By: Karissa Ketter, News Editor
Content warning: mentions of anti-Asian violence and racism.
China has consistently been featured in western news for one reason or another these last couple years. Beginning with the COVID-19 outbreak, western media and government officials have villainized China for their role in the pandemic.
Should we be critical of the Chinese government? Absolutely. They have recently committed their own share of violence against minority groups, including over one million Uyghur Muslims being put in concentration camps. We should also be critical of their ever-expanding surveillance state and social credit system used to collect personal data and monitor behaviour. However, the west’s media framing of China goes beyond a critique of their government and falls into manufacturing severe and misplaced hatred for Chinese culture and citizens. It’s time news outlets take a hard stance against such divisive rhetoric.
At the start of the pandemic, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres posted to Twitter, “The pandemic continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering.”
Human Rights Watch attributes the rise in anti-Chinese sentiment to conservative government leaders in western countries. A prominent example of the blatant racism and xenophobia in western politics is Majorie Taylor Greene, a US republican party representative. According to Vice News, Greene was trying to “do the Red Scare all over again — this time with Chinese citizens living in the United States.” The Red Scare was a government-manufactured fear of communism after the Russian Revolution in 1917. Throughout the 20th century, it resulted in multiple false accusations, and “is often cited as an example of how unfounded fears can compromise civil liberties.”
In 2021, Greene publicly declared her aim to deport everyone in the US with Chinese…
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