After some US politicians and news outlets tried to denigrate normal US-China cultural and academic exchanges, a China specialist, speaking at a recent talk in Washington, warned about an undertone of McCarthyism.

McCarthyism in the early 1950s was a dark period in US history when US Senator Joseph McCarthy led a massive scare campaign aimed at purging alleged communists in the US government and institutions.

When it was suggested that McCarthyism was too strong a word, the China specialist said it might be better to say witch hunt. But to me, McCarthyism was a witch hunt, only in an extreme way.

The China bashing and fear-mongering in the United States are nothing new, with politicians often indulging in them. I am not referring to the constructive criticism about China, which should be warmly welcomed, but the witch hunting based on utter ignorance, prejudice or malice.

The recent attacks in the US on the Confucius Institute, the China-United States Exchange Foundation headed by former Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-hwa, the Chinese news media operating in the US, Chinese students and scholars studying and teaching in US colleges and universities and Chinese foreign direct investment are examples of this witch hunt.

FBI Director Chris Wray made a shocking comment at the Feb 13 Senate hearing when he said the US should view "the China threat as not just a whole-of-government threat, but a whole-of-society threat" and "it's going to take a whole-of-society response by us". He listed Chinese professors, scientists, students in the US among the threats.

Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida, was equally guilty when he asked the question about "the counterintelligence risk posed to US national security from Chinese students, particularly those in advanced programs in science and mathematics".

No wonder many Asian-American organizations such as The Committee of 100 immediately condemned such racially charged rhetoric.

It is the rhetoric of hate speech. Which is how I condemned the 2012 documentary Death by China based on the book by Peter Navarro and Greg Autry.

The same would apply to Rex Tillerson, the just-sacked US secretary of state, when he tried to incite hatred of China by deliberately distorting the Chinese activities in Africa and Latin America during his recent trips there.

The remarks of US politicians, news media and even pundits when talking about China have become increasingly disturbing; to many of them, it seems to be simply their default mode to vilify China.

Some US lawmakers, pundits and journalists I chatted with recently have denied the existence of such a bias against China. Yet I am not convinced.

In her latest book Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School better known for her parenting memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, talks about how Americans indulge in great ideological battles and how identity politics have seized both the American left and right in a dangerous and racially inflected way, preventing them from correctly understanding and dealing with foreign countries.

Whether it's called McCarthyism or a witch hunt, the trend currently developing in the US should serve as a wake-up call not to repeat a dark period of US history.

The author is deputy editor of China Daily USA.
chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com