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Opinion | Coronavirus triggers an ugly rash of racism as the old ideas of ‘Yellow Peril’ and ‘sick man of Asia’ return
- A headline referring to China as the ‘sick man of Asia’, a cartoon of the Chinese flag with stars replaced by coronaviruses, an increase in xenophobic incidents against Chinese people: the epidemic seems to have brought out people’s uglier side
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Fear of the ‘Yellow Peril’ seems to have returned as the novel coronavirus spreads globally. The outbreak has unleashed an underlying prejudice against Asians, in particular Chinese.
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Time and again, I have read stories on my social media groups about how fellow Chinese have experienced verbal and even physical abuse in Britain, simply because of their race. Some were told to go home. One student in Sheffield was harassed for wearing a face mask. A Chinese doctor’s practice had a coronavirus sign painted over it.
Around the world, anti-China sentiment is bubbling over. Some restaurants in Vietnam, Japan and Italy are refusing entry to Chinese. A Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, courted controversy by publishing a cartoon version of the Chinese flag with viruses in place of the five stars.
On February 3, The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by Walter Russell Mead titled “China is the Real Sick Man of Asia”, with the subtitle: “Its financial markets may be even more dangerous than its wildlife markets.”
Whatever the author’s issue with China, it is shocking that a mainstream media outlet would use such a headline, which insults not only the Chinese government but also ordinary Chinese people. I wonder whether whoever came up with it really understands the historical context of the term sick man of Asia.
It actually refers to the sickly state of China in the late 19th and early 20th century, bullied by Western powers and plagued by internal divisions.
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