People holding signs take part in a Stop Asian Hate rally in Chinatown of Chicago, the United States, on March 27, 2021. (Photo :Xinhua)

The Chinese Consulate General in New York on Saturday warned Chinese nationals in the area to be more alert over anti-Asian hate crimes, which have seen a dramatic surge in the US amid an escalating trend of racial discrimination toward those of Asian descent since the pandemic outbreak. US politicians' smearing of China as a culprit of COVID-19 and worsening bilateral relations play a part in the discrimination surge, said experts. 

The notice was released on the official website of the consulate after events involving racial discrimination and violence occurred in both online and real-world communities, with the most recent one in San Francisco dubbed as "Slap an Asian" challenge. 

The "challenge" involves people slapping those from Asian groups on public transport, which has gone viral on US social media.

Police in the Bay Area said that they had put out an alert over the incident, while noting that they "have not heard any reports of this happening," local broadcaster ABC7 NEWS reported on Saturday. 

In the consulate general's notice, it also cited shootings on March 16 that killed eight people, of whom six were Asians, in Atlanta-area massage parlors. It reminded Asian-Americans to strengthen their precautions since more activities are being arranged to target local Asian communities, the notice said.

"I have been subject to racist invective from people here in the US who, thanks largely to Trump's effort to deflect responsibility, are blaming China for the COVID-19 pandemic," a Chinese-American who lives in New York told the Global Times on condition of anonymity. 

"Asians usually don't fight back as it's not really in our culture to do so. We rather ignore it and hope it just goes away... Because in the past, if we protested, it [the protest] was usually shut down by the government," he said.

"To some extent, Asian-Americans have become the worst treated and most 'invisible' minority group in the US, since there are no policy preferences toward them like African-Americans, but the discrimination is no less," Yuan Zheng, deputy director of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday. 

Yuan noted that worsening bilateral ties and "political manipulation" by some Westerners are the culprits behind such "racist terror." Pinpointing China as the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic to cover up for his own failure, former US president Donald Trump is undoubtedly on the blame list for instigating hatred toward Chinese communities in the US. 

In a video recorded in New York on Saturday (US time), hundreds of people gathered in front of the city's Queens Public Library, holding signs that said "Say No to Anti-Asian Racist Terror!" or "Anti-China Hysteria - Made in Washington."

"They [local police] say that they welcome any report on racial discrimination but when the tube's doors are closed, how can you still report that to the police? I have been in the US for 30 years and I've never been this scared," cried an elderly Asian surnamed Lin, according to the CCTV News report. 

According to a recent report from Stop AAPI Hate, an organization dedicated to tracking anti-Asian discrimination in the US, at least 500 anti-Asian hate incidents have been reported in the past two months, with a total of 3,795 reports filed since last year. 

Chinese-Americans were targeted in most of the attacks, accounting for 42.2 percent, CNN reported.