[Fears of the outbreak have fueled xenophobia
as a wave of panic spreads, sometimes outstripping practical concerns.]
By
Motoko Rich
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South
Korean protesters calling for a ban on Chinese visitors. Credit
Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press
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In Japan, the hashtag
#ChineseDon’tComeToJapan has been trending on Twitter. In Singapore, tens of
thousands of residents have signed a petition calling for the government to ban
Chinese nationals from entering the country.
In Hong Kong, South Korea and Vietnam,
businesses have posted signs saying that mainland Chinese customers are not
welcome. In France, a front-page headline in a regional newspaper warned of a
“Yellow Alert.” And in a suburb of Toronto, parents demanded that a school
district keep children of a family that had recently returned from China out of
classes for 17 days.
The rapid spread of the coronavirus that has
sickened about 9,800 people — the overwhelming majority in China, with all of
the 213 deaths there — has unleashed a wave of panic and, in some cases,
outright anti-Chinese sentiment across the globe.
While officials scramble to contain the
crisis — the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency and
the State Department issued a “do not travel” to China advisory — fears over
the dangerous outbreak have fueled xenophobia. And the wave of spreading panic
has, at times, far outstripped practical concerns.
At a time when China’s rise as a global
economic and military power has unsettled its neighbors in Asia as well as its
rivals in the West, the coronavirus is feeding into latent bigotry against the
people of mainland China.
“Some of the xenophobia is likely undergirded
by broader political and economic tensions and anxieties related to China,
which are interacting with more recent fears of contagion,” said Kristi
Govella, an assistant professor of Asian studies at the University of Hawaii,
Manoa.
Some of the response to the outbreak can be
seen as a rational calculation based on the risk of infection: Airlines are
canceling flights to Wuhan, the center of the epidemic, and other Chinese
cities, and conference organizers are asking Chinese delegations not to attend.
Late Thursday, Italy’s prime minister said
that his country had blocked all flights to and from China. And countries like
Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia and Vietnam have temporarily stopped issuing
certain classes of visas to travelers from Hubei Province, where Wuhan is
situated, or China altogether.
“I think it is time to put a temporary ‘do
not enter’ sign on our doorstep for visitors from China,” said Ralph Recto, a
lawmaker in the Philippines.
Bangkok residents are avoiding malls that are
particularly popular with Chinese tourists. A plastic surgery office in the
wealthy Gangnam neighborhood of Seoul has instructed employees that they can
see Chinese customers only if they can prove that they have been in South Korea
for 14 days or more, the potential period that the virus can lie dormant.
At a sushi restaurant in the neighborhood
that once housed the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, where about 90 percent of
the customers are Chinese, Yaeko Suenaga, 70, a server, said she understood why
some stores might want to reject visitors from China.
“I don’t think this fear comes from
discrimination,” Ms. Suenaga said, “but from the true fear that humans have of
getting infected with a virus that may lead to death.” Ms. Suenaga said that
her restaurant would continue to welcome all customers, but that workers would
wear masks.
It is not always easy to discern the boundary
between understandable fear and unmistakable discrimination. But some
protective measures have effectively amounted to racial or ethnic profiling.
At Bread Box, a banh mi restaurant in central
Hoi An, a popular tourist outpost in Vietnam, the owners posted a makeshift
sign outside their storefront this month reading, “We can’t service for
Chinese, SORRY!” Up the coast, the Danang Riverside Hotel announced on Saturday
that it would not accept any Chinese guests because of the virus.
Kwong Wing Catering, a small restaurant chain
in Hong Kong, announced in a Facebook post on Wednesday that it would serve
only patrons speaking English or Cantonese, the city’s native language — a
tongue distinct from the Mandarin spoken on the mainland. The business has been
a vocal supporter of the Hong Kong democracy movement that has risen up in
defiance of Beijing.
Public health experts said they understood
some of the impulses. “In a sense, it’s a natural reaction to try to distance
yourself from a potential cause of illness, particularly when there’s no known
cure,” said Karen Eggleston, director of the Asia health policy program at the
Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.
But examples in both mass and social media
have clearly crossed a line. In Australia, The Herald Sun, a Murdoch-owned
newspaper, published the words “China Virus Panda-monium” over an image of a
red mask. More than 46,000 people from the resident Chinese community in
Australia signed a petition that called the headline “unacceptable race
discrimination.”
Le Courrier Picard, a regional newspaper in
northern France, caused outrage with its “Yellow Alert” headline this month.
The newspaper later apologized.
On Twitter in Japan, where there has long
been unease about the conduct of Chinese tourists, commenters have labeled them
“dirty” and “insensitive” and have called them “bioterrorists.”
Disinformation is also running high. A
much-viewed YouTube video in South Korea claims that a biochemical weapons
facility in China leaked the coronavirus, a theory that has gained currency in
other corners of the globe. In Australia, a fake post circulating on Instagram
warned that shops in Sydney containing items like fortune cookies, rice and “Chinese
Red Bull” were contaminated.
The episodes of racism have swept up other
people of Asian descent. In France, one Vietnamese woman told the newspaper Le
Monde that she had been insulted by a car driver who shouted “Keep your virus,
dirty Chinese!” and “You are not welcome in France” as he sped away through a
puddle, splashing her.
In Australia, Andy Miao, 24, an ethnic
Chinese Australian who returned this month from a trip to China, said that
passengers on public transport gave him odd looks if he was not wearing a face
mask.
“It makes people like me who are very, very
Australian feel like outsiders,” Mr. Miao said. “It’s definitely invoking a lot
of past racial stereotypes.”
The Chinese — and Asians in general — were
subjected to similar xenophobic reactions during the SARS epidemic of 2003. But
now far more Chinese are traveling abroad: According to the Ministry of Culture
and Tourism, Chinese travelers made about 150 million overseas trips in 2018,
up more than 14 percent from the previous year.
China’s lockdown of tens of millions of
people, intended to curb the spread of the virus, may be spurring other
governments to overreact, said Koichi Nakano, a political scientist at Sophia
University in Tokyo.
“The fact that the Chinese government itself
is treating people like that would in some ways enable or encourage some of the
other people or governments to take equally draconian measures,” Mr. Nakano
said.
Some governments are trying to ease the
panic. In Toronto, politicians, a school board and some community groups have
issued public appeals to avoid a repetition of the racism that swept the city
in 2003, when SARS killed 44 people there.
“While the virus can be traced to a province
in China, we have to be cautious that this not be seen as a Chinese virus,” the
school board in the York Region, a suburb with many Asian residents, said in a
statement issued on Monday. “At times such as this, we must come together as
Canadians and avoid any hint of xenophobia, which in this case can victimize
our East Asian Chinese community.”
Although Indonesia has suspended flights from
Wuhan, the governor of West Sumatra, Irwan Prayitno, ignored a plea from a
citizens group to reject all Chinese tourists. On Sunday, he went to the
airport to welcome 174 Chinese visitors from the southwestern city of Kunming.
In the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo,
which is often thronged with Chinese tourists, Michiko Kubota, who runs a
clothing boutique, said she hoped the Japanese government might do more to help
China, such as by sending masks or other medical supplies.
“Japan and China may be critical of each
other sometimes, but the kindness is mutual,” Ms. Kubota said. “I hope we could
do more to help eradicate fear in China as well.”
Reporting was contributed by Ian Austen,
Hannah Beech, Aurelien Breeden, Jason Gutierrez, Makiko Inoue, Isabella Kwai,
Su-Hyun Lee, Tiffany May, Seth Mydans, Katrina Northrop, Jin Wu, Eimi Yamamitsu
and Li Yuan.
Motoko Rich is Tokyo bureau chief for The New
York Times. She has covered a broad range of beats at the Times, including real
estate (during a boom), the economy (during a bust), books and education.
@motokorich • Facebook
