Vancouver's Chinatown community is voting for real change, not platitudes

A long line of Chinese seniors at an advanced voting station in Chinatown for the 2022 Vancouver civic election. (submitted)

Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Lorraine Lowe, who is the executive director of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver’s historic Chinatown district.

The last several years have been infuriating to witness the overall decay of Vancouver’s Chinatown, but most recently, the increasing rate of violent random assaults, stranger attacks, thefts, and vandalism have been very concerning.

At the moment, the Chinese community in Chinatown does not feel safe in their own neighbourhood. But public safety should be a right, not an afterthought.

The 500% rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, and lack of respect for our cultural institutions and law enforcement agencies appear to be a conflated issue. Yet we are somehow the enemy for speaking up and standing in solidarity with those who have only stood by us offering us a sense of safety and security, while everyone else has abandoned our community.

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Xenophobia has been around since the late 1800s, viewing Asian immigrants as the “perpetual foreigner,” and most recently this resentment-ridden ideology is driven by the model minority myth — that Asians in Vancouver are affluent, law-abiding citizens with a higher socioeconomic status and education contributing to Vancouver’s housing affordability issues, inflating real estate prices through money laundering and foreign market speculation.

But the reality is that there is a huge income disparity within the local Asian population and a large number of marginalized Asian immigrants and seniors living in low-income housing in the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown. Many of these seniors and generations of families have lived their entire lives in the neighbourhood — they are more invested in the well-being of the area than those who find themselves in Downtown Eastside SROs, yet no one is listening and consulting them.

There are activist groups attacking Chinatown residents, community leaders, and business owners for merely speaking out in favour of more policing presence in the community.

There are some leaders also unwilling to speak outside the boundaries of their academic and/or political ideologies. They remain completely silent on addressing the pressing issues directly.

Even worse, accusations of our public safety pleas are grossly exaggerated.

As we are coming up on the 100th anniversary of Canada’s Chinese Exclusion Act and look back at the federal government’s official apology 16 years ago, the situation in Vancouver’s Chinatown has only gotten far worse for business owners and residents.

We don’t need any more performative gestures or doubling down on failed policies, what we need is real meaningful change. We need leadership, starting with the acknowledgement of the increase in violent crime and the ability of our residents to feel safe in their community and executing all four pillars of our existing drug policy — prevention, treatment, enforcement, and harm reduction. But not just the latter.

Chinatown has suffered enough at the hands of “enlightened” do-gooders and like clockwork, coming out every four years for their dumplings and BBQ pork photo opportunities.

Despite the many obstacles and challenges thrown our way, Chinese Canadians persevered. They fought hard to build a strong cultural community to be celebrated as a cherished institution for many future generations.

As Chinatown continues to be entangled in the web of politics and bureaucracy, so does the threat of gentrification — fuelled not by real estate developers, but by the state of lawlessness and chaos, brought on by progressive policies contributing to the continuous urban decay of our community. Although these entities and groups have well-intentioned policies, they ignore the reality of their outcomes.

Unfortunately, these policies only create more division and incite a mob mentality — if you don’t toe the line you will be “cancelled” and labelled as a “bootlicker,” anti-poor, and having no compassion. We need to take a stand and not allow bullying and gaslighting for simply wanting a safer community and more law enforcement on our streets.

Then there’s the notion that “we need to stop conflating crime with poverty.”

Low-income Chinatown immigrant seniors are not robbing and committing violent assaults. We’ve simply been asking for social and financial support for the community and struggling businesses for years, with little to no support from the municipal government.

Chinese Canadians are reserved, polite, and law-abiding citizens, but make no mistake — the community is not weak. We are speaking up now and being criticized, harassed, and bullied for doing so. This conflict was not created by the unhoused; the unhoused are being used as mascots by activists to further a destructive agenda, which has clearly failed our communities.

It is interesting to note that 42% of Vancouverites are of Asian descent — yet we are not represented by Vancouver City Council and have no seat at the table. There has been an indisputable spike in hate since the start of the pandemic, and we’ve received nothing but platitudes.

This Saturday, October 15, Vancouver’s Chinese community will be heard. I predict a strong voter turnout from the Chinese Canadian community. It’s time to take our city back, restore the moral fabric of society, and restore law and order.

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