Photo: IC

The novel coronavirus epidemic has exposed the deep-seated bigotry and substandard manner of some American elites.

While China has made enormous sacrifices to contain the spread of the epidemic, and when China's successful practice has gained other countries sufficient time to be alerted and prepared, some Americans just seek xenophobia and finger-pointing to generate more fear and anxiety instead of finding real solutions, an approach that's very American.

Tucker Carlson, a political commentator and host of the nightly talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, nastily called the coronavirus "Chinese coronavirus" and blamed China for the global spread of the virus and its negative impact worldwide.

Carlson, like other China bashers, spares no effort in rolling out xenophobia and racism. And this is not the first time that the Americans have done so.

Racism was rampant in the US in the 1800s after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed. It was based on the false belief that decreased wages and economic difficulties the West Coast was facing was because of Chinese workers. More than 200 years have passed, yet arrogance and ignorance still linger in American minds that catalyze in racist and irresponsible remarks.

Let the US elite be aware that no Chinese called the 2009 pandemic of H1N1 "an American influenza." The outright racist hate from then to now shows that US society remains as closed and US elite as narrow-minded as always.

Unsurprisingly, Carlson did not stop there. On his show, he called China's manufacturing of daily necessities the American people need, or almost everything, as extortion by China, which he thinks is "the existential threat" the US faces.

Well, if the lives of ordinary Americans really matter to Carlson, he should be familiar with the entertaining account of a US writer 12 years ago about how her family struggled without made-in-China goods for a year. Perhaps nowadays American families cannot do without made-in-China goods for a day. The good value of Chinese products has enabled a large number of Americans to afford a middle-class life.

Since US President Donald Trump came to power, he has chanted bringing back manufacturing to the US, but he must have found it difficult because his country does not have the system and all of the supply chain it needs to stage a comeback of manufacturing.

The rampant spread of the virus has provided an excuse for some to lambast China. Given the nature of viruses, any outbreak of a virus can evolve into a global public health crisis if countries do not address it in a timely and serious manner. The US government does not, obviously.

And what suggestions would the US elite like to offer? Disregarding China's effective and useful measures to contain the spread of the virus and its bearing of risks to resume work for the sake of the Chinese economy and the global supply chain, they only hype the so-called China threat and politicize everything China does.

Unfortunately, this has been the American way, in the past and it continues today.

The author is an editor with the Global Times. wangwenwen@globaltimes.com.cn