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  Home Today Topics Writers Podcasts Magazine More Account Coffee House Ian Williams How China is stoking racial tensions in  the West 2 May 2021, 8:00am Text Comments Footage of a brutal late March attack on a 65-year-old Asian American woman in Manhattan drew widespread outrage on social media. It also made for a productive afternoon for Zhao Lijian. From his Beijing office, the Chinese government spokesman retweeted 20 posts and shared the video 12 times on his official Twitter account. ‘We can’t help but wonder, who will be the next victim? When will it all end?’ he asked his almost 900,000 followers. Zhao isn’t the only one who’s been busy. In the wake of the Atlanta spa shootings on March 16, Chinese state media used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to stoke a narrative of American racism and hatred. One Twitter post from  Global Times , a Communist party tabloid, shows the Statue of Liberty, gun in hand, towering over a tiny cardboard cut-out figure marked ‘Asian’, with a target on