A University of Macau (UM) study concluded that at the beginning of the pandemic mainland Chinese were discriminated against in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Western societies, but that later the same happened to Africans in China.
The study ‘Stigma, Discrimination, and Hate Crimes in Chinese-Speaking World amid
Covid-19 Pandemic’, analyzed factors such as “the fear of being infected, food culture, mask culture, political ideology and racism”, to help “understand the stigmatization in Chinese-speaking communities during the Covid-19 pandemic”, but also“ the impact of different socio-political factors in the generation of hate crimes” the university said in a statement.
“During the early stages of the pandemic, there were mainly acts of stigmatization by Chinese […] against residents of Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province, by residents of Hong Kong and Taiwan against residents of the mainland, as well as by Western societies against overseas Chinese”.
Later, “with the epidemic gradually controlled within China and the development of the pandemic outside the country, African people in China have also become the target of stigmatization,” he concluded.
The study was carried out by students from the UM Faculty of Social Sciences Sociology Department, guided by the head of the respective department.
The covid-19 pandemic has caused at least 1,979,596 deaths resulting from more than 92.3 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report by the news agency France-Presse (AFP).
