Anti-China Rhetoric and Asian American Identity: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Abstract

What are the implications of US-China competition for Asian American identity and political behavior? Using several pre-registered survey experiments, we explore how increasing the salience of anti-China rhetoric affects East and Southeast Asian Americans' affinity with their ethnic, racial, and American identities as well as how it influences considerations of race and ethnicity in their political engagement. We find that anti-China rhetoric leaves respondents' identities unchanged but has strong and consistent consequences for East and Southeast Asian Americans' political preferences. It causes them to support co-ethnic rather than panethnic political candidates and to support fundraisers that benefit their co-ethnic group rather than Asian Americans more broadly. Overall, these results suggest that East and Southeast Asian Americans seek to distance themselves from the targeted group and are more likely to embrace their ethnic group when exposed to anti-China rhetoric.