Quick Takes (v50): Chinese Things

It probably would come as no surprise to regular readers that I'm not a fan of the president's penchant for referring to COVID-19 or the coronavirus as the 'Chinese virus.'

I'm not convinced that this is anything other than purposeful, inflammatory rhetoric designed to satiate his base and to deflect from negative press he's been getting on how the administration is handling the COVID-19 pandemic response. Truth be told, I'll never be convinced otherwise.

I know the virus originated in China - everyone in the world knows it, protestations on China's social media or within the Chinese government notwithstanding. But there's no need to give the virus a geopolitical tag, when there are two perfectly acceptable terms that the rest of the world is using without issue. 

So, why treat the virus so differently from every other product or object that originate there that are never referred to as 'Chinese' things or 'China' things.  I mean, when was the last time you heard anyone refer to their iPhone as their Chinese Phone? 

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post 
via Getty Images

Have you ever heard anyone refer to their favorite pair of China Jordans? What about all of the clothes that are made in China?  Pretty sure no one, ever, said "Honey, have you seen my China Jacket? You know, the one with the logo on the shoulder, on the back?" Of course you haven't. 

Because we simply don't do that. One, it would be almost impossible, and two, it doesn't fit the narrative, does it? 

Not only does it not fit the narrative, but it's also wrong. I happened to find an article in Sapien, an online anthropology magazine, which noted that the World Health Organization (WHO) does not use the geographic indicators any longer (Mongoloidism), names associated with animals (bat flu, mad cow disease, bird flu, etc.), and does not support naming diseases after individuals (Parkinson's) - and the organization regrets that some are still in circulation (MERS, West Nile, etc.)

The article also talked about the stigma of using an ethnic designation, using the 'Spanish Flu' as a parallel to Trump's 'Chinese virus.' 

This strain of flu, thought to have killed roughly 50 million people between 1918 and 1919, did not originate in Spain, and it killed more British, French, Germans, and Americans than Spaniards. However, those other countries censored coverage of the pandemic, while Spain did not, so it became known through Spanish media accounts. 

The Times of London, refusing to report the flu’s death toll among British troops, christened the illness “the Spanish flu,” and the name stuck. (Incidentally, many Spaniards dubbed it “the French flu.”) Today health authorities have recognized the misnomer and typically call it the 1918 flu pandemic. 

And, the article echoes my thoughts on Trump's hostility towards foreigners (which his base loves) and my contention that this is about deflection, too.

Representing COVID-19 as invasively foreign also enables Trump to distract attention from his own administration’s dismal response to the spread of the disease in the U.S., implicitly affixing the blame to an ethnically defined “other.”

Further, it notes that Trumps pejorative use of China or Chinese in this manner has other implications, including accounts of 

Asian American adults and children being assaulted, verbally abused, bullied, and spat on by strangers accusing them of bringing the virus to the U.S. In one case, a man on the New York subway sprayed an Asian passenger with the deodorizer Febreze. Meanwhile, in an astonishing display of ignorance that endangers the health of those he represents, one elected official in Kansas said that social distancing was unnecessary because so few Chinese people live in Kansas.

Earlier today, I polled social media friends to see if they owned anything they regularly referred to as "the Chinese" whatever.  Here are the results of my informal data-gathering:

• Chinese food, Chinese takeout
• Chinese checkers
• Chinese finger trap
• Chinese jump rope
• Chinese silk 
• Chinese lanterns
• Chinese Almond Cookies
• the 'good' china
• Chinese yoyo 
• 'the Chinaman,' a small multi-purpose tool

The only thing there that might be remotely derogatory would be the last, I think. The rest of them don't impart any sense of racism, any negative connotation, and more importantly, those are the actual product names in many cases, not an adjective attached to an object that has its own name. 

So - we know what the president was doing, the rest of the GOP went along with him, with many of the alleged leaders of the party choosing to use that descriptor. And his fans? Yeah, they picked up on it too, as they were supposed to. 

But here's the thing: Trump himself admits it served his purpose, and now he's done with it. That's right, Trump said today that he's not going to call it that any more.

"Look, everyone knows it came out of China, but I decided we shouldn't make any more of a big deal out of it," Trump told Fox News. "I think I've made a big deal. I think people understand it." 

Yasssssss, people understand it, for sure.

Trump's change comes a day after he tweeted that the spread of the novel coronavirus in the US is not the fault of Asian-Americans... He also denied last week that "Chinese virus" or "China virus" was a racist term to use. "It's not racist at all, no, not at all. It comes from China, that's why. I want to be accurate," Trump said at the time.

"I want to be accurate," said the liar-in-chief, who, according to the folks at the Washington Post, has made over 16,400 false or misleading statements in just the first three years of his administration. (If you think they're biased, halve the number, and you're still going to be disgusted.) And January 20th was a lifetime of lies ago, before he really started kicking things into gear on the pandemic.

What's going to be interesting now? How long will it take the Trumpeters to back off the terminology.  Think it'll happen any time soon?