Joint efforts can better protect Chinese overseas

In late May, two Chinese tourists kidnapped in Quetta in Pakistan's Balochistan province may have been killed. On June 9, Zhang Yingying, a 26-year-old Chinese student visiting the University of Illinois in the United States went missing, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the case. On June 12, a British court sentenced two suspects to prison for beating a 67-year-old Chinese man, who was visiting his daughter in Preston, Lancashire, to death in a local park on Jan 1.

These attacks on Chinese nationals abroad have prompted some media outlets to discuss the safety of Chinese overseas. But it is far-fetched for media outlest to use headlines such as "Foreign destinations unsafe for Chinese", implying that Chinese people should not travel abroad for fear of safety. Needless to say, such reports are devoid of logic.

Among the three incidents, two were not related to nationality or ethnicity. Only the Lancashire victim was targeted for being a Chinese, as one of the attackers used a derogatory term to denote Chinese nationals. But despite racism being a reality in those countries, most of the people and the governments there strongly oppose it.