Another sign of soaring xenophobia in China. A cartoon imagines foreigners as trash to be sorted. It invents their crimes against the virus response, mixes it with their malign motives in China, and fantasizes about committing violence against them. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/BiOzO4snKit4kGhnw3r5DA

In Hefei two weeks ago I was called 洋垃圾/foreign trash while quietly eating at a restaurant. These cartoons inflame already nasty sentiment. Below we have a guy who has been in China a long time, but secretly criticizes the country online.

It's depressing to see xenophobia and racism all over the world in response to the virus. China's brand of it harvests nationalism and broad suspicion towards foreigners, and then mixes it with fears over the virus. Here's a nasty one about a foreigner tricking Chinese women.

I really do wonder how much of the expat population will return to China after all this, given visas no longer work to get in. The xenophobia tends to subside over time. But this plays on a new ethno-nationalism/Han chauvinism that propaganda has been stoking in recent years.

A final cartoon of the worker kicking away the trash can. The xenophobia is ugly and revolting, and has been flourishing online in various forms. Not a ton of government effort to walk it back. Wonder how much they can walk back when it's all over.