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.

Keywords: Covid-19; Hate crimes; Stigma.

Fig. 1

Total confirmed Covid-19 cases from January 22 to May 6, 2020, of Hubei, Hong Kong and Macau and Taiwan, China excluding Hubei, and World excluding China. (Data source: Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, 2020)

Fig. 2

The time of lockdown of all 17 cities in Hubei province

Fig. 3

A banner made by a local government (Street Office) in Jiujiang city, Jiangxi province, reads “All returnees from Hubei are time bombs”

Fig. 4

A car owner in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, posted a notice at the back of car. It read “The car owner has long been living in Zhuhai, not visited Hubei. Please don’t panic. Thanks for your understanding”

Fig. 5

Two online shopping comments on products from Hubei. The first comment reads: “It is terrible. The place of production is Hubei. I was afraid that the product could bring the virus to me after I received the product.” The second reads: “The product from Hubei could be delivered to Guangdong in one day. I washed hands six times after I opened the express box. This was my worst shopping experience”

Fig. 6

Timeline of major events and measures regarding Covid-19 in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

Fig. 7

Timeline showing some important events related to stigmatization against foreigners in China

Fig. 8

A sign barring Africans from entering a McDonald’s in Guangzhou, China, April 12

Fig. 9

Discriminatory remarks about Africans in China in a WeChat group with 260 users based in Guangzhou. Africans were described as “heigui” (黑鬼, darkie/negro or black ghost/devil literally)

Fig. 10

The corresponding factors for stigma to each targeted group

Fig. 11

A Chinese overseas student in Australia posed a picture of his selfie with the comments that “I finally took up the courage to wear a mask. F**k social stigma. My cap and earphone will prevent me from seeing and hearing it (left).” A picture widely circulated in social media teaching people how to wear a Muslim Hijab to cover a facial mask inside to reduce stigma (right)

Fig. 12

A widely circulated cartoon picture among Facebook users in Hong Kong about the rumor that coronavirus was human-made in China. In the cartoon, the monkey pretended to be innocent when his trick was revealed

Fig. 13

The use of “Wuhan pneumonia” and “Covid-19” in news reports in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and other countries before and after WHO renaming the pandemic as “Covid-19” on February 11, 2020. (26,203 news were collected from December 8, 2019, to February11, 2020, and 74,149 news were collected during February 11 to March 11, 2020)