Chelsea Gray and Kirstine Hansen.

New research shows that the well-publicised case of a student who was attacked in London’s Oxford Street in February was not an isolated incident. Our study shows that in the months after Covid-19 first emerged the probability of being a victim of hate crime increased fourfold for Chinese people across the whole of the London Metropolitan area, even after controlling for other factors that might affect hate crimes over that period.

The findings showed that the probability of being a victim of hate crime for a Chinese person in London rose from around 3-4 percent prior to Covid-19, to 10 percent in February 2020 and to around 16 percent in March 2020.

Our research identified no increase in hate crimes after Covid-19 for any other ethnic group nor for other (non-hate) crimes against Chinese people, nor in any other time period we considered. To get our results we used data from the Metropolitan Police for the whole of the Metropolitan area of London.

Covid-19 came as an unexpected shock that dramatically altered the situation for Chinese people living in London. Because Covid-19 is believed to have originated in China, they (more…)