The Economist deletes racist tweet against Chinese amid torrents of online criticism

UK publication The Economist on Wednesday deleted a tweet which compared pigs with Chinese people after it encountered a tidal wave of criticism for being racist and dehumanizing.

The now- deleted tweet was published on Tuesday and was used by The Economist to promote an article titled “Most of the world’s grain is not eaten by humans.”

“In 2019 pigs ate 432m tonnes of grain, 45% more than the people of China did,” it read.

The sentence is a direct excerpt from the article published on June 23, which claims that despite the food crisis amid the Russia- Ukraine conflict, the world in fact is able to produce enough grain to meet humanity’s needs.

Considering the facts, reducing waste and turning wheat and maize into bread instead of animal feed is probably the best remedy while governments are mulling policies to get a greater share of grains into grub, the article concluded.

Although the article mainly focuses on analyzing data of food consumption per country, area, and year, the inappropriate comparison between pigs and Chinese was widely criticized for being “awful,” “racist” and “dehumanizing.”

Some pointed out that the comparison had allegedly violated Twitter’s rules on speech, and “For Twitter to allow The Economist to make such incendiary statement is beyond the pale.”

Some Chinese netizens showed their disappointment toward the magazine after the issue emerged on Chinese social media platforms. “I used to think The Economist was an authoritative magazine. It turns out it’s not that good,” a Chinese netizen commented.

The Global Times tried to contact The Economist but had not received reply as of time of press.