Opinion | Atlanta shootings: stopping Asian hate requires getting to root of West’s Sinophobia

The shootings in Atlanta that left eight people dead, including six women of Asian descent, have saddened many people. The Asian-American community has experienced heightened vulnerability during the past year, with nearly 3,800 incidents of anti-Asian bias reported. In 2020, reports of hate crimes against Asian-Americans in 16 US cities jumped by nearly 150 per cent from the previous year.

To phrase the nuanced sentiments as “Asian hate” can be misleading, though.

This current wave of anti-Asian hatred stems from Sinophobic sentiment which has long existed but increased sharply in recent years. As most Westerners are not skilled at distinguishing between people of different Asian ancestry, and some fail to draw a line between a country’s government and its people, the unfortunate consequence is that whenever China is the focus of criticism, people of Chinese origin – be they Chinese citizens or Chinese-Americans – or even anyone of East Asian heritage could experience hostility.

This primarily came thanks to former US president Donald Trump and his colleagues’ insistence on calling the coronavirus “China virus” or “kung flu”. During that time, the term “Chinese virus” jumped 650 per cent on Twitter in one day and there was a 800 per cent increase in the usage in conservative news articles, a study from the University of California, Berkeley found.

Consequently, ordinary people of East Asian origin continue to experience collateral damage. While it is one thing to hold the Chinese government accountable for its domestic human rights abuses and its crackdowns on free expression, it is another to racially profile scholars and students of Chinese ancestry in the fight against espionage.