COVID-19: China's socialist political system has shown it can overcome any challenge, says Xi Jinping

As the deadly coronavirus has spread worldwide, it has carried with it xenophobia -- and Asian communities around the world are finding themselves subject to suspicion and fear.

When a patient on Australia's Gold Coast refused to shake the hand of her surgeon Rhea Liang, citing the virus that has killed hundreds, the medic's first response was shock.

But after tweeting about the incident and receiving a flood of responses, the respected doctor learned her experience was all too common.

There has been a spike in reports of anti-Chinese rhetoric directed at people of Asian origin, regardless of whether they have ever visited the centre of the epidemic or been in contact with the virus.

Chinese tourists have reportedly been spat at in the Italian city of Venice, a family in Turin was accused of carrying the disease, and mothers in Milan have used social media to call for children to be kept away from Chinese classmates.

In Canada, a white man was filmed telling a Chinese-Canadian woman "you dropped your coronavirus" in the parking lot of a local mall.

In Malaysia, a petition to "bar Chinese people from entering our beloved country" received almost 500,000 signatures in one week.

The incidents are part of what the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine has described as "misinformation" which it says is fuelling "racial profiling" where "deeply distressing assumptions are being made about 'Chinese' or 'Asian-looking' people." Disease has long been accompanied by suspicions of foreigners -- from Irish immigrants being targeted in the Typhoid Mary panic of 1900s America to Nepali peacekeepers being accused of bringing cholera to earthquake-struck Haiti in the last decade.

"It's a common phenomenon," said Rob Grenfell, director of health and biosecurity for Australia's science and research agency CSIRO.

"With outbreaks and epidemics along human history, we've always tried to vilify certain subsets of the population," he said, comparing the behaviour to 1300s plague-ridden medieval Europe, where foreigners and religious groups were often blamed.

"Sure it emerged in China," he said of the coronavirus, "but that's no reason to actually vilify Chinese people." In a commentary for the British Medical Journal, doctor Abraar Karan warned this behaviour could discourage people with symptoms from coming forward.

Claire Hooker, a health lecturer at the University of Sydney, said the responses from governments may have compounded prejudice.

The World Health Organisation has warned against "measures that unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade", but this has not stopped scores of countries from introducing travel bans.

The tiny Pacific nation of Micronesia has banned its citizens from visiting mainland China altogether.

"Travel bans respond largely to people's fears," said Hooker, and while sometimes warranted, they often "have the effect of cementing an association between Chinese people and scary viruses".

Abbey Shi, a Shanghai-born student in Sydney, said the attitude shown by some of her peers has "become almost an attack on students who are Chinese".

While Australia's conservative government has banished its citizens returning from Wuhan -- the central Chinese city at the epicentre of the virus -- to a remote island for quarantine, thousands of students still stuck in China risk their studies being torpedoed.

"Right now it looks like they have to miss the semester's start and potentially the whole year, because of the way the courses are set up," Shi said.

According to Hooker, studies in Toronto on the impact of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS -- another global coronavirus outbreak in 2002 -- showed the impact of xenophobic sentiment often lasted much longer than the public health scare.

"While there may be a cessation of direct forms of racism as news about the disease dies down, it takes quite a bit of time for economic recovery and people continue to feel unsafe," she said.

People may not rush back to Chinese businesses or restaurants, and may even heed some of the more outlandish viral social media disinformation -- such as one popular post imploring people to avoid eating noodles for their own safety.

"In one sense you might think the effects lasted from the last coronavirus to this one because the representation as China being a place where diseases come from has been persistent," Hooker said.

Washington, May 20: Once dubbed as historic by him, US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he now feels ‘differently’ about the trade deal he signed with China earlier this year.

He said this while once again venting out his frustration with the Beijing leadership, accusing it of letting coronavirus spread.

Till Tuesday, over 92,000 Americans have died and 1.5 million tested positive for coronavirus that has globally killed around 320,000 people.

The US and China had signed a deal in January to end their 22-month-long trade war during which the two countries slapped tit-for-tat tariff hikes on products worth nearly half a trillion USD.

Under it, Beijing agreed to increase its purchase of US goods by USD 200 billion in 2020-2021.

“I feel differently now about that deal than I did three months ago,” Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

“We will see what all happens, but it's been a very disappointing situation. A very disappointing thing happened with China because the plague flowed in and that wasn't supposed to happen and it could have been stopped," he said.

Trump said he was very excited when the trade deal with China was signed.

“But once the virus came in, once the plague, as I called it, came in, I said how did they let that happen? And how come it didn't go into other sections of China? Why did they block it from leaving Wuhan? But they didn't block it from going to the rest of the world, including the United States. Why is that? Beijing doesn't have it. Other places don't have it,” he said.

Trump did not respond to questions on retaliation against China.

Meanwhile, top American senators continued to press the administration that rules of engagement with China needs to change post-coronavirus.

“As we know, they unleashed this virus on America and the world with their classic communist cover-up, deception, continued propaganda campaign, costing now over 90,000 American lives, 35 million Americans losing their jobs so far,” Senator Martha McSally said during a Congressional hearing.

“We don’t know who patient zero is, they destroyed samples, they silenced doctors, they kicked out journalists, they impacted international travel to seed this and their reckless behaviour continues to be the root of all this,” she said.

As a result of coronavirus, the American economy has been thrown into recession; more than 36 million people have lost their job – the worst ever after last century’s great depression.

Many of the US states have now started opening up, after taking necessary precautions.

By conservative estimates, it will take several quarters for the economy to be back on track.

Trump in the last a few weeks has exuded confidence that the economy will be back on track next year.

Apr 12: India and other South Asian countries are likely to record their worst growth performance in four decades this year due to the coronavirus outbreak, the World Bank said on Sunday.

The South Asian region, comprising eight countries, is likely to show economic growth of 1.8 per cent to 2.8 per cent this year, the World Bank said in its South Asia Economic Focus report, well down from the 6.3 per cent it projected six months ago.

India's economy, the region's biggest, is expected to grow 1.5 per cent to 2.8 per cent in the fiscal year that started on April 1. The World Bank has estimated it will grow 4.8 per cent to 5 per cent in the fiscal year that ended on March 31.

"The green shoots of a rebound that were observable at the end of 2019 have been overtaken by the negative impacts of the global crisis," the World Bank report said.

Other than India, the World Bank forecast that Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh will also see sharp falls in economic growth.

Three other countries - Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Maldives - are expected to fall into recession, the World Bank said in the report, which was based on country-level data available as of April 7.

Measures taken to counter the coronavirus have disrupted supply chains across South Asia, which has recorded more than 13,000 cases so far - still lower than many parts of the world.

India's lockdown of 1.3 billion people has also left millions out of work, disrupted big and small businesses and forced an exodus of migrant workers from the cities to their homes in villages.

In the event of prolonged and broad national lockdowns, the report warned of a worst-case scenario in which the entire region would experience an economic contraction this year.

To minimize short-term economic pain, the Bank called for countries in the region to announce more fiscal and monetary steps to support unemployed migrant workers, as well as debt relief for businesses and individuals.

India has so far unveiled a $23 billion economic plan to offer direct cash transfers to millions of poor people hit by its lockdown. In neighbouring Pakistan, the government has announced a $6 billion plan to support the economy.

"The priority for all South Asian governments is to contain the virus spread and protect their people, especially the poorest who face considerable worse health and economic outcomes," said senior World Bank official Hartwig Schafer.