Liberalism has always been at least implicitly, often explicitly, anti-Asian ideology in Eastern Europe - in countries like Poland and Ukraine, Atlanticist propagandists have been scaring people with the prospect of going under "backward Asiatic despotism" like the Muscovite realm. And in Russia itself, Sinophobia has been one of the main themes of Russian Zapadniks - "we gotta ally ourselves with the West or China will swallow us!"