The West is experiencing a fresh wave of anti-Asian, or more specifically, anti-Chinese racism. All of this was fueled by former President of the United States, Donald J Trump and apparently being carried forward by the Biden administration.
The hate and disliking against ever-so-naïve Chinese people may not be a new thing in the western world, it reached a whole new level during the Covid-19 pandemic. It all started when the United States President blamed it all on the Chinese government in order to divert the attention from his failure to handle the pandemic situation promptly.
Trump fueled the hate against China, which was picked by other anti-China countries, making life difficult for non-political Chinese nationals dueling in countries like the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom (UK).
A new study from UC San Francisco examined nearly 700,000 tweets containing nearly 1.3 million hashtags, the week before and after the president’s tweet on March 16, 2020, to see whether his use of the term “Chinese virus” – an expression that public health experts warned against using – may have led others to use anti-Asian language on Twitter.
They found that users who used the hashtag #chinesevirus were often tended to use more racist hashtags.
A young Chinese student, Jackie Yip, who lives and works in Cardiff, England, describes how the world around her changed after the coronavirus pandemic.
Yip, who has lived in the UK all her life, recalls how her Chinese nationality became a social stigma for her during the initial months of the virus.
“I have [only] stepped out of my house twice in the last two weeks and both times, someone has shouted abuse at me,” said Jackie, who was born in the UK after her parents moved from Hong Kong.
She recalls that receiving a racial slur for being ‘Chinese or ‘Asian’ had always been there, but things got even more intense during the pandemic.
I have not wanted to identify as an ethnic minority, as Chinese, in those circumstances because of the stigma of the association with being Chinese during a pandemic.
UK police data and surveys suggest a rise in racist incidents aimed at Chinese and Southeast Asian communities in the last 12 months. As of now, there are close to 4,000 attacks that have been reported to the STOP AAPI HATE website, and this is an undercount.
For those unaware, the Chinese receive so much hate for this pandemic because the COVID-19 virus initiated from Wuhan, China in December 2019 and spread across the world in no time.
Trump introduced a conspiracy theory, saying that the Chinese have deliberately hit the world with the virus to slow down economies that could challenge the country in the future.
Due to this, Jackie Yip, and hundreds of thousands of people like her across the world, face a continuous threat because their nationality has become a stigma for them.
It’s not like I don’t feel welcome here. It’s just that I remain more conscious of who I am as a person in that space.
Yip confirmed having been receiving more abuses during the pandemic.
“[Previously], I could without a racial abuse for like 12 months straight, but now it just hits you in the face.
She maintains that life in the post-pandemic world has become ever so difficult for her. She recalled a moment when she was sitting with her friends in November 2019, discussing the virus.
They were so conscious that whenever I coughed or sneezed, people thought I had, not because of the malady or symptoms I show, but because of my ethnicity.
‘Don’t feel safe’
Shirley Au-Yeung, a member of the Chinese in Wales Association, has also expressed concerns over rising violence against the Chinese community in Wales, saying that she doesn’t feel safe in the UK anymore. She is also concerned that the coronavirus will have a lasting impact on attitudes towards the Chinese community.
Shirley recalled that since moving to Wales in 2005, she always felt welcome in the country, but things have rapidly changed after the pandemic.
“Community members are telling me that during this pandemic they don’t feel that secure anymore… they feel less welcome and don’t feel safe anymore. I’m also feeling like that, living here since 2005, I have never experienced this kind of feeling,” she concluded.
Leave a Reply