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Scholars have often assumed that a decolonial agenda would empower emancipatory and anti-racist movements. Nevertheless, there is also increasing recognition by scholars that the language of decolonization has been co-opted to support right-wing ideologies and majoritarian agendas, most prominently in India and Turkey. Similarly, in Malaysia, right-wing actors use decolonial rhetoric to criticize ethnic, religious, gender, and sexual minorities and silence their demands for equal rights. These actors have justified their intolerance by labelling any perceived threats to heteronormative Malay Muslim identity as examples of "Western imperialism" or "Chinese colonialism." This article illustrates how decolonial vocabulary has been transformed into Sinophobia and homophobia by a right-wing Islamist group in Malaysia. It shows how revisionist nativist historiography, racism, and conspiracy theories can be integrated with moralistic calls for decolonization. Tracing developments over the past decade, the paper demonstrates how persistent dissemination, intellectual laundering, and innovative marketing strategies have helped mainstream a nativist Islamist decolonial agenda in Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the bases of Mexican national identity construction and use an array of conceptions of nationhood to study contemporary attitudes towards foreigners' sociopolitical rights in Mexico. Rarely is the study of national identity connected with immigration policy preferences in general, and even less so outside advanced countries. We explore the content of Mexicanness and use this content to understand public opinion preferences towards the integration of diverse groups of foreigners in Mexico. We employ 2016 survey data and a survey experiment and find the persistence of xenophobic attitudes towards the Chinese community in Mexico. We also show that civic conceptions of nationhood cannot counter contemporary anti-Chinese sentiment, in great part because the civic belonging of the Chinese was defined on racial terms. Lastly, we show that these processes of national identity construction, based on the marginalization of certain groups, are persistent and shape todays' attitudes and preferences towards the incorporation of different groups of foreigners. It remains to be explored whether material interests associated with the recent Chinese "going out" policy may be able to counter deep-seated anti-Chinismo [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why was the "Chinese Question" of immigration control and exclusion in the United States imagined as an appealing precedent for dealing with the "Jewish Question" of emancipation and citizenship in fin-de-siècle Romania, Hungary, and Austria? The present article examines a vast corpus of parliamentary debates, press, and pamphlets, in order to demonstrate how thinking in terms of "questions" enabled historical actors to place themselves within a "global moment" by highlighting structural similarities that would justify the analogy. By rhetorically turning to an America that was placed at the forefront of "liberal" progress, yet now began to explicitly place limits to its inclusiveness, politicians in Central and Eastern Europe sought to present their own exclusionary policies as timely and acceptable, rather than anachronistic affronts to the spirit of the age. Drawing upon this global precedent was therefore hoped to ward off criticism: if "civilized" America could draw the line, be it as a matter of principle or pragmatism, then antisemitism could be justified with reference to Sinophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada’s 1885 Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration did not end well for the Chinese. It resulted in four Chinese Immigration Acts. The last one was the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act. Before the CPR (1885) and before Confederation (1867), Western thought was shaped by the racist justification to plunder China through a colonial dominating psychology, known as the “Yellow Peril.” Through Opium Wars, military occupations and unequal treaties, European supremacy over China felt complete. This White superiority grievously affected Chinese peasants who migrated to Canada to escape poverty. Today, China has risen from the “century of humiliation” to challenge the West for a place in the global economy and yet cannot escape Sinophobia. AntiAsian/Chinese hate has provoked “Yellow Peril 2.0.” In 2023, there are demands for a public inquiry on Chinese interference and influence, and a foreign agent registry. There is a direct connection between current events to those of a hundred years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the media outlets, the newspapers were an important source of information about the COVID-19 lockdown; however, the language chosen to see the pandemic world cascaded surreal psychological feelings. Fewer scholarly studies are available which have investigated the role of language during the pandemic and its implications. This study explores primarily the pandemic language and its contribution to the discourse of fear and anti-Chinese sentiments. Data was collected from English newspaper articles and university students‘ responses to the questionnaires. The discursive themes were assessed, evaluated, and described by codifying the qualitative data. These themes were further analyzed and correlated through quantitative data to seek the goodness-of-fit. Findings revealed that the language used to report the infection perpetuated fear, Sinophobia, and certain psychological ripples. The study posits that linguists must come forward and work with journalists to introduce the language to control fear and encourage empathy and pluralism during the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The article explores Sinophobic discourses during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing specifically on violence-related metaphors used to frame China in American and Australian newspapers from January to June 2020. Specifically, the analysis aims to investigate the extent to which violence-related metaphors were used to frame China in a micro-diachronic perspective and the functions they performed in the dataset. The investigation was conducted by combining corpus linguistics and discourse analysis approaches to analyse the semantic domain of violence. The results revealed that violence-related metaphors were extensively used to negatively frame China and its institutions in both corpora, although they were more frequent in the Australian corpus. From a micro-diachronic perspective, in the American corpus, violence-related metaphors were less recurrent and evenly distributed over time, whereas they peaked in May 2020 in the Australian corpus, a time that coincided with China’s imposition of substantial tariffs on Australian barley. This seemed to suggest that the use of such metaphors was highly influenced by socioeconomic factors rather than by the spread of COVID-19.

This cross-sectional, descriptive study conducted in January 2022 reviewed 100 TikTok videos using the hashtag #StopAsianHate. Categoriesof Asian and Asian American (referred to hereafter as Asian) abuse/attack (N = 57) and awareness of Asian hate & hate crimes (N = 52) were observed in over 50% of videos. The following themes were of significance: Asian abuse/attack (p = .0079), awareness of Asian hate and hate crimes (p < .0001), somber tone/expression of sadness (p = .0025), stop Asian hate messages (p = .0380), media report of Asian hate crime (p =.0004), and mention of COVID/virus is hate p=.0103). Thus, the videos which raised awareness and specifically focused on abuse were more likely to be shared. TikTok is being used as a space for marginalized groups to raise consciousness on public health issues and injustices. These insights can potentially inform health communication efforts, cultural competency training, and targeted mental health support to address health equity and improve public health outcomes of Asian.

This article examines perceptions of China and contributes to the ongoing academic debate on Sinophobia in Central Asia. However, unlike existing studies, it specifically focuses on perceptions of those, who have first-hand China experience – Kazakh students/graduates of Chinese universities. Based on in-depth interviews with them, the article argues that those with first-hand China experience tend to reject the China threat theory, found to be widespread among the general population. Instead, China-educated Kazakh youth perceive China mostly as an economic opportunity for their own country. Yet, this does not necessarily make them Sinophiles in the sense that they still express certain concerns related to their country's potential over-dependence on China. But more interestingly, they see China as the "civilizational other." This perceived civilisational abyss even among the more-informed segments of the population appears to be one of the main causes of the alienation of China and the Chinese in Kazakhstan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this commentary, based on a close readi ng of media reports and our everyday experiences as overseas Chinese researchers, we examine the production of ignorance surrounding the COVID-19. Specifically, we focus on ignorance caused by selective inattention and power plays. We challenge the dominant dualistic frame of authoritarianism versus democracy and the role it plays in overly simplifying and even distorting the responses of Chinese authorities in handling this public health emergency. We maintain that this binary thinking is reflective of the conflation of orientalism, sinophobia and statephobia in the West, which also intersects with sexism and racism within and outside academic sites of knowledge production. The consequence is that knowledge accumulated by experts from China as well as other Asian countries about the virus and mitigation strategies are marginalised, discredited, distrusted, if not dismissed altogether.

Hate crimes and hateful rhetoric targeting individuals of Asian descent have increased since the outbreak of COVID-19. These troubling trends have heightened concerns about the role of the Internet in facilitating radicalization. This article explores the existence of three warning signs of radicalization—fixation, group identification, and energy bursts—using data from Twitter and Reddit. Data were collected before and after the outbreak of COVID-19 to assess the role of the pandemic in affecting social media behavior. Using computational social science and Natural Language Processing techniques, we looked for signs of radicalization targeting China or Chinese individuals. Results show that fixation on the terms China and Chinese increased on Twitter and Reddit after the pandemic began. Moreover, tweets and posts containing either of these terms became more hateful, offensive, and negative after the outbreak. We also found evidence of individuals identifying more closely with a particular group, or adopting an "us vs. them" mentality, after the outbreak of COVID-19. These findings were especially prominent in subreddits catering to self-identified Republicans and Conservatives. Finally, we detected bursts of activity on Twitter and Reddit following the start of the pandemic. These warning signs suggest COVID-19 may have had a radicalizing effect on some social media users. This work is important because it not only shows the potential radicalizing effect of the pandemic, but also demonstrates the ability to detect warning signs of radicalization on social media. This is critical, as detecting warning signs of radicalization can potentially help curb hate-fueled violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although studies in the field of discourse analysis have revealed the presence of animal and violent metaphors in Sino-phobic discourses about China (Carrico, 2018; Lee, 2021), there are still no systematic studies focusing on metaphor and Sinophobia. This study aims at providing a further contribution to the studies of Sino-phobic discourses by focusing specifically on animal metaphors used to frame China during the COVID-19 pandemic in two corpora of American and Australian newspapers. The analysis combines methodologies of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis. First, a semantic domain analyses was carried out with WMatrix 5 (Rayson, 2008), then, metaphors in the semantic field of living creatures were identified and analysed adopting cognitive and discursive approaches. The results showed how predatory and threatening animals are often associated with Chinese institutions in the newspapers analysed and this negative metaphorical representation is juxtaposed to that of Australian institutions which are framed as harmless pets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted countries all over the world, not only in relation to public health responses, but on multiple other societal levels. The pandemic has uncovered structural inequalities within and across societies and highlighted how race remains a powerful lens through which public policy responses are constructed and pursued. This paper examines (im)mobilities in Australia in the context of Asian, and more specifically Chinese-Australian citizens and residents, and how these have been framed in racialized discourses that justified exclusionary practices reminiscent of the White Australia ideology. The paper focuses on how Chinese Australians' mobilities have been (mis)represented and attacked in public and political discourse with particular attention to the situation of Chinese international students' (im)mobilities. Our conceptual attention in this paper, however, is not only on the racialization of mobilities but also immobilities, underpinned by an understanding of the relationality between Othered 'migrants' and hosts, as well as between mobility and immobility. We conclude by discussing future patterns of mobility, how these will impact prospective migrants including international students, and what future forms of mobilities might mean for Australia as a country highly dependent on migrants for its economic, social and cultural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We assessed whether the COVID-19 outbreak in the United Kingdom was associated with a rise in sinophobic hate crimes as well as the temporal distribution of victimization rates. A victimization survey (N = 393) showed that following the first known case of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom, Chinese/East Asian persons had a higher likelihood of being hate crime or incident victims than members of other ethnic minority groups. Specifically, victimization reported by Chinese/East Asian participants reached its highest level in March 2020 (before lockdown); it then dropped significantly after an initial relaxation of restrictions in May 2020. Overall, we documented a temporary, potentially slightly delayed hate crime trigger effect of the COVID-19 outbreak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The People's Republic of China has invited both fascination and fear, admiration and contempt in the last few years. Various public opinion surveys' data findings reveal a nuanced and conflicted phenomenon of 'Sinophobia' and 'Sinophillia' across the world nations. One view of China is that of an 'autocratic,' 'anti-democratic' regime provoking anxiety and suspicion reflected in a trending wave of anti-China sentiments evolving into 'Sinophobia,' with its prevalence and intensity highlighted in increasing cases of racism and violence towards immigrant Chinese after the novel coronavirus outbreak. The growing intensity of Sinophobia is noticed in countries witnessing a barging influx of Chinese investment with Chinese land grabs and the loss of native jobs. However, another view is of a nation that inspires vast admiration for its economic ascent and traditional culture. Today, China has an increasing appeal and attraction not just for its economic engagement but also for its culture, language and tourism. Public perceptions and opinions are critical factors in determining a state's foreign policy preferences and choices. This qualitative study utilises various global surveys and public opinion polls to gauge the dualistic trends of public opinion on China and examines the salience of public opinion in foreign relations, underlining a pluralist approach. The article illustrates multiple cases highlighting how negative or positive public opinion of China is correlated with an aggressive or friendly foreign policy posture towards China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Este es un análisis sobre el aumento de crímenes y acciones gubernamentales con motivación xenófoba contra chinos, fenómeno relacionado con los cambios recientes en la geopolítica mundial. Sin desconocer el estructural racismo de Occidente, el ascenso económico de China y la pandemia del covid-19 se convierten en nuevos motivadores de la sinofobia, como reacción liderada por EE.UU. y replicada en varios países, incluido Brasil. Estos hechos, así como las declaraciones de autoridades brasileñas y estadounidenses, sugieren que la sinofobia es una reacción a un mundo multipolar naciente, en el que China será la economía número uno. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the negotiations of racism by Twitter users in the representation of the COVID-19 crisis during the first wave of the pandemic. We focus on expressions that target China as the place where COVID originated such as 'Chinese virus' and 'Kung flu'. The repeated use and discussion of these terms on social media serves to create, establish and reinforce indexical links (Silverstein 2003) to social values, which relate to ideological conceptions of China and Chinese culture. Additionally, Twitter users' crisis processing involves the renegotiatation of indexical links to social values that coincides with the engagement in sociopolitical debates that frequent online media environments, resulting in sociological fractionation (Agha 2007); the ideological opposition between Twitter user groups involves statements such as 'Kung flu is racist but COVID originated in China's dirty markets.' We see such disclaimers as examples of 'liquid racism' (Weaver 2011) that, while they are difficult to pin down as racist, they naturalise Sinophobia as the dominant discourse in our dataset. We conclude that racism in our data is a resource embedded in blame attribution that is compatible with crisis processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now mostly known as “COVID-19” (or simply “Covid”), early discourse around the pandemic was characterized by a particularly large variation in naming choices (ranging from “new coronavirus” and “new respiratory disease” to “killer bug” and the racist term “Chinese virus”). The current study is situated within corpus-assisted discourse studies and analyses these naming choices in UK newspaper coverage (January–March 2020), focusing on terminology deemed “inappropriate” as per WHO guidelines on naming infectious diseases. The results show that 9% of all terms referring to COVID-19 or the virus causing it are “inappropriate” overall, with “inappropriate” naming being more prevalent (1) in tabloids than broadsheets and (2) in the period before compared to the period after the virus was officially named on 11th February, 2020. Selected examples within each of the categories of “inappropriate” names are explored in more detail [terms (1) inciting undue fear, (2) containing geographic locations, and (3) containing species of animals], and the findings are discussed with regard to the contribution of lexical choices to the reproduction of (racist and otherwise problematic) ideologies in mainstream media.

Since the beginning of the COVID‐19 pandemic, there have been widespread conversations about the origins of the virus and who to blame for it. This article focuses on the online hate directed at Chinese and Asian people during the pandemic. Taking a critical discursive psychological approach, we analysed seven online threads related to COVID‐19 and China from two Finnish websites (Suomi24 and Ylilauta) and one US (8kun) site. We identified three discursive trends associated with dehumanising Chinese populations: 'monstrous Chinese', 'immoral Chinese' and 'China as a threat', which created different forms of dehumanisation on a continuum from harsher dehumanisation to milder depersonalisation. The animalistic metaphors, coarse language, humorous frames and conspiracy beliefs worked to rhetorically justify the dehumanisation of Chinese individuals, making it more acceptable to portray them as a homogeneous and inhumane mass of people that deserves to be attacked. This study contributes to the field of discursive research on dehumanisation by deepening our knowledge of the specific features of Sinophobic hate speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blaming the emergence and spread of COVID-19 on various social groups has been a central theme in narrating the pandemic. In such narratives, China has often emerged as a convenient scapegoat. However, systematic research into transcultural and culture-specific strategies of stigmatisation in the context of the corona pandemic is still scarce. With the help of a cultural studies perspective and multimodal analysis, we contribute to this effort by tracing the blame allocation strategies of the online platforms of three Western European newspapers – Daily Mail (the United Kingdom), Bild (Germany) and Neue Kronen Zeitung (Austria). We argue that, in their early accounts of the COVID-19 pandemic, all three newspapers perpetuated narratives of the pandemic outbreak that were then skilfully choreographed to support narratives of invasion that register anxieties over China's potential rise to world dominance. While the strategies the venues apply show striking similarities, occasional differences account for the respective countries' differing relations with and attitudes to China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has explored how the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a wave of conspiratorial thinking and online hate speech, but little is empirically known about how different phases of the pandemic are associated with hate speech against adversaries identified by online conspiracy communities. This study addresses this gap by combining observational methods with exploratory automated text analysis of content from an Italian-themed conspiracy channel on Telegram during the first year of the pandemic. We found that, before the first lockdown in early 2020, the primary target of hate was China, which was blamed for a new bioweapon. Yet over the course of 2020 and particularly after the beginning of the second lockdown, the primary targets became journalists and healthcare workers, who were blamed for exaggerating the threat of COVID-19. This study advances our understanding of the association between hate speech and a complex and protracted event like the COVID-19 pandemic, and it suggests that country-specific responses to the virus (e.g., lockdowns and re-openings) are associated with online hate speech against different adversaries depending on the social and political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Sinophobia and its relationship to American imperialism can be understood through Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis of anti-Semitism, which is characterized by an evasive attitude. Under this attitude, the bivalent values of good and evil are pre-existing ontological properties such that the agent promotes the good insofar as she destroys evil. This evasive attitude can also be seen in the economy of the American empire. Revenue for the which exists through undermining the economies of non-pliant states, selling weapons and a disaster-capitalist industry that profits from the chaos that is created. The idea that the states to be imperialized are bivalent others both motivates and justifies this behavior whereby the agent evades self-critique and the need to cultivate her own value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media played a crucial role during the COVID-19 pandemic both as a tool for communicating COVID-19-related messages and as a platform for sharing lighter moments during the distressful time. My article focuses on these lighter moments in the form of internet memes. My interest is on internet memes shared by the cyber public in Malawi. I contend that besides the humour, the memes carry insightful commentary on and criticism of society's reaction to and handling of the pandemic. The memes poke fun at petrified and distressed Malawians, at some politicians who took advantage of the pandemic to further their own interests and how the outbreak widened the gap between the rich and the poor. Some sinophobic memes accused China of infecting the world with virus. My methodological and theoretical approaches are based on netnographic studies and theories of humour (nature and function) respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sinophobia (anti-Chinese sentiment) has become normalised and increasingly acceptable in Hong Kong in recent decades. Such Sinophobia intersects with aims of protecting what is local in the society, as seen in Hong Kong news media. This paper first explores the concept of Sinophobia. It then provides a background on Sinophobia in Hong Kong, explaining the tensions between the identities of Hong Kong/HongKongers and Mainland China/Mainland Chinese. After elaborating on the role of media and the nature of local media in Hong Kong, this paper examines Sinophobic, stereotypical and quasi-racist discourse in three major Hong Kong news sources. While respecting Hong Kong heritage is a valuable goal, the Sinophobia accompanying some such aims can be seen to fuel hatred among people. In this context, encouraging a more inclusive and reflective discourse is warranted to work against the pitfalls of Sinophobia as a particular form of xenophobia in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's ethnic Chinese population has increased from around 200,000 in the mid-1980s to about 1.2 million according to Australia's 2016 census. Their settlement has contributed to the fact that China has become Australia's largest trading partner and that Australia has been recession-free for almost 30 years. At the same time, this rapidly growing population has also become hyperdiverse, well-educated, hyperconnective, highly transnational, and hypermobile. However, over the past three or so years, Australia has been embroiled in a campaign against alleged Chinese influence in Australian politics and public life, and the Chinese-invasion narrative has not only been reinvented, but also been sanctioned by some political leaders and xenophobic critics. Before waiting until the history of Chinese migration to Australia is reconstructed and rewritten, there is an urgent need to look at what has caused new waves of Chinese migration to Australia, and offer an update about it at the intersection of two major socio-economic transformations taking place in the Asia-Pacific, which are China's reform and opening-up and Australia's shift towards Asia. Through examining their interplays, this article is to address misconceptions in Australia's current debate over Chinese influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores public discourses of race and nation in Australia and Singapore, focusing on their historical and contemporary relationship with China and the Chinese. Both countries are governed by a multicultural ideology but are experiencing evolving tensions rooted in their (post)colonial and settler histories, dominated by respective Anglo-Australian and Singaporean-Chinese majorities. To illuminate these issues, we analyse public discourses by politicians and other opinion leaders, as reported in influential media. We discuss how the two nation-states accommodate their rapidly growing mainland Chinese minorities in the context of a rising China as a global power, and in conjunction with their cultural-spatial dislocations. We found a renewed Sinophobia in both countries, but with different historic and contemporary origins and manifestations: in Australia a historically grounded fear of the Chinese as "Yellow Peril"; in Singapore, a co-ethnic anxiety about the incoming mainland Chinese who are construed as "other" to the Singaporean-Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The weaponization of racialized imagery has been a common feature of geopolitical contestation in contemporary history. The paper critically examines the historical genesis of Sinophobic narratives, which have been common features of the big power geopolitical contestation in the Pacific. The globalization of capitalism in the nineteenth century and the West's attempts to penetrate the Chinese market and exploitation of its resources led to tension, skirmishes and wars. The myth of racial European superiority and corresponding inferiority of the Chinese was weaponized as an ideological justification for colonial domination, exploitation of cheap labour and appropriation of China's resources and wealth. In recent years, the Sinophobic paranoia has been exacerbated by China's Belt and Road initiative, a strategy at global economic and technological supremacy to counter the West's dominance. This competition for global hegemony is played out in various parts of the world and the Pacific included. The paper critically discusses various historical factors associated with Sinophobia in the context of the USA, France and Australia and how these have influenced these countries' contemporary approaches to Chinese expansionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Purpose: Despite documented accounts of racial discrimination against Chinese communities during the COVID-19 pandemic, few studies have examined experiences of racism among Canadian youth. This qualitative study explored the experiences of Chinese-Canadian youth during the COVID-19 pandemic and their mental health., Methods: A qualitative descriptive research design, informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT), was used for this study. Data was collected using focus groups and image-based elicitation methods. Youth who self-identified as Chinese-Canadian, aged 18-24, and who experienced some account of self-defined racism were included. We analyzed the data using a coding system developed for this study and formulated key themes., Results: Our analysis identified three themes: (I) Becoming racialized ; (II) Learning the rules of racism ; and (III) Effects of racism on mental health . We discuss findings in relation to the model minority stereotype, intersectionality of race and gender, and factors leading to a lack of support., Conclusions: This study provides evidence that racism had immediate and prolonged effects on the mental health of Chinese-Canadian youth and their relationships with peers, family, and even strangers. Our research suggests the need for enhanced services for Chinese-Canadian youth and other groups experiencing racism., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

In these paired years (2020–2021), the whole world has been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in the emergence of different presumptions, alternative facts, and fake news. Among those, the most dominant news was about bats as the culprits of expansion of the virus and, indirectly, the Chinese diet as the root cause. However, there is no proof that the links in the triangle of bat-virus-human are valid; and the source of infection has not been identified. In addition to bats, these viruses can be found in other animals, such as camels, pangolins, and humans. Therefore, individual scientists are reversing the situation by presenting the possibility of transmitting the virus from humans to animals. Nevertheless, it has become ultimately ‘acceptable’ to demonise the bat. In this respect, various authors remind us of certain historical contexts of notions and perceptions of the bats, as well as the similarities and differences of those perceptions during the pandemic, referring to it mainly in the context of Croatia and the world. In the end, the article’s conclusion is that the story about the bats is, actually, a great indicator of the representations of Otherness and the strengthening of a binary and hierarchical division of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

The Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic process caused problems in various fields in societies. Particularly the problems in the field of health and economy reached a certain point, and studies in these areas have intensified. In addition, the pandemic also increased psychosocial problems among individuals in the society. With the spread of the virus, people's living conditions changed. Their lives were restricted due to the physical distancing measures taken, and this led to the occurrence of various psychological problems. The negativities in their living conditions and the problems they are exposed to led people to look for scapegoats. Therefore, negative attitudes towards migrants who are regarded as foreigners began to spread in the society. Considered as fear, hatred and prejudice towards foreigners, xenophobia increased. In the present study, it is aimed to evaluate the factors that lead to xenophobic tendencies, the effects of xenophobic tendencies and various steps to prevent xenophobic tendencies during the COVID-19 pandemic process. In this regard, the relevant literature has been reviewed. The spread of xenophobic tendencies in the society is seen as an important risk in ensuring social cohesion. Thus, xenophobic tendencies should be prevented. As such, necessary steps should be taken to prevent unfounded information and prejudices about migrants during the pandemic process. Particular attention should be paid to the influence of the media and politicians. Social and economic inequalities experienced by migrants should be eliminated. Their access to social and judicial institutions, and educational and healthcare establishment in the society should be facilitated. Effective mental health services should be provided in order to reduce the negative impacts of xenophobic tendencies on migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Sinophobia which is usually not expressed openly in the public service media. The Sinophobia discourse intensified in 2020 in connection with the coverage of the pandemic. How are anti-Chinese attitudes expressed in the news discourse of the Czech Radio and Czech Television? Examples from a broader analysis of the representation of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic in news and journalism programmes are given. Inductive qualitative research methods (discourse and semiotic analysis) were used to detect subtle nuances of meaning and reveal implicit presuppositions. This study focuses on the manifestations of bias, e.g., the ideologically grounded attitudes of the speakers. The anti-Chinese statements (about poor hygiene habits and eating wild animals) were most often mentioned in connection with the origin of the coronavirus, vaccination, and China expansive policy. Sinophobic messages were built on the opposition of Us and Them, which is, according to van Dijk (2000), the core of new racism. In spite of the fact that the open hate speech and systematic bias (intentional implications, obvious evaluation or signposting) were not found in the researched sample, the analysis identified the presence of Sinophobic statements in both public service media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the image of China in Kazakhstani society, analyzes the perception and attitude of Kazakhstan's population towards China. Based on the results of a survey of Kazakhstan's population (N = 2,594) and an expert survey (N = 23), the authors identify the principal stereotypes about China in the mass perception of Kazakhstanis. Also, the authors assess the level of awareness of the population about China and its projects and the perception by the Kazakhstani people of the economic, political and socio-cultural influence of Kazakhstan's eastern neighbor. In addition, the article examines the attitude of Kazakhstanis to bilateral cooperation between Kazakhstan and China and the manifestations of Sinophobia in Kazakhstani society and identifies the main factors of anti-Chinese sentiments in society. The article also presents the authors' original model of the China Perception Index in Kazakhstan, which consists of four parameters that reveal the level of cultural, economic and political perception of the country's eastern neighbor. The results of the study establish that the general attitude of the Kazakhstani society towards China is neutral. The main factor that influences the perception of China is the degree of the Chinese investors' presence in the region. The study proves the correlation between the duration of the presence of Chinese investors and the scale of business, on the one hand, and the level of perception, on the other: the longer the history of presence in the region, the less positive the attitude of the population towards China. Along with this, the study demonstrates a positive relationship between educational achievements and the China Perception Index. Thus, Kazakhstani citizens with an academic degree (Index = 0.24) have a significantly more positive attitude towards China, compared to those with a secondary technical and vocational education (Index = 0.09). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Netflix popular reality series Too Hot to Handle (THTH), released during the coronavirus outbreak in 2019, requires all contestants to refrain from sexual activities of any kind in order to win a cash prize in the end. Mirroring the physical distancing mandate during the COVID-19 crisis, the show offers an opportunity to discern a set of interrelated human and nonhuman entanglements in contemporary technoculture that the outbreak has brought into sharper relief. This essay probes into the conditions of possibility for the popularity of THTH by placing an analytical focus on the role of Lana, a nonhuman sensor centrally featured in the show with a female voice typical of digital assistants. Lana, a cone-shaped device from 'Factory, China', is a surveillance robot embodying the operation of Netflix as part of the expanding regime of data colonialism, which extracts personal data for profit. Her nonhuman identity is evocative of China as at once a manufacturing locale for the material gadgets that make up the global digital economy and an authoritarian state that has deepened its censorship and surveillance practices during the COVID-19 outbreak. Instructing the contestants to care for their entrepreneurial selves while encroaching upon their autonomy, Lana invites us to rethink the common framing of China – a coveted market for Netflix – as the nonhuman Other of the liberal-democratic West. During a time when the nonhuman virus keeps humans apart while intensifying their reliance on nonhuman machines for communication, Lana promotes a kind of intimacy without proximity characteristic of the global infrastructures of connection. A symptomatic reading of THTH, which also conjures a vision of collectivity as a basis for surviving the pandemic, thus allows us to recognize the entanglement of the human and the nonhuman and to imagine new paths toward global social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern scholarship has drawn hasty and numerous parallels between the Yellow Peril discourses of the 19th- and 20th-century plagues and the recent racialization of infectious disease in the 21st-century. While highlighting these similarities is politically useful against Sinophobic epidemic narratives, Michel Foucault argues that truly understanding the past's continuity in the present requires a more rigorous genealogical approach. Employing this premise in a comparative analysis, this work demonstrates a critical discontinuity in the epidemic imaginary that framed the Chinese as pathogenic. Consequently, those seeking to prevent future disease racialization must understand modern Sinophobia as fundamentally distinct from that of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the geographic origins of the first major outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, individuals of Chinese ethnic origin around the world have experienced discrimination, xenophobia, and racism during the pandemic. Discriminatory actions have ranged from outright physical aggression to subtle microaggressions. While reports (both media and academic) have highlighted such incidents, this paper argues that when the conversation starts and stops at the reporting of experiences of stigma, the narrative remains as the victimization of the community. Instead, instances of COVID-19 stigma and discrimination are only one aspect of this story, where other aspects include a deeper understanding of the community itself along with an awareness of the capacity that the Chinese diaspora community brings forward to help overcome COVID-19. We focus our discussion on the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Canada, a global urban center that has a sizeable ethnic Chinese diaspora community, and argue that highlighting the early actions that the community took to help broader society in dealing with COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic may help to reframe anti-Chinese stigma during the pandemic. These early actions include physical distancing, mask-wearing, sanitation and advocacy. Findings for this case-study are informed by media monitoring and interviews with 83 individuals identifying as ethnically Chinese living across the GTA.

After a period of excellent relations that reached its acme from 2013 to 2015, Australia--China relations began to decline sharply in 2017 and have continued to deteriorate since then, reaching a very low ebb from which it seems difficult to escape. The article chooses several very important incidents that mark and to some extent explain this decline. It probes the role of human rights and explores the impact on the economy and on images of China. It concludes that Australia's agency in sparking the controversies is much greater than generally supposed, with China more a reactor than an instigator. It also suggests that the present Australian government is quite happy with the wave of Sinophobia, with the mainstream media eager to assist in stirring it up. Contrary to the government's position that 'standing up to' China is in conformity with Australia's interests, the paper argues the opposite, namely that they can only be hurt by hostility with our largest trading partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coronavirus stigmatization may be disproportionately impacting ethnoracial minority groups in the US. We test three hypotheses: [H1] Asians in the US are more likely to report experiencing coronavirus stigmatization than non-Hispanic Whites; [H2] Coronavirus stigmatization is associated with psychological distress; [H3] Magnitude of association between coronavirus stigmatization and psychological distress is more pronounced among US-born Asians, compared to non-Hispanic Whites. We analyzed cross-sectional survey data from the 10–31 March 2020 wave of the Understanding America Survey, a nationally representative survey of adults in the US. Psychological distress was assessed with the PHQ-4. Measures of association were estimated using multiple logistic regression and survey sampling weights. Predicted probabilities were calculated using marginal standardization (n = 6707). [H1] The adjusted predicted probability of experiencing any coronavirus stigma among foreign-born Asians (11.2%, 95% CI: 5.5–17.0%; E-value = 4.52), US-born Asians (10.9%, 95% CI: 5.8–16.0%; E-value = 4.23), Blacks (8.0%, 95% CI: 5.3–10.7%; E-value = 2.92), and Hispanic Whites (7.3%, 95% CI: 4.6–9.9%; E-value = 2.58) was significantly greater than non-Hispanic Whites (4.5%, 95% CI: 3.7–5.4%). [H2] Individuals reporting any coronavirus stigma experience were significantly more likely to exhibit psychological distress (19.9%, 95% CI: 14.6–25.2% vs 10.6%, 9.6–11.6%; E-value = 3.16). [H3] The overall magnitude of association between experience of any coronavirus stigma and psychological distress was not significantly between US-born Asians and non-Hispanic Whites, though we found gender to mask this effect. US-born Asian females who experienced coronavirus stigmatization were more likely to exhibit psychological distress than non-Hispanic white females who experienced coronavirus stigmatization (relative risk (RR): 10.21, 95% CI: 2.69–38.74 vs 1.24, 95% CI: 0.76–2.01; p < 0.01). Comprehensive measures around care seeking, public awareness, and disaggregated data collection are needed to address ethnoracial coronavirus stigmatization and its impact on psychological health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how Chinese migrants are perceived by different groups in Kyrgyzstan—and in what domains local people turn to Sinophobia. To date, Kyrgyzstani political leaders have tended to be Sinophilic, whereas bazaar traders and ordinary citizens, fearing large inflows of Chinese migrants, are Sinophobic. The article paints a picture of Chinese migrants' lives in Bishkek and their negative and positive experiences with local people. It concludes by demonstrating that lay people and radical nationalist groups alike deploy Sinophobic rhetoric in relation to China and Chinese immigrants living in Kyrgyzstan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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