The Conflict of Modernity

— Compare the plague in colonial Hanoi and COVID-19

Baosheng Guo   Jun 12, 2024

Through the outstanding book The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam, we found that the bubonic plague in colonial Hanoi in the early twentieth century has similarities and differences to COVID-19. Although the two pandemics have different historical backgrounds, both two pandemics were initially from China, which led to the discrimination against Chinese and Asians, and both two pandemics related to modernization and globalization, which play significant roles in the spread and elimination of disease. All similarities and differences indicate the challenge and abuse of modernity during the two pandemics. 

First, the two pandemics have different social and political contexts regarding the modernity in which they occurred. One is that forced modernity faced resistance, and the other is that incomplete modernity brought global harm. In the colonial Hanoi period, the undeveloped and poor Asian states had a huge gap with the colonists' states like France and British, and Asian states urgently needed modernity and realized modernization. As a well-known Japanese thinker, Fukuzawa said, Japan should “depart from Asia for Europe.”  Japan was the only state to absorb modernization and Westernization in Asia positively. Indeed, Asia needs full-scale modernization, including in politics, economy, military, education, science, transportation, public health, etc. However, once modernity was implemented by force, the local Asian people would negatively accept or even resist it.. 

Since the establishment of the new Hanoi, the French colonists had the mission to plant modernity on Hanoi’s land. In The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt, the author writes, “In French eyes, Hanoi was backward and chaotic, not really a city but a collection of dirty villages,” “In Hanoi, he promptly demolished large sections of the city and appropriated land for the colonizers, all in the name of the French ‘civilizing mission’”.Modernization is definitely correct for Asian states, but Franc promoted modernization through the victory of the war and stationed the military in one of three districts in Hanoi. So, although the colonists built a new Hanoi that looked like Paris in the East and established a modern public health system, including sewer, the Vietnamese did not appreciate them. 

During the plague in colonial Hanoi, the colonist government implemented multiple appropriate policies and modern public health measures. However, the hostility between colonists and Vietnam caused these policies and measures to turn to the targets of resistance. For example, rat hunting and killing were the correct measures to contain the plague, but the Vietnamese sewer workers refused to hunt rats in sewers and went out on strike. When the colonists put out a bounty on rats and paid a few cents for each rat tail, Hanoi Vietnams only cut off rats' tails to collect the bounty and then let rats go free to breed more rats, and Vietnams even smuggled rats from northern Vietnam and raise the rats in the countryside. These actions of Vietnams should be Characterized by the adverse reaction to modernization health measures rather than scams. As the author Michael G. Vann said, “Hanoi’s rat problem frustrated French colonial administrators, who believed that Western modernity with its emphasis on science would solve supposedly backward Asia’s alleged health problems. … While I refused to anthropomorphize the rats, they serve as a metaphor not only for French colonization but also for Vietnamese resistance”.

On the other hand, the social and political contexts of COVID-19 were the rise of China, a superpower with incomplete modernity, causing enormous influence on the whole world. Western states, including the U.S., successfully dealt with the pandemic through modern public health policies and measures, such as vaccines, testing, and personal protective equipment, without suppressing human rights, freedom, and dignity. However,  Chinese authoritarian regimes use cruel, anti-humanity policies and measures, such as forced quarantine, repeatedly testing and tracking, and severe punishment, even sending to prison, causing the disaster of human rights and ultimately leading to the young generation’s “White Paper Movement” to resistance to the tyranny of Chinese Communist Party. Because of insufficient modernity in the political field, the harm of the brutal action of the Chinese authority‘s pandemic response hugely surpasses the measure to deal with the plague by the French colonists in Hanoi. Modernity, with its features of Freedom of speech, freedom of personal, and other human rights, was oppressed and persecuted during COVID-19 in China.

In terms of similarities between the plague in colonial Hanoi and COVID-19, both two pandemics related to globalization and modernization, and both led to discrimination against Chinese and Asians. In the early 20th century, large Asian cities, such as Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Hanoi, started to be modernized by Western colonists. Industrialized transportation, like trains, steamboats, Ocean ships, etc., expanded the people’s range of activists fast. Unfortunately, these modern infrastructures could cause the disease to spread swiftly. Like the plague in colonial Hanoi, it was initially from the Yun Nan province of China. Still, it spread quickly to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Hanoi, Manila, and San Francisco. In addition, the sewer symbolizes a modern city, but the sewer of Hanor became the greenhouse and warmroom of rats and plague. Similarly, because of high globalization and the development of the aviation industry, COVID-19 spread swiftly from 2019 to 2021, and almost every country’s citizen was infected. Ironically, modern infrastructure and globalization have become important reasons for the quick spread of the pandemic.

Furthermore,  both two pandemics were originally from China, which led to discrimination against Chinese and Asians. During the expansion of the plague in the early 20th century, the Chinese people in the world were discriminated against by the local government. Many Chinese were quarantined, most of Chinatown in the world was locked down, and most of the Chinese community was separated from the city. In The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt, the Chinese founding father of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-Sen, was in Hanoi then; his vision was to establish a modern and democratic China like the Republic of France. However, French colonizers neither supported him nor respected him, and they said, "Sure, he can wear a suit, but I don't trust him." They also said, "We all know these people are the source of disease in Asia." So, the colonizers' discrimination against Asians was deep-rooted.

During the pandemic of COVID-19, because it is originally from China Wuhan, so much racism in the world discriminated against Chinese and Asians. In particular, U.S. President Trump wrote the words "Chinese virus" on a document in the White House, causing hatred for the Chinese to grow up strong and quickly. According to research statistics, about one-third of Asian adults (32%) say they know an Asian person in the U.S. who has been threatened or attacked because of their race or ethnicity since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. “From March to May 2020 alone, over 800 Covid-related hate incidents were reported from 34 counties in California. Those numbers have since intensified in Orange County, where anti-Asian hate incidents are up by an estimated 1200%”. COVID-19 could be the origin of an incident in a Chinese military bio lab in Wu Han; the Chinese regime and military should be responsible, but all Chinese people, even Asia, became the scapegoat. Racism has always occurred in either modern society or pre-modern society. 

Modernity, including globalization, has been the subject of much conflict and controversy in recent centuries and has certainly benefited human society. However, if modernity is not applied correctly, especially during the special pandemic, it will cause many problems. Modernity is not the problem, but the incorrect method of applying modernity could be a problem. I hope the elites in the East and the West can learn from the many pandemics and use modernity to benefit humanity, stop diseases, and lead progress!