Westminster Hall debate on Chinese and East Asian Communities: Racism during Covid-19

Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)
I beg to move,

That this House has considered Chinese and East Asian communities’ experience of racism during the covid-19 pandemic.

I thank Members for joining this debate, which is the first parliamentary debate to look specifically at racism against the Chinese, East Asians and South-East Asians. I will use those terms throughout my speech, because it is vital to get the language right. Chinese, East Asians and South-East Asians have been subjected to horrific hate crimes, especially recently due to the pandemic. I wish we did not have to have this debate, but it is particularly fitting that this is National Hate Crime Awareness Week. Given the sharp rise in hate crime against British East and South-East Asians and the trebling of racist attacks since the covid pandemic, it is absolutely necessary.

I am proud of my roots and my mixed heritage, both Asian and British. It allows me the best of both worlds but, unfortunately, it also allows me to experience some of the worst. Racism against Chinese and South-East Asians is absolutely nothing new. An undercurrent of anti-Asian racism plagued this country before the pandemic started, but now the lid has been lifted and the far right has wrongly been given legitimacy to air its derision, violence and hatred.

From an early age, it was made clear to me that I was seen as different. Sitting backstage at the age of about seven or eight, waiting to perform in a play set in a Chinese courtroom, the person doing our make-up pointed at me and said, “Make the other kids look like her.” The other children had their hair covered in black tights, their eyes coated in exaggerated black eyeliner and I remember sitting there thinking, “Do I really look like that?” Thirty years later, sadly, we still see examples of yellow face all over western culture, whether it is Ting Tong in “Little Britain”, productions of “Madame Butterfly”, Scarlett Johansson or countless examples on Amazon, which has yet to take down its offensive adverts.

Only in my teens, though, did I feel that my racial identity meant that my safety was threatened, when a student brought a knife into school to stab me with because she did not like it when races mixed. I therefore understand the fear and frustration that many British East and South-East Asians are feeling right now, as racists add another powerful tool to their arsenal: coronavirus. A month ago, police chiefs warned that the far right is using covid-19 as an excuse to attack what the Metropolitan police describe as “oriental people”. We do not have enough time in this debate to unpack what is wrong with that term, but it is 2020, not 1920.

The figures obtained by the organisation End the Virus of Racism showed that there were 261 hate crimes against Asians in April, 323 in May and 395 in June, rising each time as lockdown eased. Those do not include the number of hate crimes that have gone under-reported, so I expect the real figures to be much higher, and they are rising across the board: covid-related racism has increased for the Jewish and Muslim communities as well. Protection Approaches reported that this July saw the highest ever numbers of recorded hate crime against protected groups—40% higher than even after 7/7.

In March, Jonathan Mok, a 23-year-old student from Singapore, was punched and kicked in the face on Oxford Street by a group of men. He heard shouts of “Coronavirus!” and was told, “I don’t want your coronavirus in my country!” British-Chinese filmmaker Lucy Sheen was on her way to rehearsals on a bus, when a white male passenger whispered in her ear—forgive me for the unparliamentary language: “Why don’t you f-off back to China and take your filth with you?” In Hitchin, just down the road from my constituency, a takeaway owner was spat at and repeatedly asked if he had coronavirus. In Luton, people have been shouted at from cars. One woman wrote to me to say that she no longer feels safe, and walks about with her mask on and a hood up to cover her face.

That is all without looking at the cesspit of social media. During the pandemic, blatant racism and conspiracy theories have been allowed to spread, unchecked and unaccountable. I report racist videos I am sent of people eating live animals or claiming that I am some part of a global conspiracy, but it is exhausting and the onus is on the wrong person. I hope that the Government will address that in the forthcoming online harms Bill. Social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook should be held responsible for what is published on their sites.

Coronavirus has been given the face of a Chinese Asian person. This sort of racism punches up as well as it punches down. Asians are equally dehumanised, to the extent that we are all the same and all eat live animals, as well as somehow being part of a global conspiracy. The mainstream media have added fuel to the fire. The petition started by the fantastic Viv Yau, Mai-anh Peterson, Amy Phung, Charley Wong and Karlie Wu called for media outlets to stop using East and South-East Asian-related imagery when discussing covid-19. Their work has revealed that some 33% of images used to report covid-19 in the British media have used the image of someone who looks like me, completely unnecessarily and unrelated to the story. The problem has been compounded by our under-representation in the UK media, so the negative coverage has no balance by positive representation.

I am grateful to the Minister for Digital and Culture, the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), for her recent meeting with us to find a way forward on the Government’s own advertising around covid-19. But political leadership, standing up for and standing alongside British East Asians and South-East Asians has been virtually non-existent, and at its worst it has incited further hatred.

Donald Trump this week called covid-19 the “China plague”. We have seen Tory Ministers sharing covid-19 jokes with caricatures of a person in a Chinese pointy hat, bucked teeth and slanting eyes, yet this was not addressed by the party. A Tory council leader said in a meeting that this was all because someone was eating undercooked bat soup in China. Again, that was not addressed by the party.

A couple of weeks ago, two MPs sat in the same room as me and referred to the Chinese—I will quote this unparliamentary language—as “those evil bastards”, and “oh, you know how they look.” They were rightly discussing the awful human rights abuses being carried out by the Chinese state, but this is an othering of an entire ethnicity, which should have no place in society, let alone this House. We need to lead by example. We should absolutely criticise the Chinese state for its appalling abuses against the Uyghur people and actions in Hong Kong, but we need to find a way that does not fuel racism or make Chinese-British East Asians even more vulnerable or fair game to racists. I believe that we can and must do better.

First, we need a clear statement from the Minister that she condemns anti-Asian and anti-Chinese racism. It is a basic ask but it is a start, and something that we have yet to hear officially. Secondly, our community must be supported to tackle this unprecedented rise in hate crime. We need targeted support for anti-racism organisations working with the British East and South-East Asian communities. Thirdly, the Government need to work with media outlets to stop the lazy overuse of East Asian imagery in their reporting of covid-19, especially when it bears no relation to the story, and to hold social media companies to account when it comes to ridding their sites of racism and conspiracy theories. Fourthly, include our community in the conversation—give us a seat at the table. Whether it is about financial support, health or messaging on covid-19, the black, Asian and minority ethnic community has been left out of the conversation altogether.

Lastly, I ask the Minister not just to tell us that she is grateful for our contributions, our culture, our skills, our healthcare workers and our businesses. Please act on it. Act on it and let us end the virus of racism for good.

4.39 pm

Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
May I say what a delight it is to serve for the first time under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins, and how great it is to have a rugby league champion in the Chair?

That was a powerful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen), who found the time and the passion to secure the debate. It is fitting that the debate is taking place this week, not just because it is looking at hate crime but in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In the last couple of years we can all admit that bigotry has been emboldened, whether against the Jewish community, Muslim communities or the East Asian community here in the UK, who are the subject of today’s debate. This is not just about the UK; we have heard first hand from my hon. Friend about her experiences, but we know that the issue goes across many different cultures. She mentioned Mr Trump, and I want to touch on the background to the current trade war between China and the US. There are legitimate issues to be debated about trade and commerce, but that must never be confused with racism against Chinese people.

Some of the debate turns into the “Chinese Communist party.” We know that some Chinese people based in the People’s Republic of China do not have a choice about whether they are party members or not. It is not good enough to say the “Chinese Communist party”—we should just say “the Government”, in the same way that we might criticise another Government for other things. My hon. Friend mentioned some of the issues we are currently worried about in the People’s Republic of China—about Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet—but equally we need to talk today about the fact that many East Asians are under so much pressure.

I was delighted to go and see the chairman of our local mental health trust, Mr Mark Lam, an experienced computer technician at the height of his career who is giving his time and energy to lead the mental health trust at a challenging time. As a result of covid, there is a 20% increase in demand. At the end of the meeting I said that I was going to participate in today’s debate. He said that he has experienced anti-Chinese feeling a number of times. Many Chinese people in our communities, when they are asked, say that they have experienced a terrible sense of discrimination.

I am afraid it is not just words. There have been physical attacks, spitting, trying to run people over and a number of very violent and despicable acts. Today is our opportunity in Parliament to say that we do not stand for it, that we want equality and that we want the bigotry to stop.

My second point is about the lack of role models. I would love to see more Chinese people in our media, being our anchors and newsreaders, and in our soaps. Our soaps do an amazing job; I am thinking about “Hollyoaks,” as we have some Liverpudlians with us today. They tackle difficult social issues and I wonder whether this might be something for one of our dramas to take up, to try to challenge views and teach our community in a real way, showing the hurt and how the issue is holding back community cohesion.

My final point is about the local picture. One of the terrible results of the global financial crash was the cuts to local government. Local government used to provide a small amount of funding for a number of different services—a meals on wheels service or a day centre, for example. It was a way of mixing everyone up—“Come and have a meal together. Come and have a game of mah-jong or chess. Let’s talk to each other and get to know each other.”

Since the cutbacks to local government, I have noticed how lonely people are and how they are not experiencing the fun things about their neighbours. They are not trying each other’s food or going shopping as much. It is heartbreaking to see older people in particular sitting on their own outside a supermarket or in a café, when they could be with other people and getting to know one another.

I hope that some of the money coming out of the Treasury now can go towards local government and community cohesion and, in particular, that we will look at ways within the political parties to promote role models. We obviously have a role model here, in my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North—and the hon. Member for Havant (Alan Mak) is a Minister in the Government, I believe. I am sure that there are others whom I have not remembered today. We have a few councillors, but we should be looking much more carefully at how we in politics can promote role models. It is the way we learned about Black Lives Matter: by listening to others. It is the way we have learned about racism against other Asian communities: by having role models in politics or other fields.

I hope that we can look not just at the geopolitics of covid and the role that important leaders such as the President of the US play. I hope that we can also look at the local picture, the fragmentation of our society, and the lack of services to bring people together. Finally, I hope that we can look at role models within politics so that we can promote diversity and in particular make a study of why we do not have more Chinese role models within our politics. I will conclude there because I am keen to hear other contributions. I thank everyone for taking part in the debate and I just wish a few more had joined us today from the Conservatives. Maybe next time.

4.46 pm

Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate on hate crime faced by Chinese and East Asian communities since the start of the pandemic—hatred stoked, as we have just heard, by people who should know better: Tory politicians and Donald Trump.

I am honoured to represent Liverpool, Riverside, which includes Chinatown, one of the oldest established Chinese communities across Europe. The trade links between China and Britain via the ports of Shanghai and Liverpool were instrumental in the establishment of a Chinese community in the city. The first ship arrived in Liverpool direct from China in 1834 and the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in 1866, with the establishment of the Blue Funnel shipping line, which ran a line of steamers directly from Liverpool to China.

Chinese sailors decided to stay in Liverpool and worked from a settled area in the city that was close to the docks. Boarding houses were first opened by the shipping company to accommodate its workers. It was there that the first Chinese settlers started their own businesses supplying services to their community. The British merchant navy recruited sailors from its allies across the world, and Liverpool became a reserve pool for Chinese merchant sailors, with up to 20,000 registered.

In 1906 Liverpool City Council commissioned a report on Chinese settlement. There were 49 laundries, 13 boarding houses and seven shops owned by members of the Chinese community. However, the Chinese community remains invisible in Liverpool, like so many others among our long-established diverse communities—lacking political representation, and neither being seen in shops in the city centre nor gaining access to key services such as adult health and social care.

The far right has used the coronavirus as an excuse to attack Chinese and East Asian communities, with hate crime increasing by a third since the lockdown was eased in May and figures significantly higher than in previous years. In Liverpool, community associations have expressed concern about the increased levels of bullying and intimidation and have started a low-level helpline, because unfortunately members of the community are very unlikely to report those incidents.

The Chinese community in Liverpool has been subject to racism dating back to the 1940s. In 1946, after the war, when so many Chinese seamen put their lives on the line to keep this country going and maintain the war effort, more than 1,300 Chinese sailors were forcibly repatriated to China. Over 48 hours the Liverpool constabulary implemented orders from the British Government to deport Chinese sailors in Liverpool who had travelled to England as part of the war effort. Liverpool families were never told what happened to those Chinese sailors. Their wives and children believed they had been deserted until the release of the declassified records 50 years later revealed the shocking truth.