The clarion call for human rights, equality and freedom in our brave new world of 2021 is being driven by the changing of guard in the world’s pecking order. China’s ascent is underpinned by centralised economic and social control. This trajectory threatens the viability of democracies, whose much-vaunted freedom of expression unfortunately has enabled dangerous anti-Asian rhetoric (“With or without Donald Trump, racist rhetoric on China is making the US unsafe for Asian-Americans”, April 14 ). The recent gun massacre of Asian-American women, one of a flurry of mass murders, testifies to that. The time is ripe for discussing new leadership models. A better governance model could include the best elements of the Xi Jinping model of herding the community in the right direction of prosperity, grafted onto a moderated insistence on the indomitable rights of individual citizens. After all, former US president Donald Trump’s 2016 victory unleashed hate and harm in a model democracy. Looking after both individual and community welfare is necessary in light of the torrent of indignation over the influence-peddling that accompanies China’s geopolitical ambition. I worry that loud protests risk unleashing the demons of race-based discrimination and abuse against Chinese immigrants. Newly arrived immigrants from China want to establish families and careers in the adopted countries to which they pledge allegiance. Some were granted asylum after the Tiananmen Square crackdown and others, such as Falun Gong members, were forced to leave because of religious persecution. In these fractured and suspicion-laden times, I fear vitriolic anti-China attacks will spill over into hatred of Chinese like myself, just as violence was visited upon peaceful Muslims by implicating a whole community in the terrorist acts of a few. Joseph Ting, Brisbane Mistreatment of African-Americans is bewildering With reference to “‘Daddy changed the world’: how George Floyd became symbol of America’s fight against racism” ( April 21 ), it’s as though the precious lives of a large number of human beings are considered disposable to the nation. And when the young children of those people take notice of this, they’re vulnerable to perceiving themselves as worthless or disposable. This is atrociously unjust and desperately needs to stop. Although their devaluation as human beings is basically based on their race, it still reminds me of the devaluation, albeit perhaps subconsciously, of the civilian lives lost in protracted and devastating civil war zones and sieges. At some point, these deaths end up receiving just a few column inches in the daily news in the “first world”. As a young white boy, I was bewildered (especially after watching the miniseries Roots ) by black people being brutalised and told they were not welcome – when they were violently forced here from their African home as slaves. As a people, there’s been no real refuge here for them since. Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved showed that, like in the South, people in the civil war-era northern states also hated black people but happened to hate slavery more. Frank Sterle Jr, British Columbi
