PONE-D-20-32641

Openness and COVID-19 induced xenophobia: 

The roles of trade and migration in sustainable development

PLOS ONE

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Shang E. Ha, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This paper investigates whether more open economy in terms of trade and migration has an impact on observed discriminatory behaviors empirically. The theoretical frameworks build on existing research demonstrating that openness to trade and immigration facilitates more interactions with people outside one’s race, ethnicity and nationality, thus potentially improves mutual understanding and cultural exchanges and mitigating xenophobic sentiments. Using survey data on ethnically Chinese residents’ xenophobic experiences living abroad at the early stage of the pandemic in February, 2020, the authors find that greater openness to trade decreases the likelihood of reported xenophobic behaviors while openness to migration increases it.

I think that the paper will be interesting to scholars in political economy and public opinion. The paper addresses an interesting but unexplored question. I recommend revisions before the paper appears in Polis-one or another journal.

1. Theory

The objective of this paper is to examine whether there is a causal effect of trade and immigration policy on discriminatory behaviors observed by ethnically Chinese residents living abroad at the early time of the covid-19 pandemic. Although the paper is empirical-oriented one, we still need some theoretical explanations of how changes in trade and immigration affect discriminatory behaviors observed. In this sense, the paper has some issues to be addressed. First, it does not explain why we focus on the effects of immigration and trade on discriminatory behaviors observed. Globalization can have various dimensions such as trade, foreign direct investment, immigration, and capital market liberalization. Given the various aspects of globalization, I am wondering why the authors pay particular attention to the two dimensions of globalization – trade and immigration, not trade and FDI or trade capital market liberalization, etc. The authors would justify this point well in the main text.

Second, I am wondering how trade and immigration influence discriminatory behaviors observed among ethnically Chinese residents living abroad. I think that a large body of literature in international political economy has explained underlying mechanisms linking trade and immigration to xenophobic behaviors. Yet the authors do not present these mechanisms in a systematic way, while just describing some selective studies supporting their theoretical frameworks. In doing so, the authors do not describe whether trade and immigration have a negative, positive, or null impact on xenophobic behavior observed. The authors would elaborate some testable hypotheses on the effect of trade and immigration on xenophobic behavior observed.

2. Empirics

The authors predict that an increase in trade and immigration can have a negative, positive, or null effect on xenophobic behaviors observed. The questionnaire is “Since the virus outbreak in China, have you noticed any related discriminatory behavior in your working environment and daily life?.” The underlying logic behind the hypothesis is that openness to trade and immigration facilitates more interactions with people outside one’s race, ethnicity and nationality, thus potentially improves mutual understanding and cultural exchanges and mitigating xenophobic sentiments. Given this logic, how can we know that trade and immigration affect local natives in a way that the authors expect? To figure out the mechanisms, wouldn’t it be better to do some survey experiments to local natives rather than ethnically Chinese residents? Simply asking ethnically Chinese residents living abroad does not show that they identify the causal mechanisms between trade and immigration and xenophobic behaviors as local natives are main actors under their theoretical framework.

Related to the above point, another concern is that the authors use trade and immigration indicators at the national level. Employing the national-level indicators capturing trade and immigration does not tell that individuals are affected by them. Although countries may be more economically opened in terms of trade and immigration, it does not necessarily mean that individuals know, experience, and perceive them objectively and subjectively. If the authors attempt to uncover the causal mechanisms, it would be better to use some survey questionnaires to measure how individual respondents know, experience, and perceive the degree of trade and immigration at the individual level.

Reviewer #2: This paper traces the country-specific factors that contribute to anti-Chinese discrimination in other countries under the shadow of a pandemic first spread out in China. There are many merits in this paper. Methodologically, this study is carefully done following Ortega and Peri (2014)'s IV approach using the dyadic bilateral geographical and cultural distance. The topic is very timely and critical as the pandemic has been prevailing around the world. Nonetheless, I have several points of reservation and concern regarding this research.

1. It is entirely in a black box how the respondents are recruited. Even a snowballing sampling, the readers need to know how the respondents are sampled, and who they are, how the survey was done in which language. For instance, it might be possible that these respondents were recruited from the more concerned or more nationalistic population of Chinese immigrants. The platform used in recruitment (WeChat) makes this more likely. Also, it appears that there is no compensation for the survey to the respondents. If you are not paid, what would have been the motivation for the survey-takers to participate in this survey, other than they are particularly concerned about the anti-Chinese atmosphere or feel patriotic about the difficulties their home country was going through? I do not think the WVS analysis remedies this issue.

2. Conceptually, I was not entirely clear whether the paper is about anti-immigrants, anti-China, anti-Chinese, or anti-Asian, or just broad xenophobia: all these have different implications for hypothesizing and analyses. The timing of the survey was 7 days from Feb 11th to Feb 17th, 2020, which the authors described it was a period when the infection was mostly taking place within mainland China. However, the epidemic already took place in South Korea and Japan (in the cruise ship) on a massive scale and in Taiwan and Hong Kong as well. I think this makes Anti-Asian sentiment a better angle, but at least I hope this issue can be discussed and clarified at the beginning.

3. Empirically, the primary issues I had were related to how to adopt Ortega and Peri's approach. I think this paper's setup is rather China- or East Asia- specific and different from the general perspective in Ortega and Peri. So the right approach would be to take the share of trade with "China" and the share of "Chinese immigrants" in the population, rather than general trade or immigration. Many European countries probably have many immigrants from neighboring European states, but a few from China. I could not think of why and how this would matter in the same way as, say, in South Korea, where a large proportion of immigrants must be from China.

4. Second, I am very concerned about the correlation between trade and immigration and the fact that the authors use these variables together in all models. I suspect this might drive the results of the paper. First, the authors use the same IV for both trade and immigration. Second, as shown in Figure 1, the vast majority of responses came from the US, Australia, and Canada: all of them are high immigration and high trade countries. Third, Ortega and Peri (2014) use the two variables separately and together, which I believe this paper should do. Also, the authors need to report the first stage of 2SLS, at least in the appendix.

5. Finally, because all survey was taken after the outbreak of the epidemic and the question was specifically about "since the outbreak," I was not sure if the discrimination got worse than or the same as before. Especially, due the deteriorating relationship between China and the US along with some western countries since at least 2018, maybe the discrimination was rising even before the pandemic.

6. I have questions about the data sources: Why trade data (2012-2016) is from CoW, not the World Bank or the WTO? Why are migration data from 1991-2000? There was almost no migration from China to Africa back then?

7. Some minor points:

a. P.6. says "approximately 76% of respondents chose one of three categories: (i) racially discriminatory message against Chinese in the media (29%); (ii) racist rhetoric by native residents against Chinese in public (23%); and (iii) shunning (23%)." 76% means these categories are exclusive to each other? What if one respondent experienced many of these?

b. On P.4 the authors provide some key descriptive statistics, which is very confusing. "In particular, our preferred estimates show that a respondent residing in a country ranked at the 75th percentile of trade share in GDP in our sample sees a 43% decrease in the likelihood of receiving COVID-19 induced discrimination compared to those in a country ranked at the 25th percentile. In contrast, a respondent in the 75th-percentile country in the share of immigrants in population, on average, has an 86% greater likelihood of receiving COVID-19 induced discrimination compared to those in the counterpart ranked at the 25th percentile." It was unclear because I could not figure out whether the percentile was ascending or descending order. It was only evident after I saw the empirical results in later pages.

c. Isn't it also possible that observed discrimination can be subject to the fear that the respondents at the time?

d. Table1: how about age? Why public transportation?

e. Local media on P. 10 mean domestic media?

f. Can the authors provide full survey questions and an screenshot of the survey in the appendix?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Plos one_review December 2020.docx

Openness and COVID-19 induced xenophobia: 

The roles of trade and migration in sustainable development

PONE-D-20-32641R1

Dear Dr. He,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Shang E. Ha, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have done a good job of responding to my concerns and addressing them. I recommend this article for publication.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No