Crime Lab, Education Lab Chinese Americans in Chicago donate 1 million surgical masks to city’s first-responders
Chicago Sun-Times / May 12, 2020
By Frank Main
A group of Chinese American business leaders has donated 1 million surgical masks to first-responders and others in Chicago, saying Chicagoans did the same thing for China when the coronavirus emerged there at the beginning of the year.
“We are grateful to the frontline responders who are risking their well-being to protect Chicago neighborhoods,” said Citadel Securities CEO Peng Zhao, who organized the donation with his wife Cherry Chen.
The effort follows months of President Donald Trump blaming China for the pandemic.
On Monday, when a Chinese American reporter asked the president why he sees testing for the coronavirus as a “global competition,” he responded, “Maybe that’s a question you should ask China.” On Tuesday, Trump tweeted: “Asian Americans are VERY angry at what China has done to our Country, and the World. Chinese Americans are the most angry of all.”
Zhao and more than a dozen other Chinese American business leaders bought the masks and asked the University of Chicago Crime Lab to help distribute them.
