African-Caribbean or South Asian people, and that a lot of racist attacks towards the Chinese community go unreported, primarily because of widespread mistrust in the police. Chinese labourers From the middle of the 19th century, Chinese were seen as a source for cheap labourers for the building of the British Empire. However, this resulted in animosity against Chinese labourers as competing for British jobs. Hostilities were seen when Chinese were being recruited for work in the British Transvaal Colony (present day South Africa), resulted in 28 riots between July 1904 to July 1905, and later becoming a key debating point as part of the 1906 United Kingdom general election. This would also be the source of the 1911 seamen's strike in Cardiff, which resulted in rioting and the destruction of about 30 Chinese laundries. While Chinese were recruited to support British war efforts, after the end of the Second World War, the British Government sought to forcibly repatriate thousands of seamen in a Home Office policy HO 213/926 to "Compulsory repatriation of undesirable Chinese seamen." Many of the seamen left behind wives and mixed-race children that they would never see again. A network has also been established for families of Chinese seamen who were repatriated after the Second World War. 2001 Foot-and-mouth outbreak Government reports in early 2001 highlighted the smuggling of illegal meat as a possible source for the 2001 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak, some of which was destined for a Chinese restaurant. This reportedly resulted in a drop in 40% of trade for Chinese catering businesses throughout some 12,000 Chinese takeaways and 3,000 Chinese restaurants in the United Kingdom, which made up about 80% of the British Chinese workforce at the time. Community leaders saw this as racist and xenophobic, with a scapegoating of the British Chinese community for the spread of the disease. COVID-19 pandemic On 12 February 2020, Sky News reported that some British Chinese said they were facing increasing levels of racist abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was recorded that hate crimes against British Chinese people between January and March 2020 tripled the amount of hate crimes in the previous two years in the UK. According to the London Metropolitan Police, between January and June 2020, 457 race-related crimes were committed against British East and Southeast Asians. Verbal abuse has been one of the common forms of racism experienced by British Chinese. Just before