Chinese-Americans protest US Senator Marsha Blackburn’s tweet over China’s ‘cheating and stealing’
- ‘China has a 5,000 year history of cheating and stealing,’ a Tennessee senator tweeted last week
- Members of the community said the level of hostility and vitriol they have been experiencing has reached a boiling point
Chinese-Americans held a protest in Washington on Wednesday with plans for a larger one Saturday over comments by a Tennessee senator that China has a 5,000 year history of dishonesty and theft.
The pushback comes amid years of record US-China tension and a devastating global pandemic that has left Chinese-Americans on the front lines of racial discrimination, physical and verbal attacks, presidential scapegoating and FBI campaigns that critics say heap suspicion unfairly on Asian-Americans.
Members of the community said the level of hostility and vitriol they have been experiencing has reached a boiling point.
“More and more Chinese-Americans see we are in a state of crisis,” said Cai Jinliang, chairman of United Chinese Americans (UCA), which helped organise the Washington rally and a second planned in Nashville, Tennessee this weekend.
“We felt safe, always the model minority. They used us to say “look at Chinese, how well they’ve done,” he said. “Now we’ve become a target because of these difficult bilateral relations. All of a sudden we become collateral damage.”