Fear of U.S. hate crimes prompts Asians to reconsider study plans: media

People march to protest against anti-Asian hate crimes on Brooklyn Bridge in New York, the United States, April 4, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

Asian people said the violence soiled impressions of the United States as racially tolerant society and a top choice for overseas study and research, according to the newspaper.

WASHINGTON, April 22 (Xinhua) -- Spiking anti-Asian violence in the United States has prompted people in Asia to reconsider study plans at U.S. universities and question their confidence in America as a world role model, reported USA TODAY on Wednesday.

Since the start of the pandemic, Americans scapegoating China as the source of COVID-19 has targeted random Asian people, including the elderly, hurling racial slurs or even launching violent attacks, which resulted in deadly incidents, said the report.

On March 16, six of the eight people killed in a mass shooting at Atlanta-area spas were Asian women. On April 15, many of the victims in a shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis were Sikh, a religion with origins in India, it said.

Asian people said the violence soiled impressions of the United States as racially tolerant society and a top choice for overseas study and research, according to the newspaper.

A woman shows a sign during a rally against anti-Asian hate crimes in New Orleans, Louisiana, the United States, April 4, 2021. (Photo by Lan Wei/Xinhua)

"The human toll (from) the recent race-based violence has challenged those previously held beliefs" among South Koreans that America was a model for good governance and multicultural society, Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha University in Seoul told USA TODAY.

Japanese national Akiko Horiba, 43, said that she found Americans to be "kind" during her graduate study in Boston from 2001 to 2003, but now she's unsure whether she would come if she had the chance again.

"I would be a little afraid to visit America because I'm a woman and I saw a video of someone beating Asian ladies, I don't really recommend it to the younger generation," Horiba, who works in Tokyo, told the newspaper.

The Stop AAPI Hate, a group tracking incidents of violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, received more than 2,808 firsthand accounts of anti-Asian hate from March 2020 through the end of the year.

The California-based advocacy group tracked 987 in the first two months of 2021, the report quoted the group as saying.