Sean McMinn

Opinion | Why Hong Kong students spreading racist coronavirus memes and blaming China are playing with fire

The Covid-19 crisis extends beyond Hong Kong politics and China. Singaporeans and Hongkongers have been racially targeted overseas because of the virus. Pinning the virus on China only reinforces bigotry and racism

Reading Time:4 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Sean McMinn

Published: 7:00am, 25 Mar 2020Updated: 7:04am, 25 Mar 2020

There are some in Hong Kong, such as university student unions, who are purposely circulating memes hashtagged with #ChineseCoronaVirus, #WuhanPneumonia or some variation thereof through social media. Why? One can only assume the purpose is to keep the anti-China movement alive and demonise a people.

It’s important to analyse and evaluate why these people insist on using such labels for the novel coronavirus, in spite of the World Health Organisation’s recommendations.

As stated in a WHO document on “best practices for naming of new human infectious diseases”, we should “minimise unnecessary negative impact of disease names on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare, and avoid causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups”.

Researchers have already argued that, given the use of social media in global communication, the choice of names like Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and swine influenza “has had unintentional negative economic and social impacts by stigmatising certain industries or communities”.

Yet, many people who use labels like “Wuhan virus” continue to argue that it is common practice to name a disease after the place where the first outbreak occurred. An example often wrongly cited is the Spanish flu, the origin of which is still unclear.

This is sometimes followed up with comments suggesting that there should be fewer concerns about political correctness and that the Chinese shouldn’t have such low self-esteem. After all, as some of them claim, it’s China’s fault.