While the Chinese felt under attack and discrimated, it turns out that they aren’t that innocent themselves, apparently African people continue to be barred from hotels, shops and restaurants in Guangzhou, despite Chinese officials assuring governments across Africa that discrimination resulting from efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak would stop. Racist discrimination in Guangzhou earlier this month caused outrage in Africa, provoking rare official protests to China by several countries
In the first weeks since the virus spread around the world, multiple accounts of discrimination against Chinese nationals or anyone who looks East Asian had emerged, including from Asia and Chinese-majority societies. Even as sympathy had grown for the Chinese victims, particularly with the death of "whistleblower doctor" Li Wenliang, Asian minorities and Chinese nationals say virus-related racism and xenophobia have thrived. Discrimination against China and Chinese people is not new - Sinophobia is a well-documented phenomenon that has existed for centuries. But the varied ways it has manifested during the coronavirus crisis reveal the increasingly complex relationship the world has with China right now.So, while the Chinese felt under attack and discrimated, it turns out that they aren’t that innocent themselves, apparently African people continue to be barred from hotels, shops and restaurants in Guangzhou, despite Chinese officials assuring governments across Africa that discrimination resulting from efforts to contain the coronavirus outbreak would stop. Racist discrimination in Guangzhou earlier this month caused outrage in Africa, provoking rare official protests to China by several countries. So, when Chinese workers at a McDonald’s in Guangzhou recently held up a sign saying – in English – “black people are not allowed to enter the restaurant,” they appear to be completely unembarrassed about the whole thing.Africans in the city who were contacted recently by the
Guardian said they still faced hostility and racism, prompted by fears they may be carriers of Covid-19.On April 14, the Chinese state-owned
Global Times published an article headlined: “No discrimination’ against Africans amid pandemic.” “The controversy over suspected maltreatment and discrimination against Africans in Guangzhou has made headlines on Chinese social media platforms and caused many Chinese authorities, including the Guangzhou government, China's Foreign Ministry and Chinese embassies in African countries, to respond, reiterating China's firm stance to equally treat foreigners and domestic residents,” the article begins.The article quotes a social worker who helps foreign residents in Guangzhou's Yuexiu district denying discrimination against Africans in the city. “There's no such discrimination against the African community,” the anonymous social worker is quoted as saying.Guangzhou is one of China’s largest cities, with nearly 13 million residents. It is certainly possible that the unnamed social worker did not personally see evidence of discrimination against Africans in the district.However, African workers and students have given interviews, made videos, and taken photographs documenting numerous instances of behaviors that they believe amount to racial discrimination or harassment.Frank Nnabugwu, a Nigerian businessman who has lived in Guangzhou for a year, said he was not allowed to return to his rented accommodation last week after being released from two weeks’ quarantine. “The security guards said to us: ‘No foreigners are allowed’. I was upset, very upset. I slept on the street,” the 30-year-old said. Police eventually found a hotel willing to rent Nnabugwu a room. “We use the receptionist to order food,” Nnabugwu said. “If they know it is a foreigner ordering food they will not come. You cannot buy anything in a shop; if you go in they will cover their face and chase you out.”Anecdotes abound. An elevator in the five-star Kempinski Hotel in Beijing, full of guests including a tall black man, stops on a floor on its way down to the lobby. The doors open and a Chinese woman waiting to get on takes one look at the African man, opens her mouth in shock, and shoos the lift to carry on without her. The African could only laugh.Uganda’s NBS television interviewed a Ugandan citizen in China, who said: “We are facing racism in a way that we cannot access medical care in hospitals. When we go to hospitals and we need … help, all they say is ‘please go away,’ after checking our passports and finding out we are blacks – actually, finding out that we are from Africa.” She also said that when Africans get on a bus, the Chinese passengers get off “and leave you on the bus alone, like they are protesting – they can’t travel with an African.”Many African leaders were shocked by the vehemence of the online reaction in Africa to the incidents, said Cobus Van Staden, an expert in China-Africa relations at the South African Institute of International Affairs. “They realised there was domestic pressure … They usually tend to downplay but I think they realised that would be politically impossible this time,” he said.A number of African states called in Chinese ambassadors and the African Union, which represents more than 50 states, said the discrimination had caused grief, pain and humiliation to all Africans. Ghana’s information minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, told the Guardian his government had summoned the Chinese ambassador for “a very stern conversation”.Chinese officials moved quickly to deal with the initial accusations of discrimination. The Chinese embassy in Nairobi, for instance, told Kenya’s foreign ministry that authorities in Guangzhou “have been tasked to take immediate action to safeguard the legitimate rights of the Africans concerned”. China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian acknowledged at the time that “there might be some misunderstandings in the implementation of measures” designed to prevent “overseas imports” of the virus. China treated all foreigners equally, Zhao said. However, Beijing has also tried to suggest that reports of Africans targeted in Guangzhou are a plot to smear the country. An editorial in the state-run Global Times said western media, US politicians and “Hong Kong separatists” were among those “hyping” such incidents.Many who have watched China’s unprecedented commercial and investment entry into Africa have wondered when the long history of Chinese racism toward Africans would again overshadow Beijing’s preferred narrative. The COVID-19 pandemic has now proven the perfect setting for the resurgence of this ugly phenomenon. Meral Musli Tajroska - Psychologist, Consultant on violent extremism and radicalization, activist for gender equality. Source:
Polygraph.info,
The Diplomat.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51456056 https://www.polygraph.info/a/30559882.html https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/racism-is-alive-and-well-in-china/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/27/china-fails-to-stop-racism-against-africans-over-covid-19
