Sinophobia during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Identity, Belonging, and International Politics

Abstract

In many countries, Sinophobia or discrimination against Chinese has taken place amid the Covid-19 pandemic. While this wave of Sinophobia is popularly understood to be based on a stereotypical association of Chinese with coronavirus, I argue that at a time of international tensions surrounding China, political antipathy toward China and Chinese matters as well. Thus, there is a phenomenon of “triple conflation” in which the health, racial, and political/national statuses of Chinese people become intermingled. In this study, I examine this triple conflation based on dozens of select cases covering Sinophobic actions of governments, politicians, media, businesses and lay persons in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe. My study consists of three parts using three respective interdisciplinary approaches. First, using a sociological approach, I argue that the racial and national statuses of Chinese are both, and sometimes interchangeably, used as identity markers for implementing containment, a public health measure that easily leads to stigmatization. Second, using a discursive approach, I examine how political claims unfavorable to China/Chinese are constructed in discussions of the pandemic. Third, using an interpretive approach, I analyze how Covid bio-political metaphors present certain imaginaries depicting Chinese as suspicious bio-political subjects. These three parts are unified in my analysis of the geopolitics of belonging, in which Chinese people’s rights to certain social and physical spaces are contested sometimes thorough administrative means (such as travel restriction) and sometimes through mental representations (such as the imagination of Chinese as alien).

The politics of Chinese immigrants’ double unbelonging and deglobalization

“…Against this backdrop, in the western world there has been increased antipathy toward Chinese immigrants with regard to intellectual property and even national security. The rise of the COVID-19 pandemic has only made things worse, leading to widespread anti-Chinese sentiment based on a conflation of the pandemic, race, and geopolitics (Gao, 2022b). For example, biopolitical metaphors such as the “communist virus” and “sick man of Asia” have capitalized on COVID fears to fuel the US–China conflict (Henninger, 2020; Mead, 2020).…”

Political identities of Chinese international students: Patterns and change in transnational space

“…But a transnational lens would remind us of another aspect of the story: that the political identities of CISs hinge on their changing relations with China. In 2020, many CISs were stranded overseas because China enacted stringent border control measures to reduce foreign‐imported infections (Gao, in press‐a). Notably, CISs of middle‐class backgrounds suffered the most because they could not afford the soaring plane fares caused by the border policy.…”

COVID-19 Racism and Chinese American Families’ Mental Health: A Comparison between 2020 and 2021

“…In addition, both parents (49%) and youth (71%) perceived health-related Sinophobia in America, which was thought to be perpetuated by the media (parents: 50%; youth: 56%) [ 7 ], as people who use social media frequently are more likely to view Chinese as a symbolic threat [ 11 ]. Although previous epidemics (e.g., SARS, H1N1, MERS, Zika, Ebola) also resulted in stigma and xenophobia towards various subgroups from specific regions [ 12 ], the current geopolitical tension between the United States and China, and the intermingling among health, race, and national statuses of Chinese Americans may have intensified Sinophobia and its negative impact on Chinese Americans [ 13 ]. Higher levels of parent- and youth-perceived racism and racial discrimination were associated with numerous indices of poorer mental health [ 7 , 10 , 14 ].…”