Chinese students in the U.S. are confronted with the double jeopardy of virus and stigma amid the COVID19. This study focuses on their choice and impact of mask wearing during this pandemic. How do they navigate and negotiate the troubling and contradictory directives about masks coming from their home and host countries during this pandemic? What are the impacts of their experiences on their attitudes towards the American society? Drawing from stigma theory, we argue that what Chinese students experience when it comes to mask wearing is an exemplar of how stigma is socially constructed by power. Through 30 semi-structured and in-depth phone interviews with Chinese students, we find that Chinese students cope with such stigma through various mechanisms, and most notably, through the counter-narrative of discrediting the American mainstream belief in the usage of masks. However, they harbored these thoughts privately. In addition, we conclude that escalating geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China, coupled with the lack of social integration of Chinese students in America, will continue to alienate them, despite the subsequent destigmatization of mask-wearing in America.

Grounded in the international image theory ( Herrmann and Fischerkeller, 1995 ), this study argues that individuals maintain general images of foreign nations that shape perceptions of foreign policy issues. Based on two identical national online surveys conducted in the United States ( N = 1250) and China ( N = 1311) in early 2019, the study explores the structure and composition of these national images among American and Chinese citizens and tests whether they influence perceptions of the U.S.–China trade war. The findings suggest that cognitive and affective components of national image are associated with the perceived favorability of the other nation and support for the U.S.–China trade war among the American and Chinese public. While media exposure played a more prominent role among U.S. respondents, personal traits such as cosmopolitanism, patriotism, cultural affinity, and personal contact with people from the other nation were significantly associated with people's overall favorability of the other nation and their support of the U.S.–China trade war.

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The growth in video-sharing social media platform use has changed modes of communication, which has helped to improve the visibility of gender and sexual minority groups. This tendency became evident given the social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, the use of these platforms empowers LGBTQ individuals living in China to share knowledge and experiences, receive social and emotional support and so on. Previous studies rarely interrogate Chinese queer groups’ socially sanctioned performance of identities on popular video-sharing platforms such as Douyin. This article undertakes a preliminary discussion of that research gap. It examines the conditions that enable such activities and concludes with a discussion of the strategies and methods that Chinese queer uploaders use in the process. Simply put, this article explores how the queer uploaders accommodate and negotiate their identity performances within a heterosexual and mainstream popular social media environment.