[h=1]Nationalism and Xenophobia Flare[/h]
[FONT="]After 16 years in China, a Congolese businessman thought he knew what being black there entailed. He had been subjected to racial slurs and denied apartments, but he had also learned Chinese and made local friends. He loved the country; he called it his second home.[/FONT]
[FONT="]But the businessman, Felly Mwamba, had not anticipated the coronavirus pandemic, during which he would find himself sealed in his home, prohibited from leaving and eyed as a carrier of the disease simply because he was African.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“The way they are treating black people, you cannot accept,” Mwamba said by telephone. “We are not animals.”
[/FONT]
[FONT="]A restaurant in northern China put up a banner celebrating the virus’s spread in the United States. A widely circulated cartoon showed foreigners being sorted into trash bins. African residents in the southern city of Guangzhou, including Mwamba, have been corralled into forced quarantines, labeled as dangers to the country’s health.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Some of the uglier manifestations of nationalism have been fueled by government propaganda, which has touted China’s response to the virus as evidence of the ruling Communist Party’s superiority. And recriminations from abroad, including calls to make China pay for the pandemic that began there, have triggered defensiveness on the part of many Chinese.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]“The real risk that the nationalism poses is to foreign governments’ perception of threat from China,” said Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor at Cornell University who has studied Chinese nationalism.[/FONT]
[FONT="]China’s heightened us-against-them mentality is perhaps most apparent in its recent strictures aimed at foreigners. Although the Chinese government denounced racist attacks against Asians overseas when the outbreak was centered in China, it now casts people from other countries as public health risks.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Last month, China barred virtually all foreigners from entering, even though it had criticized other countries for closing their borders. Officials emphasize that most of China’s new cases are now imported — often without mentioning that many are Chinese citizens returning home.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]After 16 years in China, a Congolese businessman thought he knew what being black there entailed. He had been subjected to racial slurs and denied apartments, but he had also learned Chinese and made local friends. He loved the country; he called it his second home.[/FONT]
[FONT="]But the businessman, Felly Mwamba, had not anticipated the coronavirus pandemic, during which he would find himself sealed in his home, prohibited from leaving and eyed as a carrier of the disease simply because he was African.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“The way they are treating black people, you cannot accept,” Mwamba said by telephone. “We are not animals.”
[/FONT]
[FONT="]A restaurant in northern China put up a banner celebrating the virus’s spread in the United States. A widely circulated cartoon showed foreigners being sorted into trash bins. African residents in the southern city of Guangzhou, including Mwamba, have been corralled into forced quarantines, labeled as dangers to the country’s health.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Some of the uglier manifestations of nationalism have been fueled by government propaganda, which has touted China’s response to the virus as evidence of the ruling Communist Party’s superiority. And recriminations from abroad, including calls to make China pay for the pandemic that began there, have triggered defensiveness on the part of many Chinese.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]“The real risk that the nationalism poses is to foreign governments’ perception of threat from China,” said Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor at Cornell University who has studied Chinese nationalism.[/FONT]
[FONT="]China’s heightened us-against-them mentality is perhaps most apparent in its recent strictures aimed at foreigners. Although the Chinese government denounced racist attacks against Asians overseas when the outbreak was centered in China, it now casts people from other countries as public health risks.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Last month, China barred virtually all foreigners from entering, even though it had criticized other countries for closing their borders. Officials emphasize that most of China’s new cases are now imported — often without mentioning that many are Chinese citizens returning home.
[/FONT]
