Coronaphobia: How the Chinese are being vilified for disease and the racist history behind it
The xenophobic fear of the coronavirus is reminiscent of the treatment of the Chinese during the bubonic plague outbreak in San Francisco in the early 19th century and it sees a relapse in the form of this novel coronavirus
The coronavirus has spread literally to every single country one can imagine — except the arctic region of Antarctica. Tourism, businesses, the economy at large, transportation and most importantly — basic necessities are running out due to the panic buying of masks, gloves, and toilet paper from where I live in, Hong Kong and the oft-compared sister city, Singapore. However, there is one thing that goes beyond this and is often ignored and overlooked — xenophobia.
Ever since the news broke out of the coronavirus, social media has been going berserk in their perception of China and has been vilifying the Chinese people — solely because of the disease that they have “brought” to other countries. And the scary thing is — this is not new.
Around 2 centuries ago, the Chinese were reviled for bringing a myriad of diseases such as smallpox, leprosy and syphilis and in the early 19th century, with the advent of the bubonic plague from 1900 to 1904 — the American government responded in the most prejudicial ways of the Chinese and of the plague “they” brought.
I aim to analyze the xenophobia faced against the Chinese today and compare how it relates to the past and why we should refrain from the historical wrongs that have been committed.
How the Chinese are being vilified now
Coronaphobia: Late 2019 to 2020 onwards
A multitude of xenophobic incidents or those of which intend to traduce against the Chinese has happened over the past few months over the contagion in using multiple methods which includes: racial discrimination and slurs, yellow journalism and social disinformation, travel bans, violent attacks and vandalism, religious disinformation and the boycott of Chinese businesses.
Racial discrimination and slurs
There have been a number of incidents in Europe, Asia and Australia pertaining to racial discrimination. In Western Australia, reports emerged that a staff of a supermarket denied entry to customers who appeared to be of Asian descent, claiming that the measure was taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
In addition, a private school in Australia, the Ravenswood School for Girls, asked a South Korean student to leave her dormitory despite the fact that she had not been to China since October 2019, when she last visited Shanghai. A Chinese-Malaysian student has also been the victim of xenophobia, where she found herself evicted from her shared home in Perth once returning to Australia from China after the Lunar New Year. Furthermore, there has been invocations of racist slurs, where some social media posts suggesting to “cull the Chinese race” and “burn down” to stop the epidemic.
On 28 January 2020, a man collapsed and died of suspected cardiac arrest outside Chinatown in Sydney. However, people feared that the man might have tracts of the novel coronavirus, thus refrained to perform CPR.
Yellow Journalism & Social Disinformation
Much of Europe fell victim to ‘yellow journalism”, a practice where hyped-up headlines and irrational arguments and narratives take centre stage. French newspaper Le Courrier Picard portrayed an Asian woman wearing a mask on its front page on January 26, 2020, with the headline “Yellow Alert”. The newspaper was condemned and made the hashtag #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus ( or “I Am Not A Virus) trend on Twitter. Separately, a German weekly magazine named Der Spiegel published a controversial cover blaming China and feeding off of xenophobia calling the coronavirus as the “China Virus”. Furthermore, a French newspaper Le Courrier Picard featured an Asian woman with a mask, including a headline which read “Yellow Alert”.
Countries in the down under were on the same fate. On 26 January 2020, two of Australia’s highest-circulating dailies → the Melbourne’s Herald Sun’s headline read “ China’s virus pandamonium”, a deliberate misspelling of pandemonium, which led to an online petition of 51,000 signatures demanding an apology.
A month later, on 5 February 2020, British Columbian newspaper The Province, which read “2nd China Virus Case in B.C” drawing criticism from the Chinese consulate general in Vancouver Tong Xiaoling, who demanded an apology for the headline saying that “it is discriminatory and unprofessional”. The editor of both The Province and The Vancouver Sun said that the headline was to geographically locate and not to discriminate.
A news outlet in Denmark, NOS reported that Facebook posts regarding the news of the coronavirus have ignited “racist, discriminating or anti-Chinese comments”, to which Dutch residents of Asian descent have reported being called out for carrying the coronavirus in various places they commute.
Meanwhile, in Asian countries, social disinformation took a headstart in xenophobia against the Chinese. In Japan, the hashtag #ChineseDontComeToJapan trended on Twitter.
Concurrently, in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan, rumours flared up after violence broke out between ethnic Kazakhs and Chinese Muslims over socio-economic woes. Fake tweets portrayed the violence as stemming from the coronavirus. A fact-checker website from Kazakhstan reported the following:
Fakes claim that pogroms and arsons of Chinese restaurants and houses began in Kazakhstan as a result of panic, over the spread of Coronavirus in the country. Some reports also claim that such events led to the death of a Kazakhstani from Coronavirus.
Travel bans
The Malay peninsula witnessed a staunch opposition to the entry of the Chinese in their respective countries which include Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. In Singapore, an online petition urged the government of Singapore to ban Chinese nationals and travellers from China and was subsequently signed by 125,000 people.
In Malaysia, a similar online petition surfaced which sought to ban Chinese citizens coming from China claimed that the” new virus is widely spread throughout the world because of [their] unhygienic lifestyle. The petition was reportedly signed by more than 500,000 people within a week.
In Indonesia, a demonstration occurred outside a hotel in Bukittinggi, rejecting visitors from Southeast China, where they demanded that all those who stayed in the hotel be isolated in the airport while showing distrust over the facilities used for screening in airports. The demonstration came to a halt only after the police guaranteed that the tourists will depart the following day and that they will be staying in the hotel for the current day (i.e the day of the demonstration).
South Korea has joined the club in this matter as well as more than half a million people signed an online petition lobbying the government to ban Chinese citizens to enter the country.
While some of the reasons to ban them may well be justified, the fact that some petitions include xenophobic statements about the Chinese and their ethnicity is not acceptable in any manner or form.
Violent attacks and vandalism
In tandem with the outbreak of the coronavirus, violent attacks have erupted against the Chinese in parts of Europe and the US. In the UK, on 30 January 2020, a postgraduate student was walking alone while wearing a mask in the city of Sheffield, towards the University of Sheffield when she was nudged by three people and was verbally abused.
In a separate incident, a 24-year old Thai tax consultant was robbed, assaulted and verbally abused in broad daylight after two teenagers shouted “corona” at the man.
In Germany, a 23-year old Chinese citizen in Berlin reportedly received racist insults and was beaten by two unknown assailants. The incident was classified as “xenophobic” by the police. Meanwhile, the Chinese embassy in Berlin has acknowledged the rise of in hostile cases against the Chinese since the advent of the outbreak.
In addition, in The Netherlands, a student campus from the University of Wageningen, where the Chinese students were living, was vandalised. The vandals tore a Chinese flag on the student’s door, left the elevator littered with faeces and urine and scribbled words on the wall of their residence which read “DIE CHINESE” and “CHINESE CORONA”. The investigation is currently underway with no culprits found yet.
Religious disinformation
Following the brutal treatment of the Uyghurs by Chinese authorities, some religious scholars have correlated the treatment of the minority to the calamity that has befallen on the Chinese. An Indian Islamic scholar, Ilyas Sharafuddin said in an audio address that the coronavirus outbreak “was a punishment from Allah on China for mistreating Uyghur Muslims”. He further said that “they [the Chinese] have threatened the Muslims and tried to destroy the lives of 20 million Muslims. Muslims were forced to drink alcohol, their mosques were destroyed and their Holy Book was burned. They thought that no one could challenge them, but Allah the most powerful punished them”. He further added that “Romans, Persians and Russians who were arrogant and stood against Islam” were all destroyed by Allah.
In Singapore, yet another Islamic cleric correlated China’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority and attributed the coronavirus as the consequence of their actions. Abdul Halim bin Abdul Karim, a cleric, posted on Facebook that the coronavirus outbreak was a “retribution by Allah against the Chinese for their oppressive treatment of Muslim Uyghurs in China ”.
In another post, Abdul Halim claimed that Chinese people do not wash their hands properly after defecating and were not as hygienic as Muslims, making the virus spread. The Ministry of Home of Affairs (MHA) has ordered the investigation of the cleric while Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam, said that the allegations were “silly”, “xenophobic”, “thoroughly racist”, and that it was “quite unacceptable from anyone, let alone someone who is supposed to be religious teacher”.
The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MIUS) responded to the incident saying that it was aware of the post and that it “expresses views that do not represent the Muslim community” and was investigating the incident. Abdul Halim responded later in a Facebook post written in Malay, saying that he did not intend to be racist and did not target “any particular race”.
Meanwhile, some scholars have refuted this claim saying that one cannot affirm that a certain situation i.e the coronavirus can be linked directly to the “punishment from Allah”
Boycott of Chinese businesses
Chinatowns and dominant Chinese businesses overseas have taken an economic blow from the outbreak as well. Chinese restaurants in Vancouver have reported a dip in businesses which ranged from 50 to 70 per cent. In the Greater Toronto Area, Chinese restaurants reported a dip in sales ranging from 30 to 80 per cent.
In the UK, Chinatowns have reduced their customers due to the coronavirus epidemic fearing that the virus may spread through food or unhygienic scenarios.
In the US, Houston’s Chinatown faced a drop in customers after people erroneously spread rumours online of an outbreak of the virus. Chinese restaurants in multiple towns such as Boston, Massachusetts and New York City have suffered the loss of customers due to fears regarding the coronavirus.
How the Chinese were vilified then
History of malice
Even before the advent of the multiple outbreaks in Chinatown in San Francisco, the anti-Chinese sentiment was already brimming with vigour in the 1860s where the Chinese were portrayed to be an “inferior race” and a “degraded people”. A decade later, in the 1870s, the Chinese were seen as “a social, moral and political curse to the community”.
Chinatown was regarded as a “laboratory of infection” which had “lying and treacherous” aliens who had no regard for the health of the American people.
Here’s what a reverend had to say about the anti-Chinese sentiment in the 1900s
There seems to be a combination of reasons which breed and keep alive this animosity against our Mongolian brothers. Race antagonism has undoubtedly something to do with it, but the fact that they do not assimilate with us has more. They constitute a foreign substance cast into our social order, which will not mingle, but keeps up a constant irritation. The amount of irritation depends upon the size of the disturbing mass. A few Chinamen would have no perceptible effect. They could be easily digested by the national stomach…But multiply units by millions, and the matter becomes exceedingly serious. Hence the fear of their putting upon us in overwhelming crowds has had much to do with our attitude toward them.
— Reverend Ira M Condit, pastor of a Presbyterian Church mission in San Francisco’s Chinatown since 1870
The sinophobic discourse went as far as depriving the Chinese medical assistance and brazenly blamed them for the diseases that spread in Chinatown during the outbreaks of smallpox, leprosy and syphilis. In addition, the medical board of San Francisco denied the existence of the plague during the bubonic plague outbreak. The ethnic group also fell prey to fallible medical theories, miscommunication with US authorities and suffered crony bureaucracy when they tried to build their own hospitals.
Medical personnel chosen by ‘political and social expedience’
One of the key problems that was affecting the medical system at that time was the selection of medical personnel based on “political or social expedience”. Although physicians were “theoretically chosen” among the best-trained members of that position, other medical personnel were not. Also, most of the problems they faced were beyond their scope in their field, and so, the basis for the conclusions made by the health board as well as health officers depended on political or social expedience.
Thus, beginning in the 1870s, they started to credit Chinatown for introducing as well as spreading every epidemic. Here’s what a judicious physicist of that time had to write about the situation in 1876:
“The Chinese were the focus of Caucasian animosities, and they were made responsible for mishaps in general. A destructive earthquake would probably be charged to their account”.
Epidemic responses
The state not only blamed the Chinese for the epidemics that broke out in Chinatown but issued xenophobic and racist statements to the Chinese public. When a smallpox epidemic broke out in Chinatown, the city health officer ordered every house in Chinatown to be thoroughly fumigated. Despite this, the virus had 1,646 reported cases and 405 deaths among the white population of San Francisco. The city health officer, J.L Meares, unable to account for the consequences said the following:
I unhesitatingly declare my belief that the cause is the presence in our midst of 30,000 (as a class) of unscrupulous, lying and treacherous Chinamen, who have disregarded our sanitary laws, concealed and are concealing their cases of smallpox.
Another notable example of xenophobia is the leprosy outbreak which also broke out in Chinatown. To one city health officer at the time, leprosy among the Chinese was “simply the result of generations of syphilis, transmitted from one generation to the other”. An additional view was held that leprosy was inherent to the Chinese and was infused into the Caucasian race by the smoking of opium pipes previously used by Chinese lepers.
However, during the 1870s and early 1880s, very little was known of the root cause of the disease and it was presumed to be hereditary, contagious, incurable, more common in the male than female and likely to disappear with hygienic improvement.
During the 1870’s and early 1880’s, little was known about the etiology of leprosy. It was presumed to be hereditary, contagious, incurable, more common in the male than female and likely to disappear with hygienic improvement.
In 1876, the police law of California was amended and made it unlawful for people who have leprosy to live among the general public and they were to be “compelled to inhabit lazarettos(isolation hospitals for those afflicted with infectious diseases) or lepers’ quarters”. Health officials then placed them at the Twenty-Sixth Street Lazaretto intending to send all Mongolian lepers back to China as soon as possible. 128 lepers were admitted to the Lazaretto from July 1871 out of which 115 were classified as “Mongolians” and 83 were shipped back to China.
Similar to both leprosy and smallpox epidemic responses, the government response for syphilis was also based purely on assumptions and not facts. In a congressional hearing, Dr. H.H Toland testified that nine-tenths of the sexually-transmitted disease in San Francisco can be traced back directly to Chinese prostitutes. In addition, it was believed that most Chinese houses of prostitution were patronized by whites and Chinese prostitution was seen as “the source of the most terrible pollution of blood of the younger and rising generations”.
Plague epidemic response — A medico-political issue
The governor of California denied the existence of the plague in San Francisco due to the interests of big businesses. The governor, together with the San Francisco Board of Trade, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and the Merchants Association were all determined to prove that the plague did not exist in San Francisco. According to one historian, “They did not wish the world to know that San Francisco harbored the Black Death. Such news was bad, for business and capital, always timid and jumpy, were fearful of sick rats and Chinamen.” Meanwhile, the San Francisco Board of Health and the Marine Hospital Service declared that the plague existed and urged authorities to take preventive measures such as quarantine, mass vaccination and possibly the depopulation and destruction of Chinatown.
Very few cases of plague were reported in 1900 due to the denial of hospital authorities. The chief of the division of domestic quarantine in the US Marine Hospital Service, surgeon J.H White asked for the suggestions and testimonials of the “best bacteriologists” in the US in order to affirm or deny the existence of the plague.
A year later, in January 1901, a team of experts was formed by the Treasury Department, consisting of professors from prestigious institutions, namely, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago.
The commission revealed that the plague did not exist in San Francisco. Alongside with that, the governor of the State Board of Health along with his members refused to allow any precautionary measures to inspect other cities in the state of California where it was rumoured to exist. The mayor of San Francisco, Eugene Schmitz was vehemently opposed to any kind of effort that was undertaken to prove that the plague had existed. He refused the printing of health reports which had any connection with reporting the plague as well as refusing to include important statistics that may help with the investigation of the plague. He prevented the efforts so much so that he removed 4 members of the San Francisco Board of Health who enduringly affirmed that the plague had indeed existed in the city.
It was only declared two months later, on March 22, 1900, when the president of the San Francisco Board of Health issued a statement which declared that the Chinese quarter was infected with the plague and that preventive measures should be implemented. There were reports of newspapers suppressing the news of the plague. Soon after, quarantine measures were declared in the states of Texas and Colorado as well as other jurisdiction such as Louisiana, the Hawaiian island, British Columbia, Mexico and Ecuador.
However, it was only after 1903, when a new governor George Park, who was a practising physician and a former member of the Oakland Board of Health was any real progress made towards controlling the plague.
Thus, the San Francisco Board of Health (hereafter referred to as the Board) implemented further measures of disinfection and sanitisation of Chinatown through exterminating rats starting from February 1903 onwards. Moreover, garbage collection in the area was accelerated, having authorities to clean the streets of Chinatown three times a week and flushed with water once a week. The area was also recommended to be cleaned by lime-based chloride and carbolic acid, according to the proposal of the Board.
Shockingly, the Board passed a resolution recommending that Chinatown be removed from its current location, which was at the centre of the city. This, according to the authorities, was due to “a large and unassimilable population” which was a “constant menace to the health, commerce, industries of the city, the state and the nation at large”. Chinatown was regarded as a “pesthole” due to the epidemic.
Fallible medical theories
The Chinese were manipulated by health authorities who used fallible medical theories to pass the blame of spreading disease to the Chinese community. One example would be use of the miasmatic theory, which claims that epidemic outbreaks were caused by the atmospheric state or by poor and unhygienic conditions. Based on that theory, Chinatown’s “foul and disgusting vapours” were considered the major source of pollution in the city. Sanitary offences at the time included “generating unwholesome odours, improper disposal of garbage, faulty construction of privy vaults and drains and failure to clean market stalls.
Another theory that was used to dispel Chinatown was known as the “germ” theory. According to sources of the time, the explanation of the “germ theory”is as follows
The “germ” theory of disease is now an acknowledged fact in the science of medicine… This theory teaches us that material like cloth, tobacco, food, if exposed to the atmosphere charged with those germs, is infected by them, and thus detrimental to the health of the wearer or consumer of such merchandise. The dangerous result of such evil, we hold, is practically proven by the ravages of diseases like diphtheria, etc., in this city, irrespective of time, season or places. The physician who tries to trace the source of the infection is mostly always unable to do so, and we believe that the existing evils in Chinatown are the proper source
Denied medical assistance
Amidst all of this, the Chinese were denied access to medical facilities and the state did not provide any health services despite Chinatown being labelled as a “nuisance” and “laboratory of infection”.And so, early Chinese immigrants understood that they needed to fend for themselves in terms of healthcare. In the 1850s, they grouped together to form Chinese associations based on the loyalty to their clan which led to family associations or their place of origin, which led to district associations.
In the 1860s, the district associations merged into the Chung Wah Kung Saw, also known as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. It was later more commonly known as the Chinese Six Companies. Each of the six companies had a small hospital in San Francisco for ailing or elderly members despite it only consisting of a few rooms equipped with straw mats.
These hospitals were not legally binding under the health codes in San Francisco. However, city officials still allowed the “hospitals” to run as usual. City officials went so far as to audaciously declaring that “the Chinese companies should be compelled to maintain and send them back to China” and the “lepers should be debarred from hospital maintenance” during the leprosy outbreak in the 1870s.
Therefore, from August 1876 to October 1878, lepers were lodged in the so-called “hospitals” made by the Chinese companies. Subsequently, health officials ruled that all lepers be isolated in the Twenty-Sixth Street hospital.
To add insult to injury, the Chinese were denied medical assistance from municipal authorities. An 1881 article on the San Francisco Chronicle which was titled “No Room for Chinese: They are Denied Admission to the County Hospital,” which referred to a resolution taken by the Board of Health several years before when the consul general of China in San Francisco petitioned the Board regarding a Chinese immigrant who was unwell and who wanted to get admitted into the medical facilities in the city and county.
8 years later, the Chinese were still denied medical assistance due to the ambiguous rules set by the city and county hospitals.
The hospital feared an overwhelming amount of Chinese patients and so they decided that all Chinese patients who wanted to be admitted into municipal medical facilities should be assigned the Twenty-Sixth Street hospital. Evidently, the policy of exclusion of the Chinese was present.
An 1899 document reads as follows:
the City and County Hospital only opens its doors to a limited number of [Chinese] patients. The remainder of the patients are taken to small, dismal Charnel-house established by the Chinese Companies and known as the “Hall of Great Peace,” or else to the Leper Asylum or Pest-House.
Although the ban on Chinese patients at both the City and County Hospital and the Almshouse was common knowledge, city officials continued to claim that San Francisco opened its municipal facilities to the sick and poor of any nationality.
Discriminatory handling of Chinatown
Chinatown was the focal point of every epidemic during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. During the smallpox epidemic of 1876–1877, health officer of San Francisco, J.L Meares bragged that the “whole of the Chinese quarter was put in a sanitary condition that it had not enjoyed for ten years” in addition to ordering every house in the Chinatown area to be thoroughly disinfected.
As mentioned earlier, the epidemic response of the health authorities has been provocative and xenophobic towards the Chinese.
Chinatown fell victim to a number of disease outbreaks during the early 19th century and received no help whatsoever from the city health officials or the state. For instance, the mortality rate was 622 people per 100,000 for tuberculosis in the years 1912–1914 in the Chinatown area while the citywide average was 174. Furthermore, with the pasteurization of milk and the testing of tuberculin for cattle, the mortality rate of the Chinese was 276 deaths per 100,000 people. There were no medical treatment facilities in Chinatown until 1933 for the treatment or diagnosis of tuberculosis.
A health report mentioned the situation of medical facilities in Chinatown in 1915:
“The Six Companies is probably in a better position than any other group to cooperate with the Board of Health in instituting curative and preventative measures among their own people.
After March 1933, the Chinese Health Centre was established in the nurses’ room at the Commodore Stockton School and that’s when the city would attempt to “cope even half-heartedly with the tuberculosis problem in Chinatown.”
Lack of understanding
Since the Chinese were mostly immigrants, the procedures taken by the US authorities were alien to the Chinese due to “the language barriers, the higher fees, and strange medications and methods [which] were too much to assimilate, according to one historian. Thus, they did not seek treatment from Caucasian physicians and doctors. Meanwhile, there were church missions offering services.
An examination of the statistics on admission to the city and county hospital for the years 1870–1897 reveals the less 0.1 per cent of the hospital in-patients were of Chinese origin, whereas the Chinese population in the city varied from 5 to 11 per cent of the total population.
Statistics on admission to the Almshouse disclose an ever lower admission rate: of 14,402 admissions from 1871 to 1886, only 14 cases were of Chinese origin.
On top of the discrimination, denial of medical assistance, the Chinese were unaware of the procedures taken by the US authorities. For instance, when the measures of quarantine were initiated, the Chinese prevented door-to-door quarantine by locking their homes and shops. When health authorities attempted to vaccinate the population of Chinatown, riots upsurged. Also, the sick were hidden in the cellar and “subterranean passages” of Chinatown.
After these series of incidents, public health officials retreated from Chinatown after the first plague and delegated the Chinese Six Companies to take up the responsibility regarding the needs of healthcare for the Chinese community.
Yet another discriminatory remark came from J.J Kinyoun, a surgeon who said:
“We never can expect to accomplish in our dealings with this race what we intend to do.” — J.J Kinyoun, surgeon in Marine Hospital Service
Crony bureaucracy
In 1877, the idea of building a separate hospital for the Chinese sprung up and it was recognised in the congressional committee as well. The same year, Dr Stout mentioned that the Chinese wanted to establish a general hospital and a smallpox hospital similar to the ones built by the Germans and the French communities. He also mentioned that the Chinese were willing to pay “liberally and freely” to construct a hospital with both Caucasian and Chinese physicians but the idea never materialised then.
13 years later, in 1890, plans were made for a hospital and land was purchased in the outskirts of San Francisco under the name of the Chinese consul of San Francisco. However, when the construction was due to be initiated, the “city authorities forbade further proceedings on the ground that the promoters only intended to use objectionable Chinese systems of medical treatment.” Trauner suggests that the objection to the construction of the hospital was due to the location of the land, which was outside the suburbs of Chinatown.
9 years later, in 1899, the Chinese community made another effort to build a hospital in conjunction with a dispensary for accommodating Chinese patients. The community planned to rent a house in a “suitable locality” where only practitioners with American or European diplomas were allowed to treat patients. The dispensary had two aims — 1) to give free medical advice and 2) to provide for poor and needy patients. The hospital was to consist of 25 beds for use by both patients seeking advice and paying patients.
The same year, the Chinese Hospital (Yan-Chai-i-Yun) was incorporated under California state law in March.
At that time, twenty-one persons (including twelve Caucasians) pledged to become members of the hospital by payment of an annual subscription of $5. Except for the Chinese consul general. The officers of the hospital’s first governing board were to be prominent members of the white community.This project too must have been shelved because no further trace of this hospital can be found.
In the 1900s, there were two efforts to build the hospital were made due to a public health crisis in Chinatown. Since there were no health facilities in the Chinatown area, the surgeon general of the Marine Hospital Service, Dr Walter Wayman, suggested converting one of the buildings in that area into a pest hospital. The War Department of the US wanted to quarantine the Chinese on Angel Island. However, none of those plans materialised.
The Chinese community clearly knew that they had to take the matter into their own hands and that they should have their own healthcare system. So, in 1900, the Tung Wah Dispensary was opened at 828 Sacramento Street. The dispensary was entirely funded by the Chinese Six Companies and employed both Western physicians and Chinese herbalists.
Also, in the same year, the Chinese Six Companies took legal action to prevent local, state and national officials from enforcing discriminatory laws aiming at the Chinese. In court, they surprisingly won the right for non-licensed Chinese physicians to attend autopsies conducted under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Board of Health.
In April 1901, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved funds for building a hospital in Chinatown. However, that too was stopped due to the city auditor declaring that the appropriation was illegal and thus, the hospital was never constructed. Similarly, their lawyers forced the courts to end the quarantine of Chinatown as ordered by the Board of Health. In May 1900, when the U.S. Marine Hospital Service imposed a ban on interstate travel by Asiatics, the secretary of the Chinese Six Companies obtained a restraining order from the U.S circuit court, arguing that such a ban was unfair class legislation.
This made public health officials of the time infuriated. In the words of J.J Kinyoun federal quarantine officer for San Francisco, expressed his indignation in the following statement:
The various injunctions which have been entertained by both state and federal courts have all considered to convince the Chinese Six Companies that they in nowise consider the Chinamen amenable to observe or comply with the health laws of the city, state, or United States. The attitude assumed by this powerful corporation forms a good excuse for the individual Chinamen to follow suit and set a nought and evince any or all rules and regulations which are considered necessary for the sanitary protection of the citizens of this state and country.
The Chinese Hospital
The Chinese Hospital opened its doors in 1925 after numerous legal battles. Almost 4 decades later, the Northeast Health Centre (NHC) was established. The NHC was situated in the basement of the Ping Yuen Housing complex which included a tuberculosis clinic, a well-baby clinic, dental services, an immunization centre, and a public health nursing service were all provided in 1200 square feet, in a converted laundry space. As late as the 1960s, there were scarcities in medical facilities in and it was not until the 1970s onwards was the problem fixed.
What we should do as a society
We saw the effects of xenophobia on the Chinese due to the coronavirus epidemic in 2020 as well as the state-sponsored xenophobia in the late 18th and early 19th century in San Francisco. In this age of information and technology, is imperative upon us to educate ourselves using accurate sources of information such as medical journals like The Lancet and verified news organizations worldwide. And please, when you read articles, do not just read the headline and please delve deeper into what that article actually mentions.
And regarding social media, please DO NOT forward every piece of information that you receive. Please do read through and scrutinize your messages on Facebook, Twitter or WhatsApp and if you are in a group, please remind each other to verify before sending any kind of news articles.
There are fact-checker sites worldwide and if your country or region has one, please do visit those sites to identify the fakes and share them in order to combat misinformation and disinformation.
This is not the time for political bashing and victimizing the Chinese. They are also people like us, they are part of humanity as well. We might have qualms with the Chinese Communist government, but not all Chinese people support the Communist government. At least, not the citizen journalists in China who are risking their lives to show us the ground situation.
Sources — The Chinese as Medical Scapegoats in San Francisco, 1870–1905.
