Amid rising xenophobia, Chinese-American communities on both coasts look out for themselves

Chinese-American neighbourhood patrols in New York and California are bracing for a spike in anti-Asian harassment and possible violence in the days leading up to the November 3 US presidential elections and what could be a turbulent aftermath, community activists say.

While Chinese-Americans have faced racism throughout America’s history, researchers and activists assert that Sinophobia has surged as a result of US President Donald Trump’s inflammatory language – particularly in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which Trump and other officials in his administration have repeatedly tied to China.

Since March, when the first US outbreaks of the pandemic began to spread, the Stop AAPI [short for Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders] Hate reporting centre has recorded more than 2,700 incidents of discrimination, verbal abuse and physical attacks in 47 states and Washington.

In an interview, Russell Jeung, the Stop AAPI Hate chair and an Asian-American Studies professor at San Francisco State University, said that many of the rising incidents could be directly correlated to incendiary rhetoric from the Trump administration.

“The current administration exacerbated the situation greatly by insisting on using the term ‘Chinese virus’ rather than a natural virus,” he said. “That racialised the disease … it spreads quickly, and hate speech then leads to hate violence.”

Nearly one-third of reported incidents through August included rhetoric specifically mentioning China. In one incident outside a hospital in Boston, for example, a man shouted accusations that the Chinese were “killing everyone”.