On Twitter, Bonnie Glaser, Asia Director of the George Marshall Fund of the United States, wrote: “This message will not land well with Japan and South Korea. Does Wang Yi really think that national interests are less important than appearance?”

“The irony of … Wang Yi telling Japanese and Koreans ‘you can never become an American,’ is that Japanese and Koreans become Americans every day,” wrote Jeff M. Smith, director of the Asian Studies Center at U.S. think tank The Heritage Foundation.

“They’re part of the fabric of America. What they can’t become is Chinese. Tone deaf. Again,” Smith wrote.

Avik Roy
@Avik
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“A man wrote me and said: ‘You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.’”—Ronald Reagan, 1989 https://reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-presentation-ceremony-presidential-medal-freedom-5
4:40 PM · Jul 4, 2023

Whether appealing to racial stereotypes or economic or security interests, it’s likely we’ve not seen the last of China’s efforts to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its Indo-Pacific allies.