Ugly American has been replaced on the world stage…

• Published date: 09 January 2019
• Publication title: The Nation - Thailand

In 1958, Americans William Lederer and Eugene Burdick wrote a thinly disguised novel about their country's outrageous conduct - a dangerous mix of determined ignorance and blithe arrogance - in Southeast Asia.

The book carried a title that became a catchphrase and then a damning definition. 'The Ugly American', which sold millions of copies, became shorthand for the brash, America-is-best, why-don't-the-locals-speak-English kind of US tourist. The description is still useful today. As Michael Meyer noted in the New York Times in 2009, 'the phrase is shorthand for our compatriots who wear tube tops to the Vatican or shout for Big Macs in Beijing … drunken backpackers or seniors sporting black socks'. For the most recent example of ugly-American behaviour many pointed to Miss USA Sarah Rose Summers at the Miss Universe competition last month, when she expressed her mocking concern that another contestant did not speak her language. 'Could you imagine? Miss Cambodia is here and doesn't speak any English, and not a single other person speaks her language… Poor Cambodia.' But as Meyer's reconsideration of the novel, half a century after its first publication, notes: 'The Ugly American' was not actually about 'impolitic travellers' or about them alone but rather 'the so-called educated elite of the [American] diplomatic corps, whose insensitivity to local language and customs' undermines the very objectives of American public diplomacy (or empire-making). To borrow the introductory language of the Ugly American Book Club (yes, there is such a thing): 'Its title remains a catch-phrase for incompetent and insensitive US diplomats, arrogant entrepreneurs, and even travellers and tourists from the States who act badly abroad.'

In the last few years, the country with the top reputation for diplomats, entrepreneurs and travellers acting badly abroad has been claimed by a new superpower: China. While the controversial and sometimes outrageous behaviour of some Chinese tourists has become fodder for social media, it must be said that the paradigm of the Ugly Chinese was set by Chinese officials themselves. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Papua New Guinea last November, China...