The moral filter of patriotic prejudice: How Americans view Chinese in the COVID-19 era

Qian He and Yu Xie
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Qian He: a Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544;
Yu Xie: a Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544;; b Center for Social Research, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing 100871, People’s Republic of China

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022, vol. 119, issue 47, e2212183119

Abstract: Existing studies of anti-Asian racism in the COVID-19 era have left open the question of how strained international relations may foment nationality-based stereotypes of Asians. We designed a survey experiment to examine Americans’ perceptions of Chinese in the context of shifting US-China relations during COVID-19. Our experiment shows that Americans rate Chinese in China lower in multiple characteristics than otherwise identical Japanese or East Asian Americans. Furthermore, Americans perceiving China as more threatening consistently viewed Chinese as less trustworthy and less moral, and residents of Republican counties generally homogenize East Asians as one outgroup. These findings pinpoint the variable causal linkages between perceived national-interest threats and nationality-based prejudices, substantiating the connections between US-China relations, domestic polarization, and anti-Asian sentiments.

Keywords: stereotypes; Asians and Asian Americans; US–China relations; China threats; trust and morality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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