China Quarantining Mexican Nationals Just The Latest In Saga Of Mexicans Vs. Chinese

China has quarantined several Mexican nationals traveling in that country for fear of spreading swine flu despite their showing no signs of infection. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu swears his country is not discriminating, but, while some of the Mexican nationals being quarantined arrived on a plane from Mexico that was carrying the first confirmed Chinese case of H1N1 virus, the majority of people being held arrived via planes without infected parties, some even originating in the United States. They’re all being quarantined for seven days in hotels all over China from Beijing and Shanghai to the southern city of Guangzhou. This has created what the press is calling a diplomatic “spat.” But we see it for what it really is: the latest in a rivalry between the Chinese and the Mexicans. Let’s take a look back at the flaming bags of poo they’ve been hurling at one another for quite some time.

Mexican Coverage of The Beijing Olympics

While we’d love to get incensed about the Chinese systematic profiling of Mexicans, we have to stop to recall the Beijing Olympic coverage from Mexico’s TV Azteca. Remember the “Getting Chinese People To Roll Their ‘R’s’” bit? Ines Gomez Mont, that classy broad, couldn’t stop with the making fun of people’s accents. She also made fun of their looks, (without them understanding, of course), calling them “egghead” and “guapo” in the most sarcastic of tones.

Chinese Americans Protest Obama’s Appointment Of Bill Richardson To Secretary Of Commerce

Old wounds were re-opened Last December when Barack Obama nominated Bill Richardson as Secretary of Commerce. Chinese-Americans protested the move because, back in 1999 when Richardson was Bill Clinton’s energy secretary, he revealed suspicions that Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-American nuclear scientist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was leaking nuclear secrets to China.

“This was the major Chinese-American civil rights case in the last 30 years,” said Albert Wang, a Fremont physician. “And there was a feeling among many Chinese-Americans, particularly in Silicon Valley, that Bill Richardson did a lot to promote the notion that all Chinese-Americans are potential spies.”

For his part, Richardson swore that, while he made “some mistakes,” racial profiling wasn’t one of them. The record shows that Lee was indicted on 59 counts, jailed in solitary confinement for nine months, and released on time served after the government’s case against him could not be proven. He was ultimately charged with only one count of mishandling sensitive documents that did not require pre-trial solitary confinement, while the other 58 counts were dropped. Yeah, so we kind of come out looking bad on this one, too. 

China Creates Corona Beer Knock Off

If there’s one thing Americans welcome from Mexico it’s their beer and Mexico has spent millions marketing Corona Extra, (which, in Mexico, is the equivalent of Milwaukee’s Best), to them. When it was discovered that the Chinese were trying to blatantly rip them off with a ringer bottle called Cerono Extra, it was most certainly on.

Mistrust between foreign cultures makes the world go round and this latest faux pas on the part of the Chinese will likely only add creative fuel to the next offensive Mexican television broadcast of Chinese coverage. Will we ever learn?

China denies discriminating against Mexicans [AFP]