ПРОБЛЕМИ ПОМІРНОЇ АМЕРИКАНСЬКОЇ СИНОФОБІЇ 2000–2010 РОКІВ (АНТИКИТАЙСЬКИЙ ДИСКУРС У ТЕКСТАХ С. МАТУШАКА)

Abstract

The author analyses the problems of history and development of anti-Chinese sentiments in the American social and political discourses of the 2000s and 2010s in texts of Sascha Matuszak, intellectual, blogger and publicist who became one of the formatters and active leaders of politically motivated anti-Chinese narratives. The author believes that the current pandemic of coronavirus infection contributed to the rise of anti-Chinese sentiments, and the concepts of Sascha Matuszak became one of the many incentives for modern intensification of anti-Chinese phobias in the world. The article examines the problems of the origins of anti-Chinese fears, features and characteristics of anti-Chinese discourse, Sascha Matuszak’s place and role in modern Sinophobia. It is assumed that anti-Chinese motives in modern American socio-political thought have become one of the “commonplaces” and in fact invented cultural tradition, elites use for legitimizing the Western project and promotion of the image of China as a universal Other. The article shows that anti-Chinese motives in the texts of American intellectuals are different, actualising various forms and dimensions of anti-Chinese political imagination. It is presumed that modern anti-Chinese phobias in American political discourse rooted from the concepts of the “yellow danger” and the “Chinese threat” genetically and historically. The author believes that American publicists imagine China as a universal ideological Other and a country that actualises a meaningfully other and ideologically opposite model of development. The author analyses how Western critics of China imagine features of its political, cultural, economic and social model, integrating them into the great discourse of modern Western Sinophobia. The article assumes that Sascha Matuszak’s ideas actualise the general tendencies in the development of American political activism and civic nationalism because Sinophobia connected ideologically with other national anti-Chinese phobias of the West. The article shows that the growing power and economic role of China, the preservation of the communist regime, Chinese migration and the general growth of the number of Chinese population in particular, are among the factors that stimulate the development of Sinophobia in general.