The political speech of the Chinese diaspora has a long history as a site of critique and co-optation by U.S empire and its enabling discourses. Amidst a new apex in Cold War Sinophobia, we trace the discursive circumscription of “overseas Chinese” as a political category, from Qing-era anti-colonialism to 20th century Cold War liberalism and beyond.

As rich nations stockpile COVID-19 vaccines, China is providing a lifeline to Global South nations spurned by Western pharmaceuticals and excluded by the West’s neocolonial vaccine nationalism. So why is China being smeared for its efforts?

Recent discourse within the U.S. and Singaporean liberal-left has championed “Chinese privilege” as an analytic of power within Singapore and Asia at large. By invoking a Chinese equivalence to whiteness, analyses of “Chinese privilege” not only disavows the material history of racial capitalism in Asia, it appropriates Black and Indigenous critiques of white supremacy to bolster a long history of Singaporean anticommunism in service of U.S. military and ideological supremacy over Asia.

KJ Noh traces the genealogy of U.S. geopolitical strategy in Asia and the Pacific, giving us an inside view of both the realpolitik of U.S. imperial expansion and the architects behind it.

The flags of U.S. client states and anti-communist regimes dotted the sea of MAGA hats and Confederate flags at the pro-Trump Capitol Hill mobs on January 6th. Making sense of why requires understanding the convergence between imperialism abroad and fascism at home.