Rajagopalan: Our growing Chinaphobia

Last week, the United States welcomed a Chinese leader and reviled a Chinese mother.

With more than 7,000 comments on her controversial Wall Street Journal op-ed - based on her new book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" - and near-universal backlash against her parenting style, her publicity tactics and her personal psychology, Amy Chua seemed at times to be getting more press than Hu Jintao, whose first stateside visit in five years marks a new era of U.S.-Chinese relations.

It's not just Chua's parenting that struck so resounding a chord - it was that she explicitly characterized herself as a Chinese mother. Overlaying general stereotypes of Chinese students as overachieving machines driven to perfection by exacting parents is the ultimate net of modern American anxiety: fear of being a bad parent and fear of being overtaken by China.

In recent years, it's seemed that Chinaphobia has begun to gain on - maybe even outpace - national fears of other geopolitical bogeymen. The fearsome Soviet spy has vanished into the past, and economic troubles dwarf the looming specter of terrorism on the news front pages. But news and entertainment media regularly refer to and depict China as a threat, and its people as somehow less human than ours.

When China became the U.S. government's largest creditor in November 2008, it quickly became conventional wisdom that China was somehow seeking influence over the U.S. economy, as The Washington Post reported the same month. Far more insidious is the oft-repeated claim that China might be buying U.S. debt in some sort of bid to gain power over American domestic and foreign policy decisions. Just last week, CNNMoney published an article headlined "China: the new landlord of the U.S." Such reports are not only inaccurate - creditors don't become legislators - but they are blatantly fearmongering.

Fear of Chinese economic actions often bleeds into fear of China's large population. Commentators on the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies implied that the sight of thousands of young dancers in unison seemed impressive, sure, but vaguely ominous.

Nationwide, writers and thinkers have begun to blame global warming on the Chinese billion, eager to own cars and live in cities, when the United States has long been the world's No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases.

All of this points to a broad media narrative of the Chinese nation and its people as grim and terrifying, reinforced with steady imagery of faceless multitudes and predatory beasts, such as dragons - and, now, tigers. Unlike her all-American counterpart, the Mama Grizzly, the Tiger Mom supposedly goads rather than shields her cubs. She is apparently convinced that the best protection she can provide her children is to make them winners. Are we so convinced as a nation that we are failing as parents? Successful parenting, of course, means different things to different parents - and in China, as here, there are likely thousands, even millions of parents who prize creativity and self-expression over becoming a math genius or violin prodigy. Clearly, the methods Chua describes in her book tap into some deep-seated insecurities not only about our abilities as parents, but also in the abilities of our children to compete in the global marketplace.

Although Chua has been the target of fervent, and occasionally vicious personal attacks for drilling her children like a general or, at one point, calling them garbage, these personal attacks are largely unfounded. No one can know what happens in the privacy of her home (or any other). Instead, we can better understand Chua as the lightning rod for a confluence of our many fears about the future. But as we strive to compete with China and other growing, increasingly powerful economies, we must learn to distinguish our fears from our capabilities.