Re: That's enough!

[Byker]

"wacipro" wrote in message
news:daf55b3b-d7d0-4be1...@googlegroups.com...
>
> The last point nails it down. Its about racism.

Something that the Chinese have turned into a fine art
-------------------------------------------------------
The coronavirus crisis has exposed China's long history of racism

Today Africans in Guangzhou are being demonized over Covid-19, but the roots
of this prejudice go back centuries

by Hsiao-Hung Pai
Sat 25 Apr 2020

“Clean up the foreign trash!”. “Don’t turn our hometown into an
international rubbish dump.” “This is China, not Nigeria!” Resembling the
anti-migrant racist hatred you frequently see on UK social media, these are
just a few examples of countless anti-African rants from Weibo users in
China in a surge of popular racism over the past month.

Despite the huge amount of censorship on China’s social media, none of these
posts have been removed. Migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have become the
primary target of suspicion, racial discrimination and abuse amid public
fear of a second wave of Covid-19. And this intolerance has peaked in
Guangzhou, a city of 12 million people in the highly industrialized
Guangdong province.

It started with the local government in Guangzhou implementing surveillance,
conducting compulsory testing and enforcing a 14-day quarantine for all
African nationals – even if they had earlier been tested negative and hadn’t
recently travelled outside China. In Yuexiu district, the largest African
migrant community in China, many Africans were evicted by landlords –
despite having paid their rents – and left to sleep rough on the streets.

In an echo of apartheid South Africa or segregation-era United States, a
colour bar was imposed across the city: Africans were refused entry by
hospitals, hotels, supermarkets, shops and food outlets. At one hospital,
even a pregnant woman was denied access. In a department store, an African
woman was stopped at the entrance while her white friend was allowed in. In
a McDonald’s restaurant, a notice was put up saying “black people cannot
come in”.

The widespread racism has caused a huge public outcry across Africa, shared
on social media under the hashtag #ChinaMustExplain. YouTuber Wode Maya, who
has lived in China and is a fluent Mandarin speaker, urges fellow Africans
to “wake up to what’s happening”. The global African diaspora has put
pressure on African embassies and institutions to act. Last weekend the
Kenyan government announced plans to allow its citizens stranded in China to
be evacuated.

The official Chinese responses were at first silence or denial. State media
such as Global Times and Xinhua failed to report the story in the first few
days after the news broke in African news outlets. Later, the Chinese
authorities began to recognise the reports of racism as “reasonable
concerns”, though migrants continue to feel unsafe.

To outsiders, this horrendous racism may appear “unprecedented”. But ethnic
minorities in China would find it all too familiar. In Shaoguan, not far
from Guangzhou, the racist murder of two Uighur workers in 2009 triggered a
series of events, such as the Ürümqi Incident, which led to further
repression in the north-western region of Xinjiang.

The ideology of “race” in China goes back a long way. In the late 19th
century, Qing imperial reformers searched for an “answer” that could revive
China in face of European and Japanese colonialist expansion. “Race”,
“nation” and nationalism have since been embedded into Chinese republicanism
in the early 20th century, and then into the establishment of the Chinese
Communist party.

Today, assimilationism is at the centre of the concept of nation. Minzu, a
key term used interchangeably for both ethnic group and nationality, refers
to a group of common descent, with a distinct culture and territory.

In 2012, Xi Jinping began his rule by saying: “The China dream gathers
Chinese aspirations and wishes for generations and manifests the interests
of the whole Chinese nation (zhonghua minzu) …” The “China dream” became the
political-economic programme for “the realisation of the great revival of
the Chinese nation”.

This century is the “Chinese century”, Xi said. His multibillion-dollar Belt
and Road Initiative was launched in 2013 as a massive global investment
program. From 2013 to 2018, the Chinese state invested nearly $614B in
developing countries. China’s foreign investment campaign is seen by some in
Africa as colonialism, as the nations involved risk losing control of their
essential infrastructure and natural resources, with their debt burden
increased. China now holds 14% of the total debt stock in sub-Saharan Africa
and has become the largest owner of public debt in Africa.

China’s growing presence brought with it labor migration from African
countries from the late 1990s. People from Nigeria, Mali, Kenya, Senegal,
Ghana and other west African countries came for work opportunities, mostly
in the metropolis of Guangzhou. Many work in the city’s wholesale markets as
other types of employment, including factory work, are closed to them. It’s
commonly said by them that Africans are often “accepted as traders but
discriminated against as people”. There are currently more than 15,000
African migrants with formal immigration status living in Guangzhou.

Although China has the lowest immigration in the world (migrants account for
just 0.07% of the population), the authorities impose harsh “migrant
management”. African migrants can often be criminalised in a similar way to
the internal migrants from the countryside. Apart from immigration checks
and crackdowns, the authorities consistently discourage migrants from living
in certain neighborhoods. There is no legal protection against racial
discrimination.

The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted this longstanding anti-African racism.
With all the damage this pandemic has done to the economy and people’s
livelihoods, scapegoating and hostility towards an imagined outside threat
clearly helps to divert domestic frustration away from the ruling elite – a
trend we are all seeing worldwide. As Asian communities in Europe and the
United States become victims of racism during this pandemic, Africans in
China are crying out, “We are not the virus!” To resist racism, we need to
see it for what it is, wherever it occurs: https://tinyurl.com/y8nuhc7v


> Americans cannot accept a Chinese nation as its replacement as No. 1.

We won't...

[Phantom_View]

We have seen it, the world has shifted into a Chinese orbit.
The WHO was just a sample, it is everywhere. The actions
of EU leaders show it clearly. Chinese influence, Chinese
economic power, it took them a long time but I think they
have finally arrived - and pushed the USA into second place.
China, plus some Russian muscle and EU lackeys, is
the Great Dragon which will swallow the world.

Our former allies who used to bow to US influence, do things
the American way, are now more concerned with making
nice with China. It seems like "the future" more than we do.
Trump has valliantly tried to reverse this trend, but it is more
than even he can handle, a power and perception too broad
and deep.

Second place is not all SO bad, so long as we can keep
it a close second place. If we drop too far, below then EU,
then we are in BIG trouble. That we neglected south America
so much, let the Chinese do what they wanted, was a very
serious mistake. An Americas alliance could have been
formidible - but just the USA alone ... not a good picture.
And yes, the Canadians will follow the EU ..........

In 25 years our former thralls will realize they were better
off with Pax Americana, but it will be too late.

China played the game better than we did. There is no
shame to losing to a better player ... except it did not
HAVE to be that way. Our "liberal" leaders made sure
it would be so however.

This is not a situation that can be deal with by military
force. All our nukes wll make no difference. The Chinese
are not fighting that kind of battle. It is hearts and minds
and perceptions instead. They look like the winners, so
the world will follow that piper.