Across the US political spectrum television networks and politicians – including Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden – have warned about China’s influence as it has grown into a global economic and political heavyweight. The common thread of those warnings is that Beijing’s authoritarian system of governance is a threat to a rules-based world order.

But Carlson and Ingraham have gone further, painting US companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter, along with Hollywood and other elites, as complicit in what they call a “Chinese takeover” – rhetoric some commentators say is fuelling anti-Asian sentiment in the country.

Carlson has said US social media companies engage in censorship “with all the ruthlessness of Chinese authoritarians, but with double the self-righteousness”. He hosted a segment in April that explored how “China’s long tentacles extend deep into American media” – imagery that has historically been associated with conspiracies about malign Jewish influence.

Tobita Chow, director of the progressive advocacy group Justice is Global, said for the conservative media and its audience, China had come to serve as a unifying explanation for everything that was going wrong in the US.

“It’s playing a very similar role as anti-Semitic conspiracy theories … where it organises all of their fears, all of their prejudices, and collects them all into one big, global Chinese conspiracy,” Chow said. Attacking China was “becoming increasingly central to the Republican sense of identity”, he said.

Recent polls seem to back that up.

About 67 per cent of people identifying as Republicans said China was a “critical threat” to the US, in a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs released on September 17. That was the highest percentage among all possible choices. For respondents listed as Democrats, China was not among the top seven threats listed.

Yan, a former postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong’s school of public health, had told Carlson the coronavirus “is not from nature, it is a man-made virus created in the lab”.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also said there was “evidence” the pathogen came from a laboratory in the city of Wuhan, where the virus first emerged and was identified.

However, there is no publicly available evidence to support these claims and most scientists have dismissed the theory, including those at the university where Yan worked.

03:21

Chinese respiratory disease expert on origins of Covid-19 and Wuhan virus lab conspiracy theories

Chinese respiratory disease expert on origins of Covid-19 and Wuhan virus lab conspiracy theories

An analysis in the scientific journal Nature in March by a team of American, British and Australian researchers said the virus had none of the hallmarks of genetic engineering.

Still, Carlson’s interview with the virologist Yan attracted 5 million viewers and later received a combined 3.5 million views on Facebook and YouTube.

After Facebook placed a disclaimer over the interview, saying it contained disinformation, Carlson said the social media site did so “on behalf of the Chinese government”.

In a May poll by The Economist and YouGov, 70 per cent of Republicans in the US said they believed the coronavirus was definitely or probably created in a Chinese laboratory.

“They would benefit greatly, obviously, by destabilising the United States,” Ingraham said.

Earlier the same month, she asked her 3.7 million Twitter followers to “raise your hand if you believe the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] has its hands in the riots and the current push to destabilise America”.

She also said US universities were being undermined by Beijing by accepting funds from China and “a huge number of Chinese students” who she said were “hand-picked by the CCP”.

Carlson’s transformation on television into a staunch Beijing critic can be traced to early 2018, just as Trump’s own stance towards China’s trade tactics and behaviour began to harden.

In April of that year, Carlson started a new segment – “The China Threat”. In total, 31 of his shows in 2018 featured segments on China – compared to five in all of 2017.

By 2019, that number had jumped to 40, and so far this year he has run 64 segments critical of Beijing’s government.

“Some in the Republican Party see China as their saviour,” said Christopher Preble, co-director of the New American Engagement Initiative at the Atlantic Council, a non-partisan think tank.

They believed it helped justify goals such as increased military spending, he said.

“It’s just too easy for people to slip into a cultural framework, and even a racialised framework,” Preble said. The US had seen that pattern before towards the Irish, Chinese, Japanese and Germans, he said.

Chow said the tone of the debate about China was contributing to a spike in anti-Asian racism and hate crimes.

The partisan nature of the issue was shown in a September House of Representatives proposal condemning anti-Asian racism that only received support from 14 Republican members, he said.

“The narrative on the right is now that claims of anti-Asian racism function as a way to defend the CCP against criticism, and are perhaps even being organised by the CCP,” Chow said.

Activists against Asian racism now faced implicit questions about their loyalty as US citizens, he said.

“Anti-Asian racism becomes … a test of whether you are siding with the United States or siding with China. If you complain about anti-Asian racism, you are in effect siding with China against the United States.”