COVID19: The China Virus?

It didn’t take long, did it? The school yard bullies of America and China to kick-off the World Finger-Pointing Championships.  It’s a conspiracy theory played out on seperate continents, about who actually started COVID19 and sent the planet into Coronavirus pandemic lockdown. As soon as President Trump got wind that a Chinese official had spread the rumour that the virus had been imported to China by U.S. Army personnel, diplomacy (not President Trump’s strong suit), went straight out of the window.

中國病毒19 (Chinese Virus 19) In that moment, the virus became ‘foreign’, an invader purposely sent by another power to wreak havoc on Donald’s people and more importantly the U.S. economy. The term ‘Chinese virus’ began to pepper speeches from the White House podium. ‘Corona’ was hurriedly scratched out and replaced with ‘Chinese’ more and more frequently. When asked if this was racist, Donald replied ‘It’s from China. It comes from China. I want to be accurate.’ He might as well said ‘Me? A lacist? Are you kiddin’?’

My good friend Xi. Up until that point, President Trump had been extremely complimentary about China’s response to COVID19. Regularly chatting to Xi Jinping on the phone, a leader that he had ‘great respect’ for. He’d said Xi was ‘doing a great job’, ‘a professional job’ and that he ‘loved his country'. Saying that the Chinese leader was ‘extremely capable, working hard and professionally’. Why was Donald acting this way? A lucrative U.S./China trade deal of course. Ka-ching!

Nearly 4 Million Americans are Chinese. An estimated 20,000 Chinese-American men fought for the U.S. during World War Two. 3.8 million Americans are of Chinese decent. I wonder how they felt when the invisible enemy known as COVID19, was given the monikers of the ‘Chinese Virus’ and more specifically the ‘Wuhan Virus’? Predictably this blaming tactic has had negative repercussions for Chinese-American communities across the States. With over a 1000 physical and verbal attacks against Asian Americans being reported.

Anti-Asian Racism Across the States. The COVID19 pandemic has just caused deep rooted Anti-Asian feelings in America to come bubbling back up to the surface again. Incidents across 46 states, include an Asian American girl being pushed off her bike in a park and an Asian American family being spat on in a grocery store. This blaming of the Coronavirus coming to America can’t have been helped by President Trump and his cronies fanning Anti-Asian feelings with their ‘China Virus’ rhetoric.  

Xenophobia? Nothing new! America has for centuries harboured strong Anti-Asian ‘forever foreigner’ views. Suggesting Asians, even if they lived in America for aeons, would still be fundamentally foreign and never be fully American. Associations with illness and the ‘weird’ stuff they eat, have re-emerged in relation to the coronavirus pandemic. This deep-rooted racism goes back to the 1800’s with the Chinese Exclusion Act, designed explicitly to prevent Chinese labourers from immigrating to America caused by unwelcome competition in the workplace.

Tweeting Trump! Of course, it doesn’t help when you have a Twitter obsessed man-child in The Whitehouse, mixing up Chinatowns found all over the States, with the actual People's Republic of China. The Exclusion Act of the 1800s not only limited Chinese immigration but prevented Chinese Americans from becoming citizens for years to come. Coinciding with devastating illnesses like smallpox and the plague, occurring around the same time. Causing the Chinese community in San Francisco to be used as medical scapegoats and the root cause of decease.

Ignorance is a virus in itself. Then like now, this racism towards Chinese Americans, was caused by a lack of medical knowledge. Chinatowns were labelled ‘laboratories of infection’. Sound familiar? White America were convinced that Chinese Americans ate rats. Bat-soup anyone? In the 19th Century, they were routinely barred from San Francisco public hospitals.

Sinophobia: Spreading like COVID19. Chinese people around the world are experiencing similar treatment today, with Chinese people being prevented from entering a doctor’s surgery in Germany. ‘We’re not taking any Chinese patients now because of this Chinese virus’. Just when multiculturalism might finally have its day, racism pops up from behind the parapets and says ‘Hello everybody, I never really went away.’