In a tweet, U.S.-based dissident writer Cao Changqing compared the Black Lives Matter movement to the Cultural Revolution and protesters to the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution who wreaked havoc across China. Trump is viewed by his Chinese fans as a powerful strongman singularly focused on his own survival and dominance, who alone has the resolve to clash with the CCP while a baizuo in his position would be ineffectual and weak.įor the anti-CCP faction in the United States, the “left” is interpreted very literally-and mapped onto the politics of China itself, where left generally meant Maoist and right free-market advocates or anti-Maoist figures. Chinese Trump supporters in the United States certainly seemed drawn to his supposedly tough attitude. Due to the association with Trump, some writers have attributed the popularity of the term to the United States’ failed engagement with China, a kind of toughened pragmatism driven by anti-CCP sentiments. Baizuo gets deployed in particular against anyone seen as putting progressive values ahead of being Chinese-which, in the mind of conservative immigrants, often includes people like Asian supporters of Black Lives Matter. “I was called baizuo on Weibo during the lead up to the 2016 presidential election for not supporting Trump, and it was very hurtful because it was implied that my causes are not genuine and that I was trying to act white, like I forgot who I was,” she said.Īnti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) diaspora Chinese, especially Trump supporters, use the term against those who don’t support Western conservative causes or politicians.
It wasn’t long before Yang herself was called “baizuo” by the same people who made fun of narcissistic white saviors. The “white” came not to mean race but to refer to naivety or ignorance. There’s always an undertone of hypocrisy, privilege, and self-righteousness,” Yang said.īut that meaning soon shifted. “Baizuo evokes white liberals from rich countries with imperialistic pasts who have shallow, simple moralistic views about the world.
students who indulged in poverty tourism to pad their resumes. DD Yang, co-host of popular Mandarin language pop culture podcast Loud Murmurs, said the first time she heard the term baizuo, it was used to describe a group of U.S. Originally bai (白, “white”) was mostly a reference to race, and the term was more subtle. But depending on which side of the Pacific Ocean-or of the U.S.-China conflict-you’re on, just which nation you’re talking about can differ sharply. Today, it is a ubiquitous insult used on China’s internet, hurled at anyone whose views can be framed as laughably naive or directly in conflict with social stability and national security. It means something like “woke”-as said in a sneering tone by conservative critics of progressives. weakness and seeks to take advantage of it.īaizuo (白左, literally “white left”) has been around for 10 years or so-but it rose to greater prominence in the wake of Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency in 2017. liberals, and he warns that China’s government perceives U.S. Jerry Nadler of New York for cautioning against spurring hate crimes against people of Asian descent through the use of the term “China virus.” All this built up to Carlson’s introduction of the term “ baizuo,” which he claims-in part by misrepresenting scholar Chenchen Zhang as part of Chinese state media-is what Chinese people call weak, impressionable U.S. Later in his segment, Carlson belittled Rep. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for supposedly embarrassing the United States in his lack of aggression during his meetings with Chinese delegates. On March 19, Fox News host Tucker Carlson spiritedly disparaged U.S.
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