Anti-China sentiment spreads around the globe along with coronavirus

[webfact]

Anti-China sentiment spreads around the globe along with coronavirus

By Stanley Widianto and Khanh VU

 

FILE PHOTO: A sign which says the shop is not accepting Chinese customers because of the corona virus is seen on the front door of a nail bar in the island of Phu Quoc, Vietnam, January 27, 2020. Sophie Carsten/Handout via REUTERS

 

JAKARTA/HANOI (Reuters) - The coronavirus outbreak has stoked a wave of anti-China sentiment around the globe, from shops barring entry to Chinese tourists, online vitriol mocking the country's exotic meat trade and surprise health checks on foreign workers.

 

The virus, which originated in China, has spread to more than a dozen countries, many of them in Southeast Asia which has sensitive relations with China amid concerns about Beijing's vast infrastructure spending and political clout in the region and sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea.

 

Authorities and schools in Toronto, Canada, were moved to warn against discrimination towards Chinese Canadians, while in Europe there was anecdotal evidence of Chinese residents facing prejudice in the street, and hostile newspaper headlines.

 

"Orientalist assumptions plus political distrust plus health concerns are a pretty powerful combination," said Charlotte Setijadi, and anthropologist who teaches at Singapore Management University.

 

Chinese authorities have said the virus emerged from a market selling illegally traded wildlife, giving rise to widespread social media mocking of China's demand for exotic delicacies and ingredients for traditional medicine.

 

"Stop eating bats," said one Twitter user in Thailand, the top destination for Chinese tourists. "Not surprising that the Chinese are making new diseases," another Thai user posted alongside a video clip that showed a man eating raw meat.

 

"Because your country is beginning (to) spread disease...we do not accept to serve the guest from China," read a sign in English outside the Danang Riverside hotel in the central Vietnamese city of the same name. Authorities later told the hotel to remove the sign, its manager said in a Facebook post.

 

Vietnam, which was under Chinese occupation centuries ago and contests Beijing's sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea, has particularly fraught relations with China.

 

But it is not alone in the region.

 

Over 60% of respondents to a poll of Southeast Asian officials, academics and other professionals said in a survey this month that they distrusted China. Nearly 40% said they thought China was "a revisionist power and intends to turn Southeast Asia into its sphere of influence". The survey did not mention the virus.

 

The Chinese government said it was determined to contain an epidemic it called a "common challenge facing mankind".

 

"Prejudice and narrow-minded words are no good at all," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

 

TRAVEL BANS

Many countries have imposed visa restrictions on travellers from Hubei province - the epicentre of the virus - while some airlines have suspended all direct flights to mainland China.

 

But this is not enough for hundreds of thousands of people in South Korea and Malaysia who have signed online petitions urging authorities to ban Chinese from visiting their countries.

 

In an unusual move, Samal Island in the southern Philippines on Thursday banned not just tourists from China but from all countries affected by the coronavirus to the popular beach spot.

 

China's boom in outbound tourism has created a pattern of international travel unprecedented in human history and driven the growth of businesses to serve Chinese travellers around the world. From a trickle in the 1980s, Chinese tourist numbers grew to estimates of more than 160 million in 2019.

 

In France, whose capital Paris is a major draw for Chinese visitors and which has a significant Chinese population, local Asians created a Twitter hashtag #Jenesuispasunvirus ("I am not a virus") to report abuse, especially in public transport.

 

Sun Lay Tan, a 41-year-old manager in the creative industries sector, said the man seated next to him in his Paris subway ride changed seat then put a scarf over his mouth.

 

"That was really shocking," said Tan, who was born in France of Chinese and Cambodian origin. "I felt really stigmatised".

 

(Reporting by Stanley Widianto in Jakarta, Khanh Vu and Phuong Nguyen in Hanoi, Chayut Setboonsarng in Bangkok, Karen Lema in Manila, Thu Thu Aung in Yangon, Joseph Sipalan in Kuala Lumpur and Josh Smith in Seoul; Caroline Pailliez in Paris and Ben Blanchard; Writing by John Geddie in Singapore; Editing by Nick Macfie)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-01-31

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[Somtamnication]

Guilty. They eat bat soup, eat live frogs then eat their hearts, a millennia of bogus medical practices with rhino horns and tiger paws. They are strange people; yearly, the flu variations come from China. The Chinese government is always  lying to its people. Why should we believe them outside of China?

 

We have every right to be afraid. That is not bigotry, it is fact. 

[Creasy]

The Thai government still loves you China ????

[PremiumLane]

12 minutes ago, Somtamnication said:

Guilty. They eat bat soup, eat live frogs then eat their hearts, a millennia of bogus medical practices with rhino horns and tiger paws. They are strange people; yearly, the flu variations come from China. The Chinese government is always  lying to its people. Why should we believe them outside of China?

 

We have every right to be afraid. That is not bigotry, it is fact. 

Questions, do you think every single Chinese person is the same?

Do you think a Canadian-Chinese person, who hasn't been to China in years, or was born in Canada should be harrassed in the street for being Chinese?

If there was a virus outbreak in your home country, how would you feel if people suddenly start harassing you, just because of your nationality? 

[Eric Loh]

1 hour ago, Somtamnication said:

Guilty. They eat bat soup, eat live frogs then eat their hearts, a millennia of bogus medical practices with rhino horns and tiger paws. They are strange people; yearly, the flu variations come from China. The Chinese government is always  lying to its people. Why should we believe them outside of China?

 

We have every right to be afraid. That is not bigotry, it is fact. 

It’s not fact and it’s a bigoted and racially charged view. 
 

You are wrong to single out the Chinese eating exotic food. China not the only country to eat exotic creatures. If you imply that eating is cause of the disease; you dead wrong as droppings and association rather than eating have been medically proven to be the causes. 
 

Again wrong to claim flu variations come from China. MERS originated from Middle East. Normal flu is just as dangerous. In US between the months of Oct - Nov, 910-2,400 people died from flu and 16,000-29,000 people hospitalized according to CDC reports. 
 

China is perhaps the only country in the world that can ordered a lockdown of a province of 11 million people by a single order. They are just as concern with the disease severity as the whole world. Many global health organizations including WHO are involved in stopping the spread. You can’t lie with such large exposure coverage by the world. 

[crabbie2020]

Chinese are some of the most racist people on earth, even to their own kind e.g. muslims, hill tribes. They generally despise anyone foreign.

 

I'll be happy if they are permanently banned from travel! Their fault for putting up with being in a dictatorship!

[XLance]

2 hours ago, Somtamnication said:

Guilty. They eat bat soup, eat live frogs then eat their hearts, a millennia of bogus medical practices with rhino horns and tiger paws. They are strange people; yearly, the flu variations come from China.

H1N2 variation that became known as the 'swine flu' originated in Mexico: Not China, not 'exotic' food, just pigs.

and all other epizootic influenza from pigs leading to epidemics never originated from China.

 

H5N1 variation that became know as the 'avian flu' originated from Hong Kong while it was still under British rule. So technically not China, and no exotic food, just chicken.

 

Most yearly variations of strains of influenza A have nothing to do with food or medical practices and all to do with the antigenic drift of the virus itself. Then 20% of the world population is Chinese, so certainly that counts.

 

2 hours ago, Somtamnication said:

That is not bigotry, it is fact. 

facts right?

 

[richard_smith237]

7 minutes ago, crabbie2020 said:

Chinese are some of the most racist people on earth, even to their own kind e.g. muslims, hill tribes. They generally despise anyone foreign.

 

I'll be happy if they are permanently banned from travel! Their fault for putting up with being in a dictatorship!

 

Bingo !!! We have a Winner....  the Racist Bigots just can’t help themselves and in doing so always manage to out themselves as being highly unintelligent... 

[impulse]

I lived in China for 10+ years and still have an apartment there.  I was 14 hours from hopping a plane to attend a trade show in Beijing this week when I got a message that said it had been cancelled. 

 

I like the people, but I still get the willies every time I'm at a group function and there's a guy across the table coughing and hacking, then dipping his chopsticks into the community bowl we're all eating from.  That's the custom, and if you don't eat from the shared dishes, you go hungry.  I don't care if it's exotic food or not.  It's not hygienic, and I guaranty you that it played a huge role in the rapid spread of the coronavirus. 

 

They got away from shared dishes for a few months during the SARS epidemic, but that was soon forgotten.

 

Edited January 31, 2020 by impulse

[Emmess]

10 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

 

Bingo !!! We have a Winner....  the Racist Bigots just can’t help themselves and in doing so always manage to out themselves as being highly unintelligent... 

Please be a little patient in the future. This has just started and you have already declared a winner ????

[spiekerjozef]

Perfectly normal sign on that door in the current situation.

[sucit]

I don't get it. Don't get it at all.

 

Isn't it "people who have been to China" that are the threat? Not all people in China are Chinese.

 

What do they do anyway, check passports? Well, what if a Thai who had been living in China for ten years went to the shop, he would be ok?

[XLance]

5 minutes ago, spiekerjozef said:

Perfectly normal sign on that door in the current situation.

I'm sure there is enough acetone and toluene in the air of that nail salon to kill any germ ????

[rabas]

3 hours ago, PremiumLane said:

If there was a virus outbreak in your home country, how would you feel if people suddenly start harassing you, just because of your nationality? 

I would absolutely understand, and accept, that they were worried about catching a disease from me.

[Mavideol]

3 hours ago, webfact said:

"Because your country is beginning (to) spread disease...we do not accept to serve the guest from China," read a sign in English outside the Danang Riverside hotel in the central Vietnamese city of the same name. Authorities later told the hotel to remove the sign, its manager said in a Facebook post.

Thailand should learn from it's neighbors and not be so greedy.....health/safety and well being of Thailand citizens and residents should their #1 priority

[Eric Loh]

25 minutes ago, impulse said:

I lived in China for 10+ years and still have an apartment there.  I was 14 hours from hopping a plane to attend a trade show in Beijing this week when I got a message that said it had been cancelled. 

 

I like the people, but I still get the willies every time I'm at a group function and there's a guy across the table coughing and hacking, then dipping his chopsticks into the community bowl we're all eating from.  That's the custom, and if you don't eat from the shared dishes, you go hungry.  I don't care if it's exotic food or not.  It's not hygienic, and I guaranty you that it played a huge role in the rapid spread of the coronavirus. 

 

They got away from shared dishes for a few months during the SARS epidemic, but that was soon forgotten.

 

Let me assure you that there are no Chinese custom that you must share the food that a rude Chinese has dipped his chopstick. That will be frowned upon by the Chinese. They know hygiene as much as you. It is normal for the restaurant to provide extra chopstick for noddles or vegetable that diners used for picking the food from community bowl. Or a spoon for soup with extra small bowls for individual consumption. What is Chinese custom is that you finish all the food that you take lest it is considered rude. 

[simon43]

They know hygiene as much as you.

 

LoL, I just wet my pants with laughter!!  Can you please explain how hacking up big green sputum lumps in the street is hygienic?

 

[DiJoDavO]

First of all, I bet that 9 out of 10 here doesn't even know any Chinese and get everything from the news. 

 

Second, I could understand the paranoia, but we should also understand that the virus could be spread even if you don't know you have caught it yet. These people weren't even aware about it. And they were just thinking they were healthy. 

 

I've lived a few years in China, most people are not like these people at that market. The majority of Chinese are against and disgusted by eating literally everything. This is done by a small part of China spread through the country, so it looks like everyone is doing it because you hear about this province and that. But it's done by a minority, so it's ridiculous to blame literally every Chinese for it. 

[impulse]

6 minutes ago, Eric Loh said:

Let me assure you that there are no Chinese custom that you must share the food that a rude Chinese has dipped his chopstick. That will be frowned upon by the Chinese. They know hygiene as much as you. It is normal for the restaurant to provide extra chopstick for noddles or vegetable that diners used for picking the food from community bowl. Or a spoon for soup with extra small bowls for individual consumption. What is Chinese custom is that you finish all the food that you take lest it is considered rude. 

 

So you're saying I got it wrong for over 10 years that I lived there?  That we weren't all dipping into the shared dishes?  Because I'd have sworn that we were.  And that's not really a hard thing to differentiate.

 

 

Edited January 31, 2020 by impulse

[Eric Loh]

3 minutes ago, simon43 said:

 

 

 

LoL, I just wet my pants with laughter!!  Can you please explain how hacking up big green sputum lumps in the street is hygienic?

 

Just helping out the ill-informed. Spitting is banned in China, frowned upon the people and happen everywhere is the world. Now clean up your pants, 

[Mavideol]

37 minutes ago, impulse said:

I lived in China for 10+ years and still have an apartment there.  I was 14 hours from hopping a plane to attend a trade show in Beijing this week when I got a message that said it had been cancelled. 

 

I like the people, but I still get the willies every time I'm at a group function and there's a guy across the table coughing and hacking, then dipping his chopsticks into the community bowl we're all eating from.  That's the custom, and if you don't eat from the shared dishes, you go hungry.  I don't care if it's exotic food or not.  It's not hygienic, and I guaranty you that it played a huge role in the rapid spread of the coronavirus. 

 

They got away from shared dishes for a few months during the SARS epidemic, but that was soon forgotten.

 

I, like you,  lived in China 12+ years, did you ever visited their local markets, with live poultry/fish, etc. and how clean they are, all disinfected on a daily basis (sarcasm) 555 one thing Chinese don't know & don't want to know about it's hygiene

[Eric Loh]

3 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

So you're saying I got it wrong for over 10 years that I lived there?  That we weren't all dipping into the shared dishes?  Because I'd have sworn that we were.  And that's not really a hard thing to differentiate.

 

 

You said it’s a custom and I corrected you. Does this still happen, bet it does everywhere in the world. Next time if that happen, you can single out that rude Chinese and the other diners will praise you for that. 

[metisdead]

An off topic post has been removed. 

[impulse]

1 minute ago, Eric Loh said:

Just helping out the ill-informed. Spitting is banned in China, frowned upon the people and happen everywhere is the world. Now clean up your pants, 

 

Seriously?   Remember those guys sitting across the table from me, coughing and hacking before they dipped their chopsticks into the shared dishes?  Often as not, they'd hack it onto the floor of the restaurant.  Another one of those things that is hard to get wrong when you're right there.

 

[impulse]

3 minutes ago, Eric Loh said:

You said it’s a custom and I corrected you. Does this still happen, bet it does everywhere in the world. Next time if that happen, you can single out that rude Chinese and the other diners will praise you for that. 

 

How do you define "custom", then?    'Cause I define it as what happens on a daily basis.  If it's 9 times out of 10, that's a custom.

 

And I never singled out Chinese, in China, doing what's customary.  That would be rude.

 

Edited January 31, 2020 by impulse

[Mavideol]

Just now, impulse said:

 

How do you define "custom", then?    'Cause I define it as what happens on a daily basis.  If it's 9 times out of 10, that's a custom.

 

 

but sometimes customs are also called "lack of education"

[Bluespunk]

4 hours ago, webfact said:

Stop eating bats," said one Twitter user in Thailand, the top destination for Chinese tourists. "Not surprising that the Chinese are making new diseases," another Thai user posted alongside a video clip that showed a man eating raw meat.

 

"Because your country is beginning (to) spread disease...we do not accept to serve the guest from China," read a sign in English outside the Danang Riverside hotel in the central Vietnamese city of the same name.

How easy it is for racist xenophobes to latch onto any story to expose their prejudices.

Edited January 31, 2020 by Bluespunk
Overly harsh, though accurate, words removed

[Bluespunk]

49 minutes ago, spiekerjozef said:

Perfectly normal sign on that door in the current situation.

We obviously have different definitions of “perfectly normal”. 

[giddyup]

4 hours ago, PremiumLane said:

 

If there was a virus outbreak in your home country, how would you feel if people suddenly start harassing you, just because of your nationality? 

I'd stop eating endangered wildlife, bats, live mice etc. for a start.

[FritsSikkink]

4 hours ago, PremiumLane said:

Questions, do you think every single Chinese person is the same?

Do you think a Canadian-Chinese person, who hasn't been to China in years, or was born in Canada should be harrassed in the street for being Chinese?

If there was a virus outbreak in your home country, how would you feel if people suddenly start harassing you, just because of your nationality? 

You can't fix stupid