3. Reasons Behind the Rising Anti-Asian Sentiment Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic

(1) Some U.S. politicians' racist coronavirus attacks on China

Some U.S. politicians' manipulation of public opinion during the coronavirus pandemic is the direct cause of the increasingly rampant racial discrimination against Asian Americans. Former U.S. President Donald Trump is good at utilizing racial issues to achieve his political goals. During his four-year term of office, he repeatedly made explicitly racist remarks, resulting in mounting racial tensions in the United States. When the United States became the country hit most badly by the coronavirus due to the lack of adequate prevention and control measures, Trump, Pompeo and other U.S. politicians who were eager to shirk their responsibilities and ensure the success of the upcoming election, even attempted to make China the scapegoat by referring to the virus as "China virus" or other names that falsely accused China of being the pathogen's geographic origin, instead of using its internationally-recognized name. What they did led to a rise in racist sentiments toward Asian Americans of Chinese or other East Asian origins, making them suffer from various kinds of racist attacks featuring malicious defamation, denial of service, or brutal violence. Ms. E. Tendayi Achiume, the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance once sharply pointed out that "politicians of relevant countries proactively refused to use the internationally-recognized name of the virus and deliberately replaced it with other names that linked this particular disease to a particular country or nation, which was an irresponsible and disturbing expression that came from and would give rise to racism, xenophobia, stigmatization, and exclusion of certain groups, and violence against certain groups." Faced with the rising Anti-Asian sentiments, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, also admitted that there was "no question" that the Trump administration's "damaging rhetoric" led to "elevated threats against Asian Americans." Frustratingly, when Trump left office, the U.S. government continued the manipulation of the public opinion and the act of politicizing COVID-19 origins tracing, further stoking the Anti-Asian sentiments within the United States.

(2) The effects of white supremacy

The hatred and exclusion suffered by Asian Americans during the pandemic are not very different from the long-term racial discrimination suffered by other U.S. ethnic minorities such as African Americans and Hispanics. All these problems are ultimately rooted in white supremacy that is embodied in the racial structure and social atmosphere of the United States. As Asian Americans have long been marginalized in the society, many Americans do not even realize or have the courage to admit the long-standing racial discrimination against them. The label "the model minority" has never helped Asian Americans to suffer less from the United States' systemic racism than other U.S. ethnic minorities do, and white supremacists have never shown more mercy toward "the model minority." Seventy-five percent of the attackers that have committed racial hate crimes against Asian Americans are white; hate crimes against Asians also occur most frequently in areas dominated by whites, and white politicians such as Trump and Pompeo are the ones who have first made Asian Americans the scapegoats for the pandemic. The mainstream society of the United States has long turned a deaf ear to Asian Americans' complaints of racism and discrimination. In September 2020, 164 Republican congressmen voted against the bill condemning discrimination against Asian Americans. Many vicious violent attacks against Asian Americans, such as setting a 90-year-old woman on fire, and stabbing a Chinese American man on the streets of Manhattan, were not filed as hate crimes. After the three shootings that occurred in Atlanta on March 16, 2021, Jay Baker, the spokesman of the local police office openly denied that it was a hate crime and even defended the shooter by claiming that he was having a "bad day."

(3) "The model minority" label shackling Asian Americans

In the mid and late 1960s, when African-Americans struggled to achieve civil rights equal to those of whites, a number of stories describing the success of some Asian Americans such as Japanese and Chinese Americans were published in mainstream U.S. newspapers and magazines, as the U.S. political, academic and media circles planned to label Asian Americans as "the model minority." Objectively speaking, this label was effective in reducing the long-existing stigma toward Asian Americans and praising some Asian Americans' hard work and success. Nevertheless, many in-depth analyses also reveal that this label was just a ridiculous idea invented to strengthen the U.S. racial hierarchy and rationalize its racist discrimination. For the following reasons, this seemingly glorious label actually shackled Asian Americans. To begin with, this label made the racial discrimination against Asian Americans sound far-fetched, and people started neglecting and even denying the discrimination against them. Along with the labeling, Asian Americans were stereotyped as well-educated with high incomes which deprived them of the right of enjoying favorable policies for U.S. ethnic minorities. Being labeled as a "successful minority," their economic difficulties are often overlooked. In fact, 13.5 percent of elderly Asian Americans currently live in poverty, and the proportion is much higher than the average poverty rate of the United States. Asian Americans also experience the longest average unemployment spell than other U.S. ethnic groups do, and they are obviously underrepresented in the leadership of politics, business, academia and law. Furthermore, "the model minority" label subdues the Asian Americans' resistance against racial discrimination. The U.S. mainstream media frequently describe Asian Americans as "independent, intelligent, diligent, obedient, and silent," and advocate that their cultural values are consistent with the country's Protestant ethics. Such seemingly commendatory remarks have successfully won the recognition of a considerable number of Asian Americans, making them willing to act low-key according to the expected image and behavior mode. As such, they become more tolerant toward discriminative speeches and deeds and even feel ashamed of mentioning them. Last but not least, "the model minority" label deteriorates the relationships among U.S. ethnic minorities and shifts their attention from opposing white supremacy. The act of labeling Asian Americans as "the model minority" during the African-American Civil Rights Movement, which implied criticism toward African Americans, was a policy of "divide and rule" used to contain the Civil Rights Movement. It caused acute conflicts among the U.S. ethnic minorities, making Asian Americans a common target for scorn, ridicule, etc.

(4) The antagonism between Asian Americans and other U.S. ethnic minorities

Relevant research shows that although all U.S. ethnic minorities suffer racist attacks mainly from whites, Asian Americans are more vulnerable to attacks from other ethnic minorities than African Americans and Hispanics. Seventy-five percent of attackers who committed hate crimes against Asian Americans were whites, and the remaining 25 percent were people of other ethnic minorities. This fact, to some extent, reflects the complex racial relations and conflicts within the United States. For instance, deceived by some U.S. politicians' and media's lies about the coronavirus pandemic, some African Americans mistook Asian Americans as their enemy and attacked Asian Americans to vent their anger. Such anger is also a result of the long-lasting antagonism and misunderstanding between Asian Americans and African Americans, which were created by the U.S. mainstream society's labeling of Asian Americans as "the model minority," and the two groups' differences in cultural traditions and values, their competition for jobs and other social resources, and their previous conflicts. Although both of them are victims of racial injustice in the United States, distrust between them makes Asian Americans more powerless to extricate themselves from the difficult position. In the end, it is worth noting that other U.S. ethnic groups clearly offered more support for the Black Lives Matter movement than they did for the Stop Asian Hate movement.

(5) Some U.S. politicians' actions that seriously undermine Sino-U.S. relations

In the U.S. history, the country's diplomatic relations with different countries could often determine its ways of treating its immigrants of different origins: the tension between the United States and a foreign country frequently led to discrimination and racist attacks against the immigrants from that foreign country. Such kinds of discrimination happened to German immigrants during World War I, Japanese immigrants during World War II, and immigrants from Muslim countries after the September 11 incident. The Sino-U.S. relations began to deteriorate even before the coronavirus outbreak, when the Trump administration adopted various policies to suppress China, made extreme remarks to criticize China's political system and harm China's sovereignty, launched the so-called trade war or tech war against China and attempted to decouple China and the United States. Affected by that, Chinese Americans began to encounter an increasing amount of discriminatory treatment in the United States, and the most typical example was the censorship and persecution of Chinese American intellectuals. When the coronavirus pandemic went out of control in the United States, the Trump administration continued using racist remarks to attack China as a way of covering up its ineffective epidemic response. This further worsened the Sino-U.S. relations and left the entire Asian American group, especially Chinese Americans, vulnerable to rampant racial discrimination. At present, the Biden administration still views China as a major strategic competitor, which continues stoking the anti-Asian sentiment in the United States. It can be inferred that in the post-pandemic era, even if the racial discrimination against Asian Americans may subside, the racial attacks against Chinese Americans will continue to rise. This increases our worry and requires our vigilance and the sustained attention of the international community.