衛周安 X 林垚 X 邱昱 | 疫情中的种族、排外与污名

<Swipe Left for English>

从14世纪的黑死病到20世纪初旧金山的鼠疫，从2003年的SARS到2014-16年的埃博拉疫情，大规模流行性疾病常常伴随着对特定族群及其文化和生活方式的审视、责难甚至仇视。

今年1月中下旬以来，随着新冠肺炎疫情的蔓延，中国国民、海外华人和亚裔遭遇了一系列的歧视、污名化甚至暴力事件。从网传“中国人吃蝙蝠”的照片视频及随之而来对中国文化的攻击，到特朗普将新冠病毒称作“中国病毒”；从亚裔女子在纽约地贴被追打，到中国留学生在柏林被当街辱骂和吐口水；从丹麦《日德兰邮报》刊登一幅五星被五枚冠状病毒图案替代的中国国旗漫画，到美国《华尔街日报》将一篇评论文章取名为“中国是真正的亚洲病夫”，无论网络上，媒体报道中，还是现实世界里，中国乃至亚洲面孔和身份频频被作为病毒的象征、新冠疫情的替罪羊。

就这一话题，上海纽约大学多元倡议项目于4月26日举办了一场线上对谈，题为“疫情中的排外：文化、种族与污名”。嘉宾分别是上海纽约大学教务长衞周安、哥伦比亚大学政治学博士林垚、中国民族大学讲师邱昱。三位嘉宾聚焦于此次全球新冠肺炎疫情期间针对中国国民、华人乃至整个亚裔的他者化和污名化，从历史和当下的视角分析了其社会、政治和历史背景。另外，嘉宾们还就日前非洲黑人在华遭遇的歧视和不友善待遇发表了看法，探讨了种族偏见背后的历史和心理根源。

本期推送是这场对谈的回顾，包括嘉宾讨论和问答环节的内容，文字有删减和编辑。我们也将活动录音进行了剪辑，做成下方的音频（不含问答环节）。完整版本的音频我们会在之后发布，可以在网易云音乐、喜马拉雅或苹果播客上搜索“unCoVer”收听。

The coronavirus is new, but xenophobia is not. From the Black Death of the 14th century to the bubonic plague outbreak in San Francisco's Chinatown, from the 2003 SARS outbreak to the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak, there have always been narratives around epidemics that stigmatize certain populations and their behaviors, lifestyles and cultures. 

In the last few months, it has been documented, reported and researched that there has been increased prejudice, discrimination and violence around the world against Chinese people and people of Asian descent or appearance. Most prominently, the President of the United States Donald Trump referred to the COVID-19 virus as the “Chinese Virus,” followed by fierce backlash.

On April 26,  the Office of Diversity Initiatives at New York University Shanghai (NYU Shanghai) held a panel discussion, “Xenophobia in the Time of Coronavirus: Culture, Race & Stigma.” The panelists were: Joanna Waley-Cohen, Provost of NYU Shanghai and Professor of History; Lin Yao, Ph.D. candidate at Yale Law School, public intellectual and activist; and Qiu Yu, lecturer in Social Anthropology at Minzu University of China. 

The panelists discussed the social, political and historical contexts in which China’s citizens, members of its diaspora and people of Asian descent have been stigmatized as carriers of contagion in the time of COVID-19. Looking at both history and the current phenomenon, the panelists examined narratives that link the imagining of an infectious disease with the imagining of “the other.” In addition, the panelists commented on the recent reports of xenophobic incidents targeting African nationals in China, highlighting the historical and psychological roots of racial prejudice.

对谈语言为英文。此音频不含观众

提问环节内容，收听完整音频请见文末信息

Conversation in English. Audio not including the Q&A part.

To listen to the full version, 

find information at the end of this issue

嘉宾介绍 | Panelist Info

<Swipe Left for English>

衛周安

上海纽约大学教务长，纽约大学历史学Julius Silver教授，耶鲁大学历史学博士。主要研究领域包括近代早期中国历史、中国与西方、中国的帝国文化等。著有《中国的战争文化：帝国与清朝军事》《北京的六分仪：中国历史中的世界潮流》及《清朝中叶的流放：发配新疆，1758-1820》等。

林垚

哥伦比亚大学政治学博士，耶鲁法学院博士候选人。主要研究领域包括当代自由主义与民主理论、道德哲学、女性主义、宪法学、政治社会学等。在学术的象牙塔之外，林垚也是一位公共知识分子和社会活动家，积极参与各种倡导和法律援助项目。

邱昱

中央民族大学民族学系讲师，英国剑桥大学社会人类学博士。取得博士学位前，邱昱曾任德国马克思普朗克宗教与民族多样性研究所研究员、荷兰莱顿大学博士后。邱昱博士的研究方向包括性别、种族和身份认同，跨种族亲密关系、婚姻及移民，中非友谊政治和民间互动。

Joanna Waley-Cohen

Provost for NYU Shanghai and Julius Silver Professor of History at New York University. Waley-Cohen’s research interests include early modern Chinese history, interaction between China and the West, and Chinese imperial culture, especially in the Qianlong era.

Lin Yao

J.D. candidate at Yale Law School, Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. Lin's research interests include applied moral philosophy, contemporary liberal democratic theory, feminism, constitutional law, and political sociology. Outside the ivory tower, Lin is a public intellectual and an activist, commenting extensively on contemporary social and political issues as well as engaging in various activities of advocacy and legal assistance.

Qiu Yu

Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Minzu University of China, China-Africa Peace Fellow at the Social Sciences Research Council of the United States. Qiu’s research interests include: interracial intimacy, marriage and migration; gender, race and identity; China-Africa friendship politics and interpersonal interactions. 

嘉宾对谈 | Panel Discussion

[06:20 - 10:15]

<Swipe Left for English>

你们是从什么时候开始关注COVID-19相关的种族主义和排外情绪的？当时的感受和想法是什么？

衛周安：我一月到三月都在纽约，当时看到一条来自巴黎的“我不是病毒”的推特后便注意到了。这条推特也被康涅狄格大学的Jason Oliver Chang教授所记录，此后我就开始关注他对反华事件的记录。我并不是很惊讶，因为流行病总是伴随着针对群体外成员的敌意，比如十四世纪黑死病流行时的犹太人、80年代艾滋病肆虐时的同性恋者、SARS期间的中国人，以及埃博拉疫情期间的非洲人和非裔美国人。

林垚：我注意到这一现象是在一月末，我的一个韩裔美国朋友说他在街上被人喊”滚回中国去！”他当时觉得很好笑，因为他都不是中国人。二月初，歧视事件频发，我的许多朋友都受到了辱骂或人身攻击，包括在街头被吐口水。就在两天前，我的一个自我隔离中的朋友在家门口被人叫“中国佬” （英文“chink”含有极强的种族歧视和侮辱意味——译者注）。我在媒体上读到了许多类似事件，这让我意识到情况已经急转直下。

邱昱：我1月在中国，2月初到了德国。刚开始的时候我尽量避免用种族歧视的框架去看待这个事——不是因为这个框架不相关或不准确，而是因为“种族”和“种族主义”的建构在不同国家有非常复杂的历史，所以不能一概而论。

我观察到两种具有排外性质的仇视。第一种是像疫情初期武汉人经历的——他们被看做病毒携带者。那时有许多关于谁来自武汉、谁跟武汉有关联、谁是大家不想要接触的人之类的流言蜚语。

第二种是针对某些国家国民的制度化的歧视，比如在中国的非洲人。疫情期间的排外情绪放大了根植在我们社会中的社会偏见与种族歧视。

一位在法华人在推特上发布自拍，照片中他手举“我不是病毒”的标识 | Lou Chengwang appealed on Twitter "I'm Chinese, but I'm not a virus! I know everyone's scared of the virus but no prejudice, please." 图源：https://twitter.com/chengwangl/status/1222114635878367232?lang=en

When did you first take note of COVID-19 related racism and xenophobia and what were your feelings and thoughts back then?

Joanna Waley-Cohen: I was in New York from January to March, and became aware of this when I saw a post from Paris saying “I am not a virus,” which is a part of a collection of anti Asian episodes being recorded by Professor Jason Oliver Chang at the University of Connecticut that I followed along afterwards. I'm not surprised to hear about it because epidemics have always been associated with hostility towards people perceived to be outsiders, whether it was Jews in the Black Death in the 14th century, gay people during the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, Chinese people during SARS, or African nationals and African Americans during Ebola.

Yao Lin: I noticed the phenomenon in late January when one of my Korean-American friends said that someone in the street yelled to him “Go back to China!” That amused him because he’s not even a Chinese. In early February, the number of discriminatory incidents surged quickly and many of my friends have either been verbally or physically abused, including being spat on in the street. Just two days ago, another friend of mine self-isolating in New York was called a “chink” right outside of her apartment. I read about a lot of similar incidents in the news which made me realize how fast this situation has developed.

Yu Qiu: I was back in China in January and then travelled to Germany in early February. At first I tried to avoid thinking along the lines of racism, not because it’s irrelevant or inaccurate, but because the construction of race and racism has extremely complex histories in different countries, and therefore cannot be discussed in a simplified way. 

I would identify two categories of xenophobia-like hatred. The first kind was what I observed at the beginning of the outbreak, when Wuhan people were racialized and portrayed as the carrier of the virus. At that time there was a lot of gossiping around who came from Wuhan, who had connections with Wuhan, and basically who were the unwanted people to be connected with. 

The second kind is the institutionalized discrimination targeting particular nationals, such as Africans in China. The xenophobia during the pandemic amplified the social prejudice and the racial discrimination that has been deeply rooted in our society.

[10:50 - 15:35]

<Swipe Left for English>

在当下反华情绪中，食物与饮食文化是如何与种族以及病毒的种族化相关联的？

衛周安：人们通过饮食对自我与他人进行身份的识别。十九世纪，中国人跟当时在中国的英国和其它西方国家传教士之间有争端的时候，中国坊间流传着各种关于他们的传闻，比如他们抓小孩来吃。这次疫情期间，一个我之前尊敬的朋友给我发消息说：“你能相信吗——他们居然在武汉的那个市场卖树袋熊给人吃！”我说：“别搞笑了，那是美国的反华政治宣传。”他说“不是的！我是从英国的媒体上看到的！”我说“那就是英国的政治宣传”。他说“可是有照片啊！”食物和饮食习惯很容易被用来定义和污名化“他者”。

林垚：人们对自己不熟悉的异国风物的想像是造成误解的原因。二十世纪初在旧金山爆发的淋巴腺鼠疫使得旧金山中国城被封锁。中国人不被允许离开中国城，而白人却可以自由出入。当时有海报画了中国人都住在拥挤的房间里吃老鼠，并推定这就是瘟疫蔓延的原因。即便当时并没有科学证据说明中国城就是疫情传播中心，对于中国食物的误解仍然广泛传播开来。如今，当西方人想弄明白新冠病毒的来源时，他们的想法基于这样一种想像：所有中国人都吃蝙蝠，所以蝙蝠将新冠病毒传播给了中国人。

邱昱：食物除了区分不同群体，也能促进人与人之间的相互联结。比如，在中国的非洲人非常喜欢吃中国餐馆里常见的酸菜鱼，许多中国人便试着通过分享食物和同一套行为方式与非洲人建立联结。

一幅1878年的漫画题为“给雇主的图：为什么他们（指中国人—译者注）可以一天40美分过活；而他们（指美国人—译者注）不行”，对比描绘了中国人在拥挤的鸦片馆里吃老鼠（左）和一位美国男人回到“正常”状态的家庭中 | Caricature titled “A picture for employers. Why they can live on 40 cents a day, and they can't” showing Chinese, living in very crowded opium den, eating rats; and American man arriving home from work to wife, children and "normal" household conditions. Published in 1878. 图源: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002720432/

How is food and the culture around eating linked with race and the racialization  of diseases, specially in the case of anti Chinese sentiment?

Joanna Waley-Cohen: People identify themselves and others by what they eat. In the 19th century, when there were disputes with the British and other Western missionaries in China, all kinds of rumors circulated among Chinese people about them. One of them was that they were taking children and eating them. During the pandemic, a friend of mine, whom I previously respected, wrote to me saying, “Can you believe they were selling koala bears for food in that market!” And I said, “Oh, don't be ridiculous. This is just America’s anti-Chinese propaganda.” And he said, “No, I got it from the U.K. newspapers.” And I said, “Well, it's British propaganda then.” And he said, “But there are photographs!” So it is common to talk about food and eating in a stigmatizing way.

Yao Lin: The imagination of exotic things people are unfamiliar with helps to build the misunderstanding. The bubonic plague in San Francisco in the early 20th century resulted in the lockdown of its Chinatown. Chinese people were not allowed to leave Chinatown, whereas white people were free to go in and out of Chinatown. There were posters showing Chinese people all living in overcrowded rooms and eating rats and presuming that was why the plague was spreading. Even though there was no scientific evidence showing that Chinatown was the epicenter, the misunderstanding of Chinese foods still spread out. Nowadays when people in the West wonder where the coronavirus came from, they immediately build the idea on the imagination that all Chinese people eat bats and therefore bats transmit the coronavirus to Chinese people.

Yu Qiu: Aside from differentiating one group of people from another, food can also play a very important role connecting people. Africans in China are extremely into the spicy fish soup that has been widely available in many Chinese restaurants. A lot of Chinese people try to connect with Africans by sharing their food and sharing the same kind of manner. 

[15:40 - 22:00]

<Swipe Left for English>

“黄祸”这个词由来已久，透露出将东亚人视为对“西方文明”的威胁的恐惧。然而，直到近几年中国才开始作为一个在地缘政治上拥有强大军事与经济能力的超级大国而被视为威胁。当下的排华情绪中有多少是那种老式的种族主义，又有多少具有不同于以往的、新的特殊性？

衛周安：美国人突然意识到中国已经大步前进，且不是以美国模式为参照而发展。这就造成了一种集体性的焦虑。我成长于二十世纪五十和六十年代期间，当时大英帝国正逐渐解体，现在某种程度上我有种童年重演的感觉。当人们感到恐惧和焦虑时，他们会错放自己的焦虑，产生一种敌意，针对那些他们认为导致自己失去控制和权力的人。

林垚：100年前，中国移民对当时世界秩序的“威胁”在于其移居后却不能融入到当地的“优等”文化中。“黄祸”这一概念认为这些移民的出现是对当地卫生状况的威胁。但是这种威胁在今天已经被一种不忠诚带来的威胁所替代。人们设想了一个正在崛起的威权国家，其民众散布世界各个角落。西方领导人不确定这些人是否会对其现居的新国家忠诚，还是共产主义政权派遣的间谍或特工。【对他们而言】当下的威胁是越来越政治性的，越来越有关自由民主政体与威权力量之间存在性的威胁。一些人坚持将病毒称为“中国病毒”，因为这样他们便可以将责任归咎于共产主义政权。

邱昱：反华情绪的产生实际上取决于不同的社会文化背景。例如，中国人在非洲国家不被认为是“黄种人”。在尼日利亚，人们称中国人为“奥伊卜”（“白人”），我认为【对尼日利亚人民来说】中国人和英国殖民者之间有一种非常微妙的联系。但与此同时，尼日利亚人民对中国有不同的期望。对尼日利亚等非洲国家的人来说，真正的问题不在于中国是否是一个威胁，而在于中国是否是一个新的值得效仿的领袖国家，或是否是带着自身目的在非洲扮演更有影响力的角色。

1月27日的丹麦《日德兰邮报》刊登一幅中国国旗漫画，上面的5星被5枚冠状病毒图案替代 | On January 27, Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a cartoon depicting a Chinese national flag with the five yellow stars normally found in the top left hand corner replaced with drawings of five coronaviruses. 图源: https://supchina.com/2020/01/30/chinese-social-media-users-target-denmark-after-danish-newspapers-coronavirus-cartoon/

The term “Yellow Peril” has long been there manifesting the fear towards East Asian people as a threat to the “western civilization.” However, It is only recently that China has started to be perceived as a threat in the sense of being a geopolitical superpower with strong military and economic capacities. How much is the current Sinophobia part of the old racism, how much of it is new and unique to the situation today?

Joanna Waley-Cohen: This is about a sudden realization on the part of the U.S. that China has progressed by leaps and bounds but is not necessarily progressing towards an American model. That causes extreme anxiety in a collective way. I grew up during the 1950s and 60s as the British Empire was disintegrating, and I feel like I'm now reliving my childhood to some extent. As people feel terrible fear and anxiety, they displace their anxiety which becomes a kind of hostility towards the people that they think may be responsible for the loss of control and power.

Yao Lin: 100 years ago, the “threat” imposed by the Chinese immigrants to the existing world order was that they emigrated to other parts of the world but were not able to be integrated into the existing “superior” culture. The idea of “yellow peril” posits that those immigrants imposed a kind of sanitary threat by their presence. But nowadays that kind of threat is partly replaced by a kind of threat originating from disloyalty. People envision an authoritarian state on the rise, exporting its people to other parts of the world. Western leaders are not sure whether those people will be loyal to the new country they now reside in, or whether they are just spys or special agents sent by the Communist regime. The threat now is more and more political and existential between liberal democracies and authoritarian powers. Some people insist on calling this virus “Chinese virus” because that helps them to pin down the blame on the Communist regime.  

Yu Qiu: How anti-China sentiments have been constructed really depends on different kinds of social and cultural contexts. For example, Chinese people in African countries are not considered as a “yellow” race. In Nigeria, people call Chinese people “oyibo” which is used to refer to “white men” or something foreign, Western and superior. I think there is a very subtle association between Chinese people and the British colonizers. At the same time, however, the Nigerian people expect different things from China. For people in African countries such as Nigeria, it's not really about China as a threat, but whether China as a state is a new leader good to follow, and whether China is carrying out its own agenda while playing a more influential role in Africa. 

[22:29 - 27:46]

<Swipe Left for English>

此次疫情被西方优越论者当作非自由主义国家体制失败的证明。中国受到指责与歧视，不仅因为其文化与食物，更因为其政治与意识形态体系。这种形式的“他者化”在何种程度上导致了一些国家对疫情相当迟缓的反应？

林垚：这种“他者化”在一定程度上导致了那些国家最初未能迅速作出反应，但并非主要因素。影响不同国家疫情对策的因素是多种多样的。一方面，新冠病毒对公共卫生政策提出了新的挑战。依赖旧的知识和管控模式的公共卫生官员们很难在一开始就意识到，他们需要迅速采取行动以遏制病毒的扩散。

在1月底2月初的时候，美国许多新闻媒体把整个局势都归咎于中国政府隐瞒信息，暗示在美国永远不会有瞒报的现象。但结果事情并非如此，部分原因是因为美国现在正在经历一种政治准则与制度的衰退。但还有一个原因则是中国应对疫情的举措中有对有错【，并非像一些美国媒体描绘的那样一无是处】。

由于西方媒体倾向于寻找便捷的答案来满足读者的好奇心，对于疫情因果链的解释被过于简化，即：是因为政府的威权体制才导致事情出了错，因此我们没有什么可以从中借鉴的。在这种情况下，中国政府一些可能得当的举措没有受到西方国家的重视，比如建造临时医院来治疗轻症患者。

邱昱：对于控制病毒传播要不要采取威权主义的方式，有关讨论已经很多了。欧美国家有比较中韩两国在控制疫情方面的成效，因为韩国有跟中国类似的应对SARS的经历但它对人员流动没有像中国那么严格的控制。我觉得在西方“他者化”的运作里，对于政体的区分起到的作用是比较小的。

与此同时，许多西方国家实际上也在做着类似几个月前的中国做的事情。例如，德国当局目前（指对谈当时，即4月下旬——译者注）建议人们戴口罩，而这在三个月前是难以想象的。正是因为这些对于中国政治制度的偏见，所以【在西方国家中】广泛存在一种无知。

衛周安：我同意由于中国的威权政体，【西方的评价】存在双重标准。包括美国媒体在内的西方媒体一直强烈批评【中国】并称“他们居然封锁了这个偌大的城市和省份，真是令人难以置信”。但与此同时，他们却在赞扬意大利的封城举措。【他们认为】因为意大利不是威权政府，所以情况是不一样的。我同意林垚的说法，在一些西方国家迟缓的疫情应对里，政体区分不是主要因素，但确实是因素之一。

2020年第6期德国《明镜》周刊封面，上面写着“新冠病毒 中国制造” | Cover of the Feburary 1 publication of Der Spiegel with a giant headline "Coronavirus made in China." 

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/infecting-the-world-economy-how-the-coronavirus-made-globalization-a-deadly-threat-a-974703a5-59ca-436b-ae5a-bdfdb7898343

The outbreak was taken by the western exceptionalists as proof for the failure of the non-liberal state. China is blamed and racialized not only for its culture and food, but also for its political and ideological system. To what degree did that form of othering contribute to some countries' rather delayed response to the outbreak?

Yao Lin: It contributed to the earlier failure of a quick response in those countries to some extent, but didn’t play a primary role in the process. There was a mixture of factors that affected different countries’ responses. The coronavirus presented a kind of new challenge to public health policies. Public health officials who relied on old knowledge and old modes of regulation would hardly be able to realize at the onset that they need to move fast to contain the virus. 

In late January and early February, a lot of American news media painted the whole situation as [a result of] the Chinese government's concealment of information. An implication not said was that this would never happen in the United States. But things turn out differently, partly because the United States is nowadays undergoing a kind of decay of its political norms and institutions. But it was also because there was a mixture of things that Chinese government did right or wrong.

As the western media tends to find quick answers to satisfy the curiosity of their readers, the causal chains are reduced to an over simplified explanation: it was because the government was authoritarian, things went wrong, and therefore, there was nothing particularly interesting that we can learn from. In this case, some of those things the Chinese government might have done right were not taken seriously by Western countries, such as building the temporary hospitals to treat those who are mildly symptomatic.

Yu Qiu: There are so many discussions about whether to go authoritarian or not in the way of controlling the spread of this virus. In Euro American countries, they were comparing the success of control between China and South Korea which had similar experience with SARS but does not have a strict mobility control. I think the differentiation of regimes plays a small part in the Western operation of “othering.”

At the same time, a lot of Western countries are actually doing similar things to what China was doing a few months ago. For example, German authorities are advising people to wear masks which was really unimaginable about three months ago. So there is a kind of widespread ignorance, precisely because of these prejudices towards China's political regime.

Joanna Waley-Cohen: I agree that there's been double standards because China has an authoritarian regime. The Western press, especially in the U.S., has been highly critical and saying that “it is unbelievable that they locked down this enormous city and province.” At the same moment they are praising Italy for having a lockdown. Because Italy is not an authoritarian government, it's different. I agree with Yao that the othering of China’s political system was not the major factor, but it was a factor in some Western countries’ response.

[28:00 - 38:07]

<Swipe Left for English>

在海外中国人成为仇外情绪和种族主义的靶子的同时，在中国的许多非洲国家国民，特别是在广州的非洲人也遭受着不公正的待遇。我们如何将中国人以及其他东亚裔的经历与非洲移民在中国的经历进行比较和对比？

邱昱：今年3月，广州一名病毒检测显示阳性的尼日利亚籍人士咬伤一名护士的消息在网上流传，激起公愤，网民批评中国对待外国人的措施太过软弱。因此，广州市政府开始对在广州的非洲黑人实施非常严格的检疫规定，不管其过去的旅行史或新冠检测结果如何。这使得我们所知的“三非”问题——非法入境、非法逗留和非法工作——更加复杂化。广州政府一直在努力排查那些在当地被认定为“三非”的人。这项兼具公共卫生与移民政策双重性质的举措引发了在广州的非洲人士的忧虑。

最近，许多非洲人被他们租住的公寓和旅馆拒之门外，很多人很长一段时间以来只能睡在马路边上或桥洞下。与此同时，民间社会团体在开展包括提供食物等救济工作。这样的情况已经持续了好几个星期。自2013年以来，人们一直在关注广州地区非洲人的境遇，而这次疫情恰恰放大了他们一直以来的经历。

这次疫情将成为中非关系的一个转折点。我们很难再回到20世纪六七十年代非洲人民和中国人民的那种团结的状态，当时我们共享着一种同在第三世界的真挚情感。这种历史遗产在新的中非伙伴关系话语中是缺失的，中非人民之间那种非常草根的亲近感也是缺失的。非洲人中那种仇视、不信任和不满情绪日益增长。在这里，种族歧视并不是单向的：非洲人民针对中国人的种族歧视也在增加。

林垚：政府对广州的非洲裔社群实施的严厉政策，很大程度上是由民间猖獗多年的自下而上的草根种族主义推动的。

当前事件的历史和心理根源可以追溯到清末，当时的中国第一次见到了现代化的西方世界，对西方的政治理论和科技感到敬畏。但当时也是西方的社会达尔文主义和所谓的“科学种族主义”兴起的时期，这种种族主义认为人们被分成具有不同智力水平和道德观念的不同种族【是正当的】。当时中国人渴望吸收学习西方的一切，因此也采纳了这种等级观念。

这样的世界观在中华人民共和国成立之初被短暂地抛弃过，因为中国共产党至少在初期还有着第三世界团结一心的理念。但在改革开放之后，由于六七十年代的灾难使得民间社会对官方教条存在争议，所以这种第三世界团结的思想也随之被抛弃了。

这也是为什么我们在改革开放之后的一段时期，看到许多对非洲不友好的事件。当时的大学是反官方意识形态的自由主义的中心，所以也成为了第一个否定第三世界团结这一理念的地方，因此在大学里种族主义事件不断发生。在接下去的二三十年中，这种继承于西方的、修正主义的种族主义在整个社会上传播开来。 在互联网时代，很多网民已经内化了这种世界秩序观。在这种世界秩序观中，汉族人要么在秩序顶层与西方并驾齐驱，要么取代西方，而黑人、拉丁裔、穆斯林和中东人民则处于底层。

衛周安：上世纪80年代，我和一群外国学生一起住在北京，其中有几个是黑人学生，TA们确实经历过种族歧视。所以我可以在这里说我亲眼目睹了你描述的情况。

这次疫情期间，当海外中国留学生开始回国的时候，当一些外国人也回到中国的时候，似乎第二波疫情即将来临。事实上，只有10%的归国感染者是外国人。但禁止外国人入境这一举措制造出一种印象，让人以为这一比例远远高于10%。我认为这在一定程度上促使了对外国人的普遍敌意，特别是对在广州和其他地区的非洲人。

在广州戴口罩的行人 | People wearing masks in Guangzhou, Guangdong province 

© Alex Plaveski/EPA/Shutterstock

https://www.ft.com/content/48f199b0-9054-4ab6-aaad-a326163c9285

While Chinese people have been the target of xenophobia and racism abroad, many African nationals in China, especially in the city of Guangzhou, have been subjected to mistreatments. How do we compare and contrast the experience of Chinese and people of East Asian descent with that of African migrants in China?

Yu Qiu: In March, a Nigerian patient who bit one of the nurses in Guangzhou went “viral,” and stirred criticism online on China’s weak measure towards foreigners. So the Guangzhou government started to implement a very strict quarantine rule for Black Africans in Guangzhou regardless of their past travel histories or test results. This also complicates what we know as the “three illegals” problem -- illegal entry, illegal stay, and illegal work. The local government has been working hard to track down those who are identified as “three illegals” in the city. This double control -- one of public health nature and the other of immigration nature -- has caused great concerns among Africans in Guangzhou. 

Recently many Africans were evicted from apartments and refused by hotels; a lot of them have been living on the streets or under bridges for a long time. At the same time, we see that civil society groups have been helping with delivering food and other relief efforts. This has been going on for quite a few weeks now. Since 2013, there have been continuous concerns about African in Guangzhou, and this pandemic just amplifies what they have been experiencing. 

This pandemic will be a turning point for Sino-African relations. It's very hard for us to go back to the solidarity between African and Chinese people in the 1960s and 70s, when there was a sincere shared feeling of being together in the Third World. This kind of historical legacy has been missed in the new Sino-African friendship discourses. The very grassroots-based affinity between the people has been missing as well. So what happened is a growing sense of hatred, mistrust and the dissatisfaction among the African people. The kind of racial discrimination does not go one way: we see a lot of increasing racial discrimination targeting Chinese people among the African people as well. 

Yao Lin: The draconian policy imposed by the government on the African communities in Guangzhou was largely propelled by a bottom-up grassroots racism that has been rampant in civil society for many years. 

The historical and psychological roots of the current incidents date back to the late Qing dynasty, when China first met the modernized West and was awed by all the political theories and technologies. But it was also a time when the West was undergoing the rise of social Darwinism and so-called “scientific racism” which maintains that people are [justifiably] grouped into several races with different levels of intelligence and moral conception. China was eager to absorb what the West had and also adopted this kind of racist thinking of the world order. The black and brown races were conceived as the bottom of the racial hierarchy.

This worldview was temporarily disrupted when the People's Republic of China was founded, as the Communist Party had a conception of Third World solidarity - at least at its inception. But after the reform and opening-up, when the official doctrines were disputed in civil society because of the disaster associated with Maoist-totalitarism, this idea of Third World solidarity was thrown out. 

That’s why in the post-reform era, we saw a lot of anti-African incidents. Universities at the time were the center of anti-official-ideologies liberalism, so they were the first to repudiate this idea of Third World solidarity, and therefore the rise of racist incidents at universities. In the following two or three decades, this kind of western-inherited but revisionist racism was spreading across the society. In the Internet era, a lot of netizens have internalized this view of the world order, in which Han Chinese people are at the top either alongside or replacing the West while the black and Latino people, Muslims and Middle Easterners are at the bottom. 

Joanna Waley-Cohen: In the 1980s, I lived in Beijing with a group of foreign students, several of them were African who definitely experienced racism. So I can say from on the ground that I saw that happening as how you were describing. 

During this pandemic, when Chinese students studying abroad started coming back to China, and when some foreigners came back to China as well, it appeared that there was going to be a second wave of infection. Actually, only about 10% of the people returning who are infected are foreigners. But the ban against foreigners coming back to China left an impression that the percentage was much higher than that, which I believe contributed to a general hostility towards foreigners, especially in the case of the Guangzhou Africans and Africans elsewhere.

[38:33 - 40:59]

<Swipe Left for English>

除了针对非洲国家人民的仇外情绪之外，是否还有针对其他外国人的仇外情绪？

衛周安：在过去的几个月中，美国和欧洲与新冠病毒有关的反犹太事件急剧增多。自14世纪黑死病疫情之后犹太人被指责和屠杀以来，犹太人一直被与流行病联系在一起，人们总是认为TA们将从疾病中获利，或者TA们或多或少患有疾病。在许多方面，中国人和犹太人的处境有共通点：一方面，他们被白人至上主义者辱骂为糟糕的、肮脏的。同时，他们却也被其他遭受更糟糕对待的族裔视为精英。这是一种双输的局面。

Is there any xenophobic sentiment targeting other foreigners besides people from African countries?

Joanna Waley-Cohen: There has been a surge of  anti-semitism in the last few months in relation to the coronavirus in the United States and in Europe. Jews have always been associated with epidemics since they were blamed for and massacred after the Black Death in the 14th century, and there is always an idea both that they are going to be profiting from the illness, and that they are diseased in some way. In many ways, Chinese and Jewish people share in common that on the one hand, they are reviled by white supremacists as being bad and in some way filthy. And at the same time they are regarded by some other ethnicities who are worse treated as elite. It's a kind of lose-lose situation.

[42:35 - 52:10]

<Swipe Left for English>

你们对世界各地抗争种族主义和排外情绪的社会活动抱有多大希望？它们能在多大程度上减少偏见和歧视？

邱昱：中国民众极度缺乏对于种族和种族歧视的理解，而中国社会中没有任何种族教育。我们现在需要为此进行严肃而细致的讨论，探讨什么是中国的种族主义，及其何以至此。在中国古代社会中，有一种中国作为文明中心的强烈意识。黑人被认为是野蛮人，是半人半兽。这种意识形态在今天的种族主义话语中仍然发挥着重要作用。

当下正是努力减少种族偏见的最好时机。我们已经看到了一些积极的行动，其中包括一个名为“三元里团结”的微信群。很多大学生也一直在努力帮助非洲人民进行翻译和注册健康码等服务。我相信如今的误解和无知只有通过人们之间更好的互动来消解。我们也必须努力进行自我教育。

衛周安：我同意。尽管带来这些问题的情况很不幸，但它提供了一个讨论的契机。真正的风险在于社交媒体发挥其消极作用，占据了话语权，使阴谋论从中发酵。所以偏见和歧视能在多大程度上消除，取决于我们是否能尝试以一种充满教育意义的方式去引导叙事。

林垚：我对我们能否成功减少偏见和歧视持悲观态度， 因为存在更大的结构性问题。这一问题并不是指人们无知或生来具有种族主义倾向，而是人们在社会化过程中，习惯和内化了各种被鼓励甚至被官方化的一些观念。

一方面，中国的信息生态体系非常糟糕。微信作为中国主要的社交媒体平台，不允许外部链接或交叉引用，这使得我们很难交叉核实信源、驳斥谣言。

而且，中国的排外现象也与一种贯穿于中国历史的“皇汉”观念有关。“皇汉”指的是中国人将自己视为宇宙的中心。这一想法声称，为了让中国伟大，我们需要复兴中国的旧传统，纯化中国血统，拒绝外来元素。

“皇汉”观念【的普及】尽管是自下而上的草根运动，却是由政府极保守的文化转向所推动的。想想近年来，政府是如何开始鼓励中医药以及中华传统美德的复兴的。因此，这种排外的观念之所以能生根，不仅是随着中国作为一个超级大国的崛起，也伴随着国内在文化和社会议题上极保守的转向。那些试图对抗这种转向的人往往受到审查。

为了对抗这种趋势的暗流，我们不能仅仅聚焦在文化层面上，还必须将其与政治变革联系起来，而政治变革是更困难的。尽管持这种悲观态度，我还是觉得我们必须做一切努力让事情变得更好，哪怕只是一点点。

衛周安： 首先，虽然我知道有一个很强的观点是中国将自己视为宇宙的中心，但你想想看，有哪个文明不是这样看待自己的呢？也许它们不像古代中国那样有正式的表述，但没有哪个社会或文明会说自己不如下一个好，或者说其它文明或社会比自己更好。 

其次，古代中国并不排外。是欧洲人来了说：“你们不按照我们说的做，是因为你们仇外。”但那不是真的。那是因为中国人不想被外国人安排该去做什么。那跟我们今天在这里讨论的仇外是很不一样的。今天我们讨论的不一定就是关于“仇外”，而是关于一般意义上的”他者“，不是一定关于外国人。我想，像中国这样相对同质化的社会内部，应该也有针对不同地域或不同族群的人们的情绪。

3月12日，在波士顿州议会大厦的台阶上，麻萨诸塞州的亚裔美国人谴责针对亚裔的种族主义 | Members of the Massachusetts Asian American Commission protest on the steps of the Statehouse in Boston 

© AP Photo/Steven Senne https://theconversation.com/the-long-history-of-us-racism-against-asian-americans-from-yellow-peril-to-model-minority-to-the-chinese-virus-135793

To what degree are you hopeful that through different kinds of activism and counter efforts around the world against racism and xenophobia, we can actually reduce prejudice and discrimination?

Yu Qiu: The understanding of race and what counts as racism is quite poor [in China], and there is no racial education that has been implemented in any single aspect of our society. What we need to do at this very moment is to have a very serious and nuanced discussion about what China's racism is and how it came to be what it is today. In ancient Chinese society, there was a strong sense of China being the center of civilizations. The black people were conceived as barbarians, as semi-animal semi-human. This kind of ideology still plays an important role in today’s racist discourse. 

This is quite the best time for us to engage in efforts to reduce racial prejudices. We have seen some positive examples. One of them is a WeChat group called “San Yuan Li Solidarity.” A lot of university students have been working hard to help the African nationals with translation and various services including health code registration. I believe the current miscommunication or ignorance can only be reduced by enhanced interactions between the people. We also have to work very hard to educate our netizens.

Joanna Waley-Cohen: I agree. Although the situation that has brought these issues is unfortunate, it provides an opportunity to talk about them. The real risk is of social media in a negative sense taking over the conversation and fomenting conspiracy theories. So it's up to people like us to try to direct the narrative in an educational way.

Yao Lin: I am a bit pessimistic about how likely we will succeed in reducing racial prejudice. There are larger structural problems at play here. It's not just that people are ignorant or inherently racist; rather, they have been conditioned and have internalized various thoughts that have been explicitly or implicitly encouraged or officialized. 

For one thing, the ecosystem in China for verifying information is especially bad. WeChat, the major social media platform in China, doesn't allow external links or cross reference. This makes it especially hard to cross examine the credibility of sources and claims and to refute rumors. 

Also, the xenophobic phenomenon is associated with the thought called “皇汉”, or “Imperial Han,” that Chinese people often conceive themselves as being the center of the universe. This thought claims that in order to make China great, we need to revive the old traditions of China, “purify the Chinese blood” and reject the foreign elements. 

This thought of “Imperial Han,”  although having become a bottom-up grassroot movement, is propelled by an ultra conservative cultural turn of the government. Think about how in recent years, the government has started to encourage the revival of traditional Chinese medicine, or traditional Chinese virtues. So, not only with the rise of China as a superpower, but also with the domestic turn to a kind of ultra conservative position on cultural and social issues, this kind of xenophobic thought has a root to grow. Those who try to counter it are often censored. 

In order to counter the undercurrent of such a trend, we cannot simply focus on the cultural side. We have to link it to a project of political change, which is more difficult. Despite the pessimism, though, I think we have to do whatever we can to make things better, even if only a little bit.

Joanna Waley-Cohen: First of all, even though I know that there’s a very strongly held view that China regards itself as the center of the universe, I challenge you to come up with any civilization that didn't think of itself as that way. It may not be as formally described as it was in traditional China, but there is no civilization or society that's going to say they are not as good as the next one, or that somebody else was more important than they were.

Second of all, traditional China was not Xenophobic. The Europeans came along and said, “You're not going to do what we want, that's because you hate foreigners!” But that wasn't true. That was because the Chinese didn't want to be told what to do by the foreigners. And there is a really important difference between that and what we talk about in this panel. It's not exactly about xenophobia, it's about “Others” in general not foreigners in particular. I think it's probably true even within relatively homogeneous appearing societies like China’s, that there are sentiments against people from different areas, groups, or minorities. 

观众提问 | Q&A

[52:35 - 57:48]

<Swipe Left for English>

生鲜市场是中国文化中如此重要的一部分，很难被废除。然而很多西方人士呼吁将其废除。作为全球公民，如何弥合与不熟悉生鲜市场的非中国人士在文化和理解上的差距？

林垚：首先我们需要仔细区分生鲜市场和野生动物市场。在武汉，一些野生动物市场被伪装成生鲜市场。受到良好管制的生鲜市场不会有我们在华南海鲜市场看到的问题。而野生动物市场从来不是东亚社会的组成部分，应该被禁止，或至少受到严格管控。

衛周安：在美国的时候，我会去纽黑文家附近的农贸市集。他们不贩卖生禽，因为美国人不喜欢把活的动物跟自己吃的东西联系在一起。在中国我也会去生鲜市场，那里有新鲜的活鸡活鱼。而野生动物市场是完全不同的东西。但是很多中国之外的人们不理解这两种市场是完全不同的。

The wet market is such a big part of Chinese culture that they cannot simply be removed. Yet many Westerners are calling for the removal because of the coronavirus. As global citizens, how do we start to bridge this cultural and understanding gap with other people who are not Chinese and who are not familiar with the wet markets?

Yao Lin: The first thing to do is to carefully distinguish between wet markets in general and wildlife markets. What happened in Wuhan was that there were wildlife markets disguised as wet markets. On the one hand, wet markets, if well regulated, would not have the kind of problem that we see at Huanan Seafood Market. On the other hand, the wildlife market was never an integral part of the Eastern Asian society, and should be banned or at least heavily regulated.

Joanna Waley-Cohen: I go to the New Haven farmers market when I'm at home in the US, and they don't sell live animals because Americans don't like to associate live animals with what they are eating. In China I go to the wet markets and there are chickens and fish, and it shows you that they are fresh. But the wildlife markets are something completely different. Yet people outside China simply don't understand that these are two completely different things.

[58:44 - 1:03:41]

<Swipe Left for English>

你们对中国政府官员在推特上声称新冠病毒来自美国军队怎么看？怎样与来自其它社群的人沟通我们所掌握的关于疫情和疫情中排外现象的信息，达到联结、说服或教育的目的？

林垚：我们是否能有效沟通以及我们采取的沟通策略与我们所处的信息生态系统紧密相关。如果我们在一个相对自由的信息生态系统中，只要我们尽最大努力，是很有可能进行成功的沟通的。但是，在一种封闭和审查严格的生态系统中，成功的可能性就大大降低了。中国外交部发言人发布那样一个阴谋论，因为他们自己也生活在一个封闭和敏感的信息生态体系中。他们中许多人读到微信上一些无法被核查的阴谋论文章，也内化了那些阴谋论。如果要更好地进行沟通，应该有更多面对面的交流，比如去到当地社群与那里的人们进行互动。

邱昱：外交部发言人关于病毒来源的评论只是中美交战背景下中国外交新路子的一部分。这种阴谋论和外交战不需要过分解读。我们与他人就此事进行沟通时，最重要的是不要想着你是在教育别人，而是尝试理解别人，从TA们的角度出发设身处地去思考，寻找共识进行沟通。

What do you think of Chinese government officials claiming that the virus is from the US military on Twitter? How do we communicate what we’ve learned and known so far about the pandemic and about the xenophobia in the time of pandemic with people from the outside of the community for connection, conviction or education? 

Yao Lin: Whether we will succeed [in communication and education] and the strategies we adopt are closely tied to the information ecosystem we are in. When operating under a relatively free informational ecosystem, successful communication is likely as long as we make our best effort. 

But in a kind of closed and largely censored ecosystem, the likelihood of success is greatly diminished. The Chinese spokesperson who exposed the kind of conspiracy also lives in this kind of closed and sensitive informational ecosystem. Many of them read conspiracy theory articles on WeChat which cannot be double-checked, and they have internalized those kinds of conspiracy. To better communicate, more things need to be done face to face, such as going to local communities and interacting with people.

Yu Qiu: The spokesperson’s comments on the original source of the virus was just part of China's new virus diplomacy which is part of the China-U.S. rivalry. I wouldn’t read too much into this kind of conspiracy theory and diplomatic war. The most important thing for us when we communicate about this issue with others is not to think about educating them, but actually to try to understand them, think in their shoes, and find a common ground of communication. 

点击“阅读原文”，前往ACAST收听

本次对谈音频的全英文完整版

Click “Read More” to listen to the full version 

of the conversation on ACAST. You can also listen to it on Apple Podcast by adding the following 

RSS feed to your podcast app:

https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/uncover

文字整理 | Lili

翻译 | Lili, 雪，Joyce

音频 | Lili

编辑 | Joyce, Lili

英文校对 | Ryan Hoover

排版 | Linlin

往期阅读 ▼

Contact Us | 联系我们

[e-mail]

Follow Us | 关注我们

Instagram: uncover.2020

Weibo: unCoVer疫中人

Facebook Page: 

https://www.facebook.com/2020.unCoVer/

Website: https://uncoverinitiative.home.blog/