While recent weeks have seen steady deterioration in the United States’ relationship with Pakistan, the last seven days witnessed an equally rapid warming in its ties with China.
First, President Barack Obama virtually issued a warning to the U.S. Congress at a news conference on Thursday that any legislation that they planned to pass, labelling China as a currency manipulator, should be consistent with the U.S.’ international treaty obligations, including the World Trade Organisation.
On Friday, it was the U.S. Congress itself which took the unprecedented step of issuing to Chinese immigrants in the country a statement of “regret” — as close to an apology that it could come — for six decades of discriminatory policies that targeted this community.
Almost 130 years after Congress voted to ban Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. through the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the Senate passed a resolution expressing regret on Friday for the racial discrimination against Chinese-Americans that that law implied.
“This resolution cannot undo the hurt caused by past discrimination against Chinese immigrants, but it is important that we acknowledge the wrongs that were committed many years ago,” said one of the Senate’s newest members and the bill’s sponsor, Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts.
The resolution apologised not only for the Act for keeping Chinese immigrants away from U.S. shores for sixty years before it was repealed in 1943, but also for several other anti-Chinese laws passed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of San Francisco and a co-sponsor of the bill said, “I hope this resolution will serve to enlighten those who may not be aware of this regrettable chapter in our history.”
The bill further expressed regret for racial violence that occurred in San Francisco and a few other cities during the time, and for the “persecution and harsh detention of Chinese immigrants at the Angel Island Immigration Station,” which operated from 1910 to 1940 in San Francisco Bay, according to reports.
Specific racist statements surrounding the Act were mentioned in the statement of regret including the fact that some Senators at the time believed that “the Chinese people were unfit to be naturalised; the social characteristics of the Chinese were ‘revolting’; Chinese immigrants were ‘like parasites’; and the U.S. ‘is under God a country of Caucasians, a country of white men, a country to be governed by white men’.”
