More and more people are realizing the People’s Republic of China is not America’s friend.

Many Americans first became suspicious with the bug China itself originally called the “Wuhan virus”; shrouding the Wuhan lab’s gain-of-function research in a conspiracy of silence only deepened mistrust.

Others took quiet account earlier, when fentanyl overdoses, now the leading cause of death for Americans 18 to 49, struck close to home.

The spectacular provocation of one spy balloon after another over America’s military installations, accompanied by preposterous denials and reversed accusations of aggression, tipped the scale for more.

Add China’s secret police operations in America, China’s push to displace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, China’s unprovoked and aggressive militarization on land, ocean, air and space, the scourge of TikTok on our youth, and you get a groundswell of aversion against China.

Even dictatorships hate negative press.

The benign image China nurtured over the years with the tried-and-true technique of corrupting your enemy was wrecked by the breadth, speed and aggressiveness of President Xi Jinping’s offensive against America.

Hence the new human-shield ploy.

China’s human-shield script is simple: Don’t you dare criticize China, or you’re inflaming “anti-Asian hate.”

Don’t you dare question acquisitions of strategic assets in America by China or Chinese-American fronts, or you’re inflaming “anti-Asian hate.”

To drive the point home, Chinese-American protesters suddenly emerge when measures are taken to counter China, as with Florida’s SB264 — and their posters demand: “Stop anti-Asian hate!”

This is sheer nonsense. America’s national interests must never be held hostage to such blackmail.

And for all the reasons listed above, Xi Jinping’s China is a national threat.

Americans trace ancestries to foreign lands, yet when required by national interests, America justifiably confronted those foreign states and even went to war against them.

During World War II, Americans of German, Italian and Japanese descent served patriotically in the armed forces and impressed America with their exceptional bravery. 

General Dwight Eisenhower, America’s supreme commander in Europe, had German ancestry himself.

Yes, the Japanese-American internment, as well as the smaller-scale German-American and Italian-American internments, was problematic and is now widely reviled.

America got better.

There will always be individual bigots, but during the Korean and Vietnam wars, there were no internments or widespread attacks against Americans of Korean and Vietnamese descent.

Same with Russian Americans during the Cold War.

Yes, America can tell the difference between China the regime and Americans of Chinese descent.

When China-connected interests buy farmland near US military bases — which the Florida bill prohibits — the resulting debate is not racist against Chinese Americans.

It is a necessary national-interest debate.

Nor do the facts of actual attacks against Asian Americans support China’s narrative.

The street-muggers, store-robbers, subway thugs, drug addicts and mentally ill, who make up the vast majority of those attacking Asian Americans, are hardly geopolitical patriots worried about China’s construction of military artificial islands in disputed seas.

Finally, many Chinese Americans came to the United States after Tiananmen Square, know Mao’s Cultural Revolution firsthand and deeply appreciate the liberties America promises.

They, along with freedom-lovers from Taiwan and Hong Kong, are among the strongest critics of China.

To smear these Asians with “anti-Asian hate”? Outrageous.

Countering China’s threats against America’s national interests should be bipartisan.

But Democrats, all leaning or far left, can’t get past China’s blackmail because it’s just a variation of the familiar race card Democrats play to guard their agendas.

Virginia Democrats, for example, recently voted down a proposal for schools to teach about the 100 million people killed by communist regimes.

The Democrats argued that since most communist regimes are Asian, teaching the evils of communism would fan anti-Asian hate.

This is exactly using Asian Americans as human shields for Democrats’ real agenda to continue indoctrinating students in the greatness of socialism. 

China found a ploy Democrats themselves use and therefore can’t call out.

To both China and Democrats: Stop using Asian Americans as human shields for your agenda.

To fellow Asian Americans: Refuse to become human shields for China or for Democrats in their race-card ploys.

Both harm America. No one should be, or use, human shields.

Wai Wah Chin is the founding president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York.