a partial ladder that led to a bamboo ceiling. They had no love for China, and they were even trained to see their Chinese counterparts as a potential adversary. But the more they spent their energies on improving their local community and increasing their voice in America, their experiences led them to believe that the China of the future will be better for them than the America of the future.

Even if this calculation proves to be incorrect, it is remarkable that they seemed to have been pushed to this decision not by Chinese propaganda but by their experiences and observation of America’s trajectory.

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The Future

There are plenty of arguments to be found that assert the primary blame for anti-Asian discrimination should be placed on the Communist Party of China, just as there were arguments that the main blame for Muslim discrimination should be placed on Al-Qaeda or Daesh. But even disregarding the logical shortcomings of this belief, as the new Cold War further materializes, the true originator of this societal effect will matter less and less as more innocent Americans continue to be swept into the hurricane.

We can perhaps say that American suspicions of Arabic and Islamic culture have expanded to cover suspicions of China, especially because this time, the adversary is not a nebulous network of non-state actors, but a nation that sees itself as more of a civilization-state, unsatisfied with its modern history and its place in the world. But like the young man who questioned my family’s ability to be patriotic in 2001, perhaps these suspicions did not take much to be incentivized and promulgated.

Even in a supposedly diverse and multicultural society like modern America, the draw of labeling an Other is too strong to avoid. These are lessons that were supposedly learned from the de-Germanization of America in WW1, the Japanese-American internment camps of WW2, and more. They have supposedly been addressed by civil rights movements that are continuing to this day. But as the United States progresses further into what looks to be a decades-long competition with the People’s Republic of China, what will the fate of Chinese-Americans and their identities be?

The question that this series wishes to explore is also one that many in the wake of 9/11 have raised: What does it mean to be part of a nation that sees you as a threat?

This is not just limited to America.