The official WHO name of the disease

I am a citizen of Wuhan. Like millions of other Wuhan residents who now live in a state of fear and anxiety, the first thing I do when I wake up every morning is to check the latest news of the coronavirus epidemic.

In December 2019, a month before the Spring Festival holiday, an unknown coronavirus broke out and rapidly spread in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, China. This virus is a new strain of coronavirus that has not been previously identified in humans.  Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which emerged in 2002. Compared to the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003, the novel coronavirus has a lower mortality rate but seems to be spreading much faster. It took almost four months for SARS to spread to 1,000 people, but the novel coronavirus infected more than 1,200 people in just 25 days. On January 19, 2020, the first exported case of this virus was discovered in Guangdong Province, hundreds of miles from Wuhan. Just three days later, on January 22, 23 provinces across the country had confirmed cases. So far, around 80,000 people from 29 countries have been infected with the virus and more than 2,000 have died.

Facing the complicated and severe epidemic situation, China has taken drastic measures to limit the spread of the virus. On January 23, Wuhan – a city of 14 million inhabitants and about 5 million migrants – was put in lockdown. All transport – airplanes, subways, buses, and trains – have been suspended. Private cars are no longer permitted to be driven on the streets without a special permit. All citizens are required to stay at home to avoid cross infection. A virus has silenced a bustling city. A few days later, 13 cities in Hubei Province with a total population of 56 million people were locked down. 31 provincial-level regions in China all activated top-level emergency responses to the coronavirus. These measures are without precedent, not only in China but perhaps in the whole history of humankind.

On January 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. And on February 11, the WHO announced an official name for the disease, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (abbreviated “COVID-19”).

Anti-Chinese caricature in Jyllands Posten

If I did not live in the epicenter of the disease, I probably would not give much thought to the naming of a new disease. As it is, I am forced to reflect how much harm the inappropriate naming of infectious diseases can do to certain groups.

In recent years, the world has seen the emergence of several new human infectious diseases. These diseases are often given common names outside the scientific community for everyday communication. Inappropriate disease names, once established, are difficult to change and can bring serious negative impacts and harms to individuals and communities. Therefore, it is important that an appropriate name is assigned to a newly identified human disease by whoever first reports it.

In response to such concerns, WHO developed a set of standard best practices for the naming of new human infectious diseases in 2015. In this guideline, the WHO advises against using place names, human names, or animal names for naming new infectious diseases with the aim of “minimising unnecessary negative impact of disease names on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare, and avoid causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.”

Anti-Asian headline in Courrier Picard

According to these guidelines, disease names such as Ebola, Zika, swine flu, Rift Valley fever, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or monkeypox are all problematic. The use of place name for a disease should be avoided as they can stigmatise entire regions or ethnic groups. For example, the Ebola River of Congo or the Zika Forest of Uganda, where the Ebola and Zika diseases were first identified, are now inevitably linked to these diseases in the public imagination.

The use of animal species in names such as “swine flu” (officially known as “H1N1”) has had unintentional negative economic and social impacts by stigmatising the pork industry, even though this disease is being spread by people rather than pigs. (See related post on the “Danish boar fence”)

People’s names, usually the scientists who identified the disease, may also be inappropriate as are “terms that incite undue fear” such as “unknown” or “fatal.” “We’ve seen certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, create unjustified barriers to travel, commerce and trade, and trigger needless slaughtering of food animals,” the WHO says in its guidelines.

Before the announcement of the official name, COVID19, by the WHO, “Wuhan virus” or “China virus” were widely used (and continue to be used) for the disease by some foreign media.

Anti-Chinese headline in Der Spiegel

At a time when China is mobilising all resources to fight COVID-19, fear and discrimination spread rapidly outside China through these stigmatized names. Jyllands Posten, a Danish broadsheet paper, for example, published a cartoon of the Chinese national flag where the five stars were replaced with virus-like figures. In response to China’s protest, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen responded that “we have freedom of expression in Denmark – also to draw.”

An increase in racial stereotyping of Chinese in particular and Asians in general over the novel coronavirus can be seen in the media of other Western countries, too. The French newspaper Le Courrier Picard used inflammatory headlines including “Alerte jaune” (Yellow alert) and “Le peril jaune?” (Yellow peril?), stigmatising all Asian people as virus. Der Spiegel, a German magazine, featured a man wearing a red hoody, protective masks, goggles and earphones, with a giant headline “Coronavirus – Made in China.” And the US Wall Street Journal published an article with racist overtones under the headline, “China is the Real Sick Man of Asia,” humiliating China’s subordination to Western countries in the 19^th Century and marking down the prospect of the Chinese economy.

These biased media reports not only constitute racial stereotyping but undoubtedly contribute to racial discrimination experienced by Chinese and Asians in these countries.

This anti-Chinese racism has now gone well beyond the media. As of February 20, Amazon allows individual businesses to openly sell T-shirts, hoodies, cups and other products imprinted with the insulting slogan “coronavirus made in China” on its English mall.

Anti-Chinese merchandise on Amazon

Even more outrageously Chinese students and migrants have been racially vilified and attacked because of their nationality and race. On January 30, for instance, a Chinese postgraduate student was attacked by three local people in Sheffield, UK, for wearing a mask to protect herself and others from COVID-19. In the US, racist attacks against Asians are said to be spreading faster than the virus. In Australia, Chinese restaurants are struggling to survive as their customer numbers have plummeted.

The list of examples of anti-Chinese racism could go on and on.

Facing deadly infectious diseases, it is, of course, normal that we feel scared or anxious. However, racism and any act of discrimination driven by such fear is completely unacceptable. As Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said, the coronavirus is a public health event, not a matter of ethnicity or nationality, “Even though the virus started in Wuhan, it doesn’t respect nationality or race. It does not check your passport before it goes into your body. Anybody can be infected.”

A virus does not have a nationality, ethnicity or a race. Discrimination can be the most dangerous virus.

I studied in Australia for six years. In a sense, I have been educated in the West. Personally, I truly appreciate the pursuit of freedom of speech in Western countries and agree that this may be something the Chinese government needs to work on. But, the premise of freedom of speech is not to infringe upon the rights and dignity of others. While the Chinese people are suffering from this calamity and are united as one in combating this “war without smoke,” attacking the country and its people in the name of “freedom of speech” is undoubtedly a retrogression of human civilization.

Epidemics have been rampant throughout human history, and they have often caused devastation. It is the responsibility of us all to ensure that there is no stigma associated with any infectious disease, and the unnecessary and unhelpful profiling of individuals based on nationality or race.

Fighting the novel coronavirus, as we do here, is protecting both China and the world. On behalf of millions of ordinary people living in Wuhan, I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to the international community who has given us valuable moral and material support. China is not fighting alone. We believe “winter will eventually pass, and spring is sure to come.”

Nov 16-18, 2012, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, China

The Foreign Languages School of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL) and the Publisher of the journal Foreign Languages and Their Teaching are pleased to announce the forthcoming first conference on Research and Applications of Intercultural Communication to be held on Nov 16-18, 2012 in Wuhan, China, hosted by The Foreign Languages School of ZUEL. We now invite the submission of high-quality papers for the conference.

Intercultural communication is a widespread and longstanding phenomenon among communities, nations, and organizations: the scientific and systematic study of intercultural communication is now widely recognized as a significant field. It combines and applies the theories and methods of anthropology, psychology, linguistics, sociology and related disciplines to understand the dynamic processes of intercultural communication, explore its essential qualities and regular patterns, and enhance ways of effective intercultural communication in multicultural contexts. With deepening globalization and its international role, China experiences unprecedented levels of scale and depth in its exchanges with other countries and people. Increasing cross-border cooperation and transnational employment patterns in the fields of education, health care, business, international affairs, tourism, sports and cultural activities, besides transnational migration and marriage, intercultural mass communication and online communication, have awaked many Chinese people to the need for developing improved intercultural communication skills. There is a great need for further research and, more specifically, to apply recent research to these areas in China. Complementing this, there is a need to develop Chinese theories and research applications in intercultural communication which are relevant to diverse social and cultural communities within China, and to Chinese communities overseas, and the numerous institutions and organizations around the world which have personal and professional encounters with China.

Hence the theme of this conference is “intercultural literacy, communication, and competence in the context of multiculturalism”, with a focus on the application of intercultural communication research in China’s contacts with the world. The conference aims to broaden the horizon of intercultural communication studies with Chinese theoretical and empirical studies and to provide guidelines for the increasingly frequent intercultural activities of Chinese people.

Invited Keynote Speakers

Overseas Scholars:

• Ingrid Piller, Macquarie University, Australia
• Lixian Jin, De Montfort University, UK
• Martin Cortazzi, The University of Warwick, UK
• Tim Greer, Kobe University, Japan
• Kimie Takahashi, Assumption University, Thailand

Domestic Scholars:

• Chen Xinren, Nanjing University
• Jia Yuxin, President of China Association for Intercultural Communication Studies
• Song Li, Harbin Institute of Technology, President of IAICS

Click here for the Call for Papers and here for the Conference Flier. For further information send an e-mail to the conference address.

The magic of English

I recently returned to China from graduate study in Australia and soon reestablished my old habit of reading the newspaper over breakfast. One Sunday morning, this color flier was enclosed in the roll of my local newspapers. The flier is an advertisement for the 2011 national speaking tour of Li Yang, founder of Crazy English. Under the alluring headline “把成功传给下一代 (Propagate the success to the next generation)”, a picture of Li Yang confidently holding the Olympic torch stands out against the background image of a large crowd gathered at the Imperial Palace symbolizing the supreme power of ancient China. On the reverse side of the flyer is a synopsis of Li Yang’s public lecture on “如何把流利英语和成功、自信、吃苦精神传给下一代 (How do we hand down fluent English, success, confidence, and diligence to the next generation)?” In this synopsis, a fairy-tale narrative of Li Yang immediately captured my eye:

He has changed the destinies of millions with English and influenced three generations of Chinese English learners! He has created a legend in English teaching. He gave English lectures at the Imperial Palace and the Great Wall, and offered oral English training to a hundred thousand volunteers for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. He and his team have been travelling from city to city, dedicating three decades to the career of “conquering English, revitalizing China”. His name is Li Yang, a legendary hero in the era where knowledge changes destiny. (My translation)

As a successful English learner and an English training magnate, Li Yang is a household name in China, a country of 400 million English learners. For millions of his followers and admirers, he is an idol, a role model, and even a “legendary hero” of godlike power who has changed his own and others’ destinies with English. In Li Yang’s discourses English becomes some sort of magic wand that will allow devotees to achieve successes that would normally be considered out of the reach of ordinary Chinese people. English proficiency is tied up with accomplishment, self-confidence, self-value, pleasure, money, and success. Through encouraging self-confidence and promising material rewards through its rags-to-riches narratives, the Crazy English method has aroused intense English desire among millions of Chinese.

In many of his public appearances, Li Yang speaks about his own earlier difficulties in mastering English, urging his devotees to follow his example of self-transformation. Born in 1969, Li Yang studied for a mechanical engineering major in Lanzhou University when he was confronted with the need to pass college English tests. That motivated him to develop what he called “a language cracking system” – Crazy English. It took Li Yang only a few years to give up mechanical engineering and turn his radical method into one of China’s most well-known brands of English training and a multi-million Yuan business. In Crazy English lectures, Li Yang encourages students to shout out motivational English expressions loudly, quickly and repeatedly with hand gestures that are supposed to stress the pronunciation. Central to the Crazy English method is the belief that these practices are instrumental in breaking down a common barrier faced by Chinese learners of English, namely, their fear of “losing face,” a self-perceived obstacle of Chinese EFL learners in communication with “native English speakers”. Li Yang proclaimed,

My method can give people confidence very quickly. I try to simplify English for common people. I became an idol and a celebrity for Chinese young people because of this content. (quoted in Gallagher, 2009).

 The Crazy English philosophy is deeply nationalistic. Li Yang promotes English language learning not only as a means of self-transformation but also as a facet of Chinese patriotism, which is best captured in his personal motto:

激发爱国主义热情，弘扬民族精神；攻克英语，振兴中华 (stimulating patriotism, advocating national spirits, conquering English, revitalizing China)” (“Li Yang,” 2009)

The Crazy English philosophy that advocates learning English for national benefits is rooted in the slogan of the Chinese Self Strengthening Movement (1860s to 1890s): “师夷长技以制夷 (learning advanced technologies from Western barbarians in order to fight against them)”. Li Yang alludes to this slogan in his own lectures, in which he often urges students to go abroad to learn from America and the West and bring that knowledge and experience back to serve China.

 Rising from ordinary person to social hero, Li Yang became the fulfilment of his story of personal self-transformation through English. Whether omnipotent English has mythicized Li Yang or Li Yang has mythicized the omnipotence of English is a chicken and egg question. What is certain is that Li Yang’s rags-to-riches and patriotic narratives not only contributed to the swift expansion of his own English teaching business, but also heightened the symbolic meaning of the English language in China as a valuable asset!