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This sort of thing really is bordering the Yellow Peril line. Shameful that a prominent journalist like Uhlmann is endorsing it, but symptomatic of everything wrong with the discourse around China in Australian public life. https://twitter.com/CUhlmann/status/1334358657463566337
This is no different from Trump's 'kung flu' trope- it associates a whole country with the virus. Bear in mind the context: a media climate around the CCP threat in which even Parliament has become a forum for 'blatant racial profiling' of people who look Chinese. @mcgregorrichard
To expand on *why* the cartoon is a problem
1)The caricature of China spreading disease to the world is an old one with particular history in Australia. The plague was not a specifically Chinese phenomenon any more than COVID, but conflation exploits fear. https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/blog/exhibitions/2019/05/10/australia-for-the-white-man
1)The caricature of China spreading disease to the world is an old one with particular history in Australia. The plague was not a specifically Chinese phenomenon any more than COVID, but conflation exploits fear. https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/blog/exhibitions/2019/05/10/australia-for-the-white-man
2) This fear is not a 19thC relic, but gets traction quickly under the right conditions. People in US/Aus/elsewhere who look Asian are getting attacked due to association with COVID. Linking COVID to China translates into actual violence & discrimination. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/24/asian-australians-threatened-and-spat-on-in-racist-incidents-amid-coronavirus
My own future sister-in-law was physically kicked on the streets of Melbourne by a stranger for no apparent reason other than looking Chinese -she's Malaysian, but that brings us to-
3)We can't expect the average Joe to distinguish btwn the 'CCP', 'China', 'Chinese people', etc.
3)We can't expect the average Joe to distinguish btwn the 'CCP', 'China', 'Chinese people', etc.
Hence the poverty of the mantra 'we hate the CCP, not the Chinese people'.
Debate around the CCP doesn't happen in a vacuum.
There's already structural bias - not speculative, but evident in data - in Australia and elsewhere against people who look Asian. https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/eight-out-of-10-asian-australians-experience-discrimination-survey-20190920-p52tfp.html
Debate around the CCP doesn't happen in a vacuum.
There's already structural bias - not speculative, but evident in data - in Australia and elsewhere against people who look Asian. https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/eight-out-of-10-asian-australians-experience-discrimination-survey-20190920-p52tfp.html
This bias is only amplified by a picture of the CCP spreading tentacles, whether political or an actual virus, among ethnic Chinese people around the world. People sympathise with that community as an abstraction, but turn a blind eye to the negative impacts at individual level.
That's how you reach a situation where elected reps in our Parliament subject *only* ethnic Chinese-Australians to questioning about their loyalty to the CCP, and still portray such actions as helping rather than hurting Chinese-Australians. @redrabbleroz https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-was-born-in-australia-why-do-i-need-to-renounce-the-chinese-communist-party-20201014-p5655j.html
4) Back to the cartoon - the idea that it's innocuous because it portrays Xi Jinping releasing the virus and not some other abstraction of 'China', is as foolish as saying Zhao Lijian's tweet is innocuous b/c people will distinguish a photoshopped Aussie soldier from 'Australia'.
The point of both cartoons is obviously to direct opprobrium at an entire country.
To say that the general public will distinguish between 'the CCP system' and people who look Chinese is, for reasons given in thread above, willfully blind to how this plays out in the real world.
To say that the general public will distinguish between 'the CCP system' and people who look Chinese is, for reasons given in thread above, willfully blind to how this plays out in the real world.
But let's accept that premise for the moment.
Even if this is indeed just about 'the CCP system', the idea that that system is uniquely responsible for inflicting COVID on the world is both poorly supported, and damaging to effective policy for dealing with the CCP's challenge.
Even if this is indeed just about 'the CCP system', the idea that that system is uniquely responsible for inflicting COVID on the world is both poorly supported, and damaging to effective policy for dealing with the CCP's challenge.
Firstly, could COVID have spread round the world if it originated in a country other than China? Clearly, yes. The way Trump's America handled it gives plenty of reason to believe it would still have become a global pandemic if it had originated in the US. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/opinion/sunday/trump-woodward-coronavirus-tapes.html
Not to mention Asian democracies like Indonesia, where a minister claimed eucalyptus necklaces stopped COVID, or India, where govt officials led mass gatherings on the streets in response to Modi's call for social distancing & showing pandemic solidarity. https://qz.com/india/1823105/india-hits-street-in-gratitude-amid-modis-social-distance-curfew/
Yes, pernicious aspects of the CCP system contributed to global spread of this pandemic. That doesn't justify claiming the pandemic *results from* the CCP system, and conflating this with completely unconnected issues like Hong Kong to make a political point, as the cartoon does.
The cartoon is especially irresponsible b/c it implies China might have deliberately released COVID on the world. This idea, backed by no evidence but playing to conceptions about China/CCP, it now seems clear is being driven by a disinformation campaign. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/business/media/steve-bannon-china.html
