Almost a month after the Atlanta massage parlor shootings, rallies against anti-Asian hate crimes have sprung up across the world.

From the U.S., Canada, to Germany, France, to New Zealand and even Asian countries, people have started speaking out both on social media platforms and in the real world, with some for the first time.

According to Google Trends, global search interest for "Stop Asian Hate," the most prominent slogan and hashtag for the anti-Asian violence movement, has hit record highs, with a surge of more than 5,000 percent last month. 

The result behind may explained by the dramatic increase of real-world hate crimes against Asians in the United States in major cities last year.

The analysis released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University last month examined hate crimes in 16 of America's largest cities. The report shows that while crimes triggered by racial hatred in 2020 decreased overall by 7 percent, those targeting Asian people rose by 149 percent.

The disturbing trend has got a lot of people asking why.

One recent study published by the American Journal of Public Health argues that former President Donald Trump's first "China virus" tweet on March 16, 2020 was directly responsible for a major increase in anti-Asian hashtags. 

Before his tweet, the dominant hashtag on Twitter was #covid19. But after that, it was #chinesevirus, which saw a surge in use by 8,351 percent. The study added that people who used that term were more likely to post other anti-Asian content.

A couple of days ago, the Biden administration announced a set of measures responding to rising anti-Asian violence, including deploying $49.5 million from COVID-19 relief funds for U.S. community programs that help victims.

The White House also promised to set up a new task force dedicated to countering xenophobia against Asians and carry out new efforts to enforce hate crime laws and report data on racial crimes.