Crises, Scapegoating, and Anti-Chinese Racism

Abstract

This article takes a historicizing and structural approach to anti-Chinese racism, a stream of anti-Asian racism, understood as a system of meaning making for power advantages in changing contexts (Hall 2021[1997]). Based on textual data, observations, and interviews and drawing on literature on scapegoat racism and the sacrificial politics of threat and security (Girard 2021[1977]), it advances the following arguments: first, current discussions about anti-Asian racism are often narrowly focused on individual acts of hateful attacks, overlooking the anti- Chinese scapegoating discourse that is at the root of discriminatory and hostile treatment of the Chinese, particularly those with Mainland Chinese background. Second, the anti-Chinese scapegoating discourse has revived the anti-Communist Sinophobia during the Cold War with exaggerated claims about the threat of China and perceives the “Bad Chinese” in the Chinese diaspora as threats to Canada. Third, the anti-Chinese scapegoating discourse not only fuels racist and discriminatory treatment of the Chinese, it also diverts our attention away from serious issues in Canada that do not have much to do with China or the Chinese diaspora.