COVID-19 and the racialisation of Chinese wildlife consumption

Hairong Yan and Barry Sautman

Third World Quarterly, 2024, vol. 45, issue 7, 1177-1198

Abstract: Pandemics and food consumption have long been racialised against non-Western peoples. Yellow Peril tropes of Chinese as disease vectors and consumers of ‘weird’ wildlife, such as bats, were conjoined again with COVID-19. US politicians and media have especially deployed these themes to blame Chinese for the pandemic, alongside tropes of Chinese as cruel, deceitful incompetents, thus serving a wider mobilisation against China that fuels a new Cold War and anti-Asian attacks. Wildlife consumption as a spur to COVID’s Wuhan outbreak is, however, an unverified supposition. Many societies consume wildlife, but it was uncommon in China and mostly shunned by the time of COVID-19’s onset. Meanwhile, significant US wildlife consumption continues. Yellow Peril racialisation of the pandemic and demonisation of China also continue, both despite and because of Western politicians’ COVID-19 failings.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2024.2309241

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