Stigma, Discrimination, and Hate Crimes in Chinese-Speaking World amid Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to stigma, discrimination, and even hate crimes against various populations in the Chinese language–speaking world. Using interview data with victims, online observation, and the data mining of media reports, this paper investigated the changing targets of stigma from the outbreak of Covid-19 to early April 2020 when China had largely contained the first wave of Covid-19 within its border. We found that at the early stage of the pandemic, stigma was inflicted by some non-Hubei Chinese population onto Wuhan and Hubei residents, by some Hong Kong and Taiwan residents onto mainland Chinese, and by some Westerners towards overseas Chinese. With the number of cases outside China surpassing that in China, stigmatization was imposed by some Chinese onto Africans in China. We further explore how various factors, such as the fear of infection, food and mask culture, political ideology, and racism, affected the stigmatization of different victim groups. This study not only improved our understanding of how stigmatization happened in the Chinese-speaking world amid Covid-19 but also contributes to the literature of how sociopolitical factors may affect the production of hate crimes.

Stigmatization of Chinese and Asian-looking people during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany

“…The specificity of these findings was discussed with respect to the current epidemiological situation and associated media coverage, as Italy was severely affected by COVID-19 at the time of the study [ 35 ]. In support of this notion, Xu and colleagues [ 5 ] showed how stigmatization of different geographic target groups spread within China, neighboring countries (i.e., Hong Kong and Taiwan), and other global regions as a function of COVID-19 prevalence. Furthermore, the activation of the BIS in response to an infectious disease threat may only lead to negative attitudes toward an outgroup when people perceive that this outgroup is associated with an infectious disease [ 17 , 36 ].…”

Stress, Anxiety, and Depression for Chinese Residents in Japan during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Moreover, social stigma targeted Chinese individuals, which adversely affected their mental health further [ 23 ]. Since the COVID-19 outbreak became widely known from its incidence in Wuhan, China [ 24 ], Chinese individuals became at a higher risk for being targeted by violence and stigma [ 25 ]. In Japan, concerns regarding a tendency of exclusionary attitude toward foreign residents, particularly Chinese residents, were addressed under the threat of infection [ 26 ].…”

Remaking higher education for the post‐COVID‐19 era: Critical reflections on marketization, internationalization and graduate employment

“…The anti‐Chinese sentiments and anti‐China politics that were already happening before the outbreak of the COVID‐19 crisis have begun to interrupt normal student mobility and research collaboration between China and the United States. This has also extended to other liberal economies guarding against China in its rise in Science and advances in innovation and technology (Wong & Barnes, 2020; Xu et al., 2021).…”

“…The call for internationalization of higher education has become one of the key performance indicators when assessing public universities in Hong Kong, Pan attempts to reconceptualize internationalization of higher education of this international city in Asia. The above reflections of the major arguments of these few articles related to internationalization of higher education lead us to ask which directions internationalization of higher education will head for in the COVID‐19 crisis context (Xu et al., 2021).…”