That wasn't specific to Chinese shoppers and tourists. Northern Italy is now full of Chinese workers, the amount of them there has been growing for 10 years because they work there making all the "made in Italy" fashions, leather and pottery etc which was my point.
The government was trying to
cool the racism there because of the workers, not the shoppers.
First google link for hug a chinese:
https://kprcradio.iheart.com/feature...a-chinese-day/
Workers!
If the cruise lines, Italian industry and where ever else wasn't being typical in their behaviour (import the cheapest labour and don't pay the local labour rate or hire locals) then this virus wouldn't have got spread so much. Western employers choices is the cause for the spread of this virus.
As I mentioned before, the only difference between covid19 and SARS is in the past 15 or so years western companies have been increasingly reliant on cheap goods AND imported labour from China. If that wasn't the case this wouldn't have spread more than SARS in 2002 (plenty of rich Chinese shoppers and tourists back then as well.) It's only the spreading of the Chinese workforce that has changed since.
E: You could casually google right now and find a lot of articles from between 2010 and 2018 remarking on the increasing numbers of Chinese working on cruise ships or in northern Italy between those years because it was newsworthy as it was happening.
That's why the West has SARS 2.0