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Scholars of Sinophone Studies have long critiqued imperialism, but by their actions, they need it. Sinophone Studies scholars have long argued against a world that wants colonialism, but by their actions, actually-existing colonialism isn’t worth the fuss. 

If not, then why have the vast majority of Sinophone Studies scholars, particularly those in positions of leadership, refused to assume a critical public position against Howard Chiang’s acceptance of the Dan David Prize? By now, the facts regarding the Dan David Prize and Chiang’s decision are well established by the several documents disseminated in the Boycott Dan David Prize Campaign: the “Open Letter to the Society of Sinophone Studies regarding Howard Chiang’s Acceptance of the Dan David Prize”; “The Dan David Prize and Liberal Zionist Academic Washing: An Explainer”; and “History of the DDP and its Dissidents”. 

Perhaps Sinophone Studies scholars merely want for courage to draw the line at a leading scholar using the Sinophone Studies project to rehabilitate collaboration with a genocidal state. Perhaps Sinophone Studies scholars believe that opposing Howard Chiang’s genocide-washing could endanger their own careers. If the latter is true, if scholars are reasonably afraid to critique their collaborationist colleague and stand for Palestinian lives, then that speaks to the unsalvageable character of Sinophone Studies as an intellectual community. But that still does not explain the silence among many, many scholars who enjoy tenure and positions of leadership in Sinophone Studies. Surely, among them, there are scholars who oppose the genocide as well as their own academic field being financially bound to collaboration with it. Have these leaders not considered that, by assuming a critical public position, they would not only claw back the credibility of Sinophone Studies, but do so in a way that offers legitimacy to the junior scholars, contingent scholars, and current graduate students who have evidently risked much in standing against Chiang’s actions?  

Yet the leading lights of Sinophone Studies, always keen to announce their career milestones, stay silent. Perhaps this silence is purposive. Perhaps Sinophone studies needs the imperialist logic that has wrought the “Howard Chiang [Blood Money] Research Fund”. We may certainly dispute whether, in the past, Sinophone Studies, with its fair-weather commitments to “decenter China” and champion the “marginalized,” was a project coherent with U.S. imperialism. However, what the Chiang affair demonstrates is that Sinophone Studies has now become part of U.S.–Israeli imperialism, with its attendant pinkwashing, colonialism, and genocide. It has become this not just through the actions of Chiang (though Chiang plays a decisive role and should be duly recognized for this, his latest career milestone), but through the complicit silence of the Society of Sinophone Studies scholars and, more broadly, the unwillingness of Sinophone scholars at all levels of the academy to draw the line at genocide collaboration within their own field.  

Perhaps the senior scholars who choose to stay silent on the Chiang affair should be named. They owe an explanation for their tacit complicity. But today, this is not our concern. This is, in fact, not a question of individual actions. Howard Chiang is also of little interest, as an individual. Chiang is only the symptom of a broader phenomenon in Sinophone Studies and well beyond — that of scholars who cherish their position at any and all cost to their positionality.

The positionality of Sinophone Studies has been long developed through critiques of imperialism. How quickly such critiques evaporate when a monetary award is presented that rehabilitates collaboration with the Israeli state. In accepting this money, Howard Chiang has embraced a new position as friend to imperialism. His action also makes him an implicit foe to the countless students and faculty across the United States, Europe, and beyond who have risked and often suffered consequences for demanding the end of Israeli occupation and genocide. But most egregiously, Chiang is positioned as institutionally hostile to Palestinian lives. Given this, one could be forgiven for believing that Chiang also placed himself at odds with the Society of Sinophone Studies, given its June 15, 2021 commitment to the international Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) movement. What a statement they composed, decrying Israel for settler-colonialism and apartheid. These declarations are only good, however, when followed by meaningful action.

Chiang’s defiance of commitments to BDS within his field and the near-categorical silence of Sinophone Studies scholars marks a transformational moment in Sinophone Studies. It signals the incorporation of U.S.–Israeli imperialism as a structuring, material condition for the future of the field. In addition, the categorical silence imposed around the Chiang affair inscribes this material condition as an ideological norm. Silence on the Chiang affair and all it importunes is no longer a question of individual temerity; it is evidently a condition for being part of the Sinophone Studies community.

This community has generally developed its intellectual project through engagements with postcolonial studies, extending to examinations of queer and trans identity in communities defined as Sinophone. This has been a salient dimension of Howard Chiang’s own scholarship. In accepting the DDP, Chiang has posed a material condition (collaboration with the Israeli state) that reconfigures queer studies within the Sinophone field. Chiang has institutionally fused queer studies to genocide rehabilitation. He does this as Israel continues its bloody colonization of the West Bank and Gaza. Chiang has therefore removed the “post” from “postcolonial,” baptizing queer studies in the blood of colonial violence.  

Jasbir Puar and numerous other critics of Israeli “pinkwashing” have shown the systematic hijacking of queer identity used to legitimize Israeli authority over Palestinians (who are duly smeared as anti-queer). Chiang’s own self-named research fund is now unambiguously inscribed in that pinkwashing logic. This material collaboration by a leading figure of queer studies and its tacit acceptance by the Sinophone Studies community marks a major transformation in how we must regard queer Sinophone Studies. Howard Chiang’s pinkwashing is therefore significant –– if precedented and unexceptional (though allowing that an award be named after yourself is exceptionally tacky).  

Is this what Sinophone Studies scholars want? If Howard Chiang’s actions were received with critique and reflection among the broader community of Sinophone Studies scholars, then this would be a pertinent question. In the face of enduring silence despite numerous efforts at dialogue and blistering critiques, it can only be reasonably concluded that yes, this is what the community wants. And irrespective of what individual scholars may think of what they want, this is now what Sinophone Studies is.  

Howard Chiang is only a symptom of Sinophone Studies as a project bereft of a critical position on the most incisive issue of our present. Sinophone studies scholars will not critique imperialism, colonialism, and pinkwashing –– to say nothing of genocide –– when the call is coming from inside the house. Now, the material organization of Sinophone Studies is bound to its former objects of critique. In the absence of any clear evidence to the contrary, Sinophone Studies scholars are willing to accept the price of collaboration.  

Of course, the true price is and always was paid by the people of Palestine. From the heights of Jade Mountain, it must be difficult to hear them.