Did China overreact to being called the 'Sick Man of Asia'?
- By Li Xiaohua
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E-mail China.org.cn, February 29, 2020
In early February, as COVID-19 was spreading across China, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a controversial commentary piece "China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia", which sparked outrage within the Chinese government and the general public.
The headline was clearly playing on a double pun - the COVID-19 that was ravaging China and the racially discriminatory phrase "Sick Man of East Asia". On Feb. 19, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs revoked the press passes of three Beijing-based WSJ journalists to protest the Journal's slander and attack on China and its refusal to apologize for its highly insensitive and inflammatory piece.
Major Chinese media outlets were swift to criticize the WSJ opinion piece, but some local bloggers and online commentators insinuated that China's response was an overreaction. They argued that it had little contextual understanding of the term "sick man", which was often used by the Western media.
So what are the origins of the term? I found that the phrase "Sick Man of Europe" was used to describe poor European countries facing economic troubles. Going back even further, I found that the term was first used to reference the debt-ridden Ottoman Empire in the 19th century.
Nowadays, this term is still being widely used by Western media to describe a country or region facing severe economic challenges. And this is commonly believed to be a possible origin of the phrase "Sick Man of Asia." These are just a handful of examples:
1. The American Empire Is the Sick Man of the 21st Century by Foreign Policy on April 2, 2019
2. The U.S. Is the Sick Man of the Developed World by Bloomberg News on August 1, 2017
3. Britain is once again the sick man of Europe by the Financial Times on April 18, 2019
4. 'France is now the sick man of Europe', says Polish minister by the Daily Mail on December 17, 2018
5. Germany becomes the ‘sick man' of Europe by Fox Business Network on October 5, 2019
Aside from China, foreign media also labeled other Asian countries such as the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Japan and Indonesia with the same term when they faced economic recession.
1.Philippines- 'Sick man of Asia' risks relapse by the Nikkei Asian Review on November 12, 2018
2. Thailand Risks Inheriting Asia's Sick-Man Tag on Unrest: Economy by Bloomberg News on May 28, 2014
3. Is Singapore the new sick man of Asia? By the New Straits Times on December 24, 2016
The term "sick man" in these articles refer to economic downturns in the respective countries, and despite it being pejorative in nature, had nothing to do with racial discrimination. As such, some commentators questioned why China reacted in such an intense way when so many other countries were also given the same label. They mistakenly believed that the over-sensitive and unconfident Chinese were simply making a mountain out of a molehill.
Perhaps, what they chose to ignore was the fact that the phrase "Sick Man of East Asia" had taken on a special meaning when viewed alongside the humiliation China faced over the past 200 years.
In 1896, an English writer used the phrase "Sick Man of East Asia" to describe the corrupt and bureaucratic Qing imperial government in an article published in the North China Daily News, an English newspaper based in Shanghai.
Liang Qichao, the renowned scholar and reformer, translated this phrase into "东亚病夫" to express his despair toward the indifferent and ineffectual Qing government. Since then, this phrase has been closely tied to the stereotype of catatonic Chinese opium addicts in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
In the movie Fist of Fury released in 1972, Chen Zhen, played by Bruce Lee, sent back to the Japanese a tablet inscribed with the phrase "Sick Man of East Asia". This made the racially discriminatory term even more widely known around the world.
Therefore, the term "Sick Man of East Asia" has a clearly different meaning in China even though it originated from the West. It is a term that is inextricably linked to the dignity and emotions of the Chinese, especially when it is used to discuss something other than the global economy.
The meaning of a word or a term cannot be construed independent of its broader socio-historical context.
Several days before the release of the commentary by the WSJ, 13 cities in China's Hubei province, including Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, were on lockdown. China made huge sacrifices and mounted a massive national effort to contain its spread so as to ensure the well-being of its people and protect other nations from COVID-19. All these efforts embody China's great sense of responsibility and commitment.
I believe that the incendiary headline by the WSJ exposed its indifference to all the efforts made by the Chinese people during such a trying time. In many ways, the article, which was unfair and unsympathetic, struck at the very core of the Chinese people's sentiments.
Those who have voiced their support for the WSJ article must understand that some words or terms cannot exist separately from their specific socio-historical context, cultural background and national sentiment. Likewise for the phrase "Sick Man of Asia".
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