As China's global economic expansion keeps bringing large numbers of Chinese into daily interactions with foreigners inside and outside China, concerns over racial relations have emerged and will grow stronger. The most challenging of such relations involves interactions between Chinese and Africans. In the first decade of China's post-Mao reforms, an anti-African racism developed in university campuses that paralleled the pro-democracy movement. Since then, as China deepens its economic involvement in Africa, large numbers of African and Chinese merchants and workers have migrated to each other's lands. This mutual migration has forced many Chinese to face an unfamiliar reality. As a result, anti-African racism has re-emerged in cyberspace, especially among Chinese with experience of working in Africa.

Comparing the present cyber racism with the campus racism of the 1980s reveals important changes. In the 1980s, anti-African racism reflected the feelings of Chinese discontented elite who regarded Africans as racially inferior yet were upset by China's own lack of modernization. Today it reflects the thinking of those who are well-connected to the world in an era of China as a global power. Given presumed black racial inferiority, these people feel it is wrong for Africans to create social problems in Chinese cities and impede China's actions in Africa. But a historical continuation also connects these two racisms. Both are informed by a racial discourse that was constructed in the early stage of modern Chinese history to define China's place in the world order.

But campus and cyber racism ought to be understood in a broader context of the relationship between the discourses of race and nationalism in today's China. Since the early 1980s, nationalism has become an ever-powerful ingredient in official ideology that appeals to the populace. The literature on contemporary Chinese nationalism is abundant, but what remains much less examined is the relationship between nationalism and the discourse of race. While civic and ethnic nationalisms have become the major forms of the ideology, and racial nationalism can no longer be addressed publicly and explicitly in many countries, in China racial language and concepts have emerged to help articulate nationalistic claims since the early 1980s, encountering little resistance from the media and intellectual community. This article examines this development. For historical and ideological reasons, the Chinese people are aware of their history of being victims of Western and Japanese racism but are often blind to their own racism, and society does not provide anti-racist education or promote public awareness of sensitivity to racism. Such tendencies suggest that a racism with Chinese characteristics will keep growing as China continues to be a global power.

Campus Racism in the 1980s

About two decades ago, when the Chinese students' and intellectuals' pro-democracy movement was climaxing, racial frictions between Chinese and African students also reached a point of violent explosion in the “Nanijng incident” in December 1988.Footnote ¹ Triggered by a dispute between a Chinese gatekeeper and two African students at Hehai University who were bringing Chinese girls into their dorms on Christmas Eve, the incident quickly involved several thousand Chinese students. It developed into a mêlée which led the local government to evacuate African students from the campus and even the city. The intense racial hatred was reflected in slogans such as “Down with the niggers!” (Dadao heigui 打倒黑鬼), “Niggers go the hell home” (Heigui gunhuiqu 黑鬼滚回去) and “Niggers! Kill the niggers!” (Heigui! Sha heigui! 黑鬼杀黑鬼). A massive student demonstration followed, drawing significant attention from the international media until it was eclipsed by the democracy movement the following spring.Footnote ²

Frank Dikötter's The Discourse of Race in Modern China identified a systematic Chinese discourse of race that was enmeshed in or disguised as ethnocentrism (before the Opium War) and cultural nationalism (from the Opium War to 1949). It was based on a traditional Sino-barbarian dichotomy ideology and absorbed social Darwinist doctrine. This discourse imagined a racial hierarchy dividing mankind into five races articulated by Liang Qichao, and reverberated among many late-Qing leading reformists and revolutionaries. The racial hierarchy designated the white and the yellow (Chinese) to be “strong and intelligent” and others “feeble and stupid.” It particularly denigrated blacks as the most inferior human race, said to be living a primitive, unimaginative and slavish life that had created an immoral, ugly, licentious, unintelligent but cunning and sometimes frightening character. Kang Youwei, arguably the most well-known reformist philosopher, excluded blacks in his vision of the future utopian world. Echoing Western racialist eugenics ideas, he suggested the eradication of the blacks through dietary control, intermarriage, migration and sterilization.Footnote ³ Since their inferiority was deemed racially inherent, this discourse did not distinguish African blacks from those elsewhere.

Before the 1980s, racism was a matter of discourse and attitude. The issue subsequently became racist behaviour. The Chinese student demonstration and daily frictions revealed blatant campus racism which reflected attitudes in the broader society. The social Darwinist global racial hierarchy persisted throughout decades of Mao and Deng. As observed by Lufrano, this “hierarchical categorization” of races remained intact after decades of communist socialization: “Africans are almost universally looked down in China as people of ‘low quality,’ people who have failed in the Darwinist struggle for survival”; “Many Chinese intellectuals attribute the United States' most serious problems such as poverty and crime to its African-American population.”Footnote ⁴

A survey among primarily Chinese students and intellectuals conducted in 1992 found a similarity between attitudes towards blacks and towards peasants, as both were regarded as less intelligent, cultured and civilized. They were seen as on the lower or bottom level of modernization and development.Footnote ⁵ Michael Sullivan noted that Liang Qichao's distinction between “historical races” (the whites and Chinese who were historically conscious) and “unhistorical races” (the coloured and especially black people who were unconscious of history) “continues to permeate Chinese society.” A letter sent to all African embassies in Beijing by the “alleged Chinese Student Association” in spring 1986 (during an earlier student demonstration) not only revealed the connection between the students' anti-African slogans and the racial-hierarchy ideas but also expressed their discontent at government policies of lavishing economic aid on Africans (including scholarships for African students in China) and concerns over African corruption of Chinese culture and society. The letter declared that the Chinese people would not “feed uncultured Africa with the results of our efforts” or “allow any Negro to hang about our universities to annoy Chinese girls and to introduce on our academic grounds manner[s] acquired by life in tropical forests.” Footnote ⁶ In contrast, Sautman observed that “whites were seen as contributors to China's development, while Africans were viewed as uncultured suppliants.” Footnote ⁷

The students and intellectuals believed that Mao and his successors had wasted China's resources, allied with backward nations, and sacrificed their own people's – especially intellectuals' – material benefits. Ironically, campus racism legitimated a political opposition calling for a more democratic policy-making process. Similar people joined both the anti-African demonstrations and the pro-democracy movement. This connection persisted in the post-1989 Chinese overseas pro-democracy movement. Chinese human rights activists in the United States made no efforts to seek support from influential black civil-rights movement, in part because “the Chinese know that Africans and African-American people had bad social habits and vices and they would corrupt Chinese society as they had corrupted American society.”Footnote ⁸

Therefore, rooted in the perceived global hierarchy and associated with Chinese nationalism and even the pro-democracy movement, the 1980s campus racism was “an intrinsic part of racialized trends of thought which have been diversely deployed in China since the end of the 19th century.”Footnote ⁹ Between the founding of the PRC and the 1980s, paradoxically, anti-African racism was strengthened by a backlash against Maoist China's internationalism. China's assistance to Africa reinforced the negative perception of Africans as passive recipients of fruits of other civilizations, and intensified Chinese political discontent at wasting wealth on Africans when Chinese needs were extreme.Footnote ¹⁰ The word “Africa” was often inseparable from the word “aid” (yuan fei) to ordinary Chinese, and the term “aid” was misunderstood by many as “gift” rather than long-term or interest-free loan.

China's world revolution rhetoric replaced whites on the top of the global racial hierarchy with Chinese to lead the coloured peoples on the bottom towards liberation. The official ideology related racism to class exploitation and oppression and maintained that it only existed within Western colonialism. This theory helped blind the Chinese to their own racism: China was victimized by racism in the past and now was free of it. State censorship kept knowledge of the discussion of Chinese racism from the people,Footnote ¹¹ and the official verdict of the Nanjing incident found that it had little to do with racism but was a result of politically “erroneous” tendencies.Footnote ¹² Foreign discussions on Chinese racism were often dismissed as ill-willed efforts to make Western racism look less evil.Footnote ¹³

A long history had produced a “gut-level” racism in China.Footnote ¹⁴ The blacks were stigmatized as sexual predators and a relationship between a black man and a Chinese woman was socially unacceptable.Footnote ¹⁵ The Nanjing incident was triggered by anger at African students' relationships with Chinese women. This racial prejudice remains the most sensitive part in the anti-African racism. Despite the official Sino-African friendship propaganda, Africans often find a de facto apartheid in China in daily life.Footnote ¹⁶ M. Dujon Johnson called this racial barrier “Afrophobia,” ostracizing African students.Footnote ¹⁷ Booming popular consumerist culture attached values of beauty and health to light skin while degrading dark skin, a racial “aesthetic premium.”Footnote ¹⁸

Two decades after the Nanjing incident, the presence of large numbers of Chinese and Africans in each other's lands has led to blatant racism against Africans. Unlike the late 1980s, this time the internet allows racist rhetoric to be well articulated by numerous Chinese netizens. “Cyber racism” has replaced “campus racism.”Footnote ¹⁹ The majority in the cyber community are well-educated and well-connected to the world. They are explicit about the connections between their perceptions of Africans and their new Chinese nationalism reflecting China as a global power.Footnote ²⁰

Summer 2009: Discussion on the Blacks in China

The issue exploded in summer 2009. On 15 July, two Nigerians ran to escape police checking passports in Guangzhou. One was seriously injured after jumping from a building. Believing he was dead, hundreds of Africans gathered around a local police station to protest about being victims of racial profiling by frequent police ID checks. The incident immediately caught media attention and was followed up by feature reports.

However, for people in Guangzhou, concern over Africans in the city had emerged long before this. A report by a local newspaper in January 2008 estimated that there were 20,000 blacks legally living and working in the city, but including illegal immigrants the black population could be as high as 200,000 and growing.Footnote ²¹ There were also many Africans in Wenzhou and Yiwu in Zhejiang province. Both Guangdong and Zhejiang are major producers of “made-in-China” household consumer goods. Many reports focusing on Guangzhou sympathized with the Africans struggling to survive in China. But the language often remained demeaning regarding Africans as much less civilized people. Chinese words such as 部落 (buluo, “tribes”) or 聚居地/ 群居/群落 (jujudi/qunju/qunluo, habitats), instead of 社区 (shequ, community) were often used to refer to Africans. An African father's blessing to his baby daughter born in China – “I hope she has a Chinese brain” – was projected as a section title in a lengthy report.Footnote ²² The reports painted a picture of a rapidly expanding illegal population competing with the local people for residential and employment resources and causing problems and crimes. Although there had not been a racial confrontation, fragmentary and isolated tensions had occurred. But African migrants' contribution to the Chinese economy – wholesale purchasing and shipping out-of-fashion and “low-end” merchandise to Africa – was rarely appreciated.

Many Chinese netizens outside Guangzhou were struck by the facts presented in these reports. Extreme racist language included: “It is a racial invasion!”; “Public safety is gone!”; “Are they becoming the 57th ethnic group?” (officially the government identifies 56 ethnic groups in China); “China is not a camp for refugees; our resources are already scant”; “Not obeying law and order is their nature, not to mention their body odour!”; “Go home you African dogs! You are here only to share our businesses and our women!”Footnote ²³ Comments concerning interracial marriages (extremely rare) between blacks and Chinese revealed the persistence of the discourse of race constructed in the 19th century. They called for “defending Chinese racial stock” and one states:

The race issue also arose in Shanghai in a discussion of the saga of Lou Jing, a black-Chinese girl. The girl's mother had an out-of-wedlock affair with an African American. She divorced and raised the child by herself after the father disappeared. The girl became a student at the Shanghai Academy of Theatre. Internet racial slurs spread in the summer when she participated in a local television talent show, and the stereotype of blacks as irresponsible sex pursuers was conjured up. Many Chinese netizens claimed that they despised Lou's mother not because she slept with a black man but because of her “immoral conduct.” But given the extent of sexual freedom in today's urban China, it is hard to accept that they objected to just an affair out of wedlock. Some Chinese men felt humiliated because they believed that Chinese women were influenced by a racial stereotype that exaggerates black men's masculinity as superior to that of Chinese men. In the cyber discussion on the Guangzhou incident, some netizens attacked Chinese women involved with blacks in obscene language from a nationalist perspective, saying they brought shame to “our country” and “our ancestors” by sleeping with “ugly and smelly” blacks.Footnote ²⁵

“Why Are the Chinese Discriminated against in Africa?”

The Chinese experience in Africa is another new source of racism. Two essays by the same author drew significant attention during the discussion in summer 2009. The first one is entitled “Why are the Chinese discriminated against in Africa?”Footnote ²⁶ The English title provided by the author, however, read “Is Africa worth China's aid?” It appeared online in the author's blog on 18 May 2009. The second article, “The Chinese in the eyes of African people,” appeared in the author's blog five days later.Footnote ²⁷ It was translated and published four weeks later by The Global Times English edition.Footnote ²⁸Guangmin guancha 光明观察, the web page of Guangming Daily, published its Chinese version on 22 May. Both essays have been pasted in many web pages and blogs and discussed by numerous netizens. The author, Liu Zhirong, is a French-educated businessman with ten years African experience, including being director of the Woreta–Woldiya road upgrade project launched by World Bank in Ethiopia.Footnote ²⁹ He has interacted with a wide range of Africans – from government ministers and provincial governors to local elites, tribal chiefs and ordinary people – and has shared his experiences and opinions with Chinese in his many publications and online pieces.

In the first essay, “Why are the Chinese discriminated against in Africa?” Liu poured out his frustration and anger resulting from his African experience. From airport and custom facilities to highways and government offices, Chinese were victims of racial profiling by abusive policemen and arrogant administrators. Behind double-checking Chinese passports, demanding more ID or searching baggage often lay explicit requests for bribes. These were often in places where landmarks of Chinese aid – stadiums, factories, highways, government buildings and hospitals – were in plain sight. Liu attached photos showing such buildings in Cameroon. He found that Africans took Chinese aid for granted even after he told them that such facilities would be a luxury to most Chinese. He quoted a long chat with Ndanga Ndinga Badel, Cameroon Minister of Industry, Mines and Technological Development, who unabashedly asked for more Chinese aid, on 6 May 2009.Footnote ³⁰ Liu then said: “We have given Africans so much, but they still give us such a hard time. Is our help like a meat bun eaten by an unthankful dog?” (rou bao zi da gou 肉包子打狗).

Liu acknowledged that China's aid to Africa is to eliminate Taiwan as a diplomatic rival. “Some African countries have no principle,” he deplored, “whoever feeds them milk is their mother and whoever gives them more money gets the recognition.” Their greed is a “bottomless pit” for both China and Taiwan. “The Taiwan issue must be solved with a sense of urgency,” otherwise “no one knows how much more money these black men will be able to extort from the Chinese nation. Mainland money is Chinese money, and so is Taiwan's. After all, we are all descendents of the Emperors Yan and Huang (yanhuang zisun 炎黄子孙).”

Liu's answer to “Why are the Chinese discriminated against in Africa?” is “because we did not colonize them.” Echoing social Darwinism and “might is right” rhetoric, he maintained that “all nations in the world seem to be the same. They admire the strong and despise the weak. It is just like taming a horse: only when you remain tough will it be submissive to you … Otherwise not only will it not allow you to ride on it and touch it, but it will kick you.” The whites colonized Africans, and that is why today Africans still treat whites like a servant treats his master. “The face of a white man is his passport,” Liu asserted. The Africans spoke “birds language” (niaoyu 鸟语), and the white men “worked very hard with their tongues” (bai zhe tameng de shetou 掰着他们的舌头) to teach them European languages which they have kept. The naked African bodies “visually bothered whites” (ciji tamen de shijue 刺激他们的视觉) so they forced them to put on clothing in a Western style. They had only primitive religions until whites gave them the Bible. To provide a piece of solid evidence of African subservience, a reminder of the Aristotelian theory of natural slavery, Liu quoted a paragraph of a letter, purportedly from two Cameroon tribal chiefs (Akwa and Bell) to the British Queen in 1879, begging her to colonize their tribes. African independence, according to Liu, was just a “trick” (baxi 把戏) played by native politicians for their own sake.

“The Chinese in the eyes of African people,” a more politically correct essay by the same author, quickly appeared in his blog only a week later. It listed nine reasons why Africans had negative views of Chinese. None is racial or political this time. Some are cultural, such as that Chinese work so hard that they don't even rest on Saturday and Sunday, but they are neither religious nor spend their money for fun, so that Africans cannot understand the purpose of such diligence. But most of the reasons reflect the problems the Chinese bring to Africa. Chinese products are cheap both in price and quality. The Chinese force out European competitors with extremely low prices, but later “lower construction standards, violate contracts, cut corners or use substandard materials.” They also “disrupt the market” by making large-quantity purchases. They are not used to following legal procedures and often become entangled in employment disputes by unlawfully hiring or firing local workers. The Chinese often act without a sense of civility, such as spitting and smoking on aeroplanes and dressing too casually. They are involved in gang activities against other Chinese competitors. Lastly, Chinese eat everything. They have made many local animals extinct without heeding African cultural and religious sensitivities. The last sentence was not translated into the essay's English version: “If we are looked down on even by blacks, who could be bought and sold in the past, then what on earth can we Chinese, who have a civilization of five thousand years, find to be proud of?” In contrast to the first essay, this one was publicized through official channels and even has an English version.

Liu's questions “Is Africa worth China's aid?” and “Is our help like a meat bun eaten by an unthankful dog?” are shared by many Chinese. For them, Chinese aid to Africa and Africa's indebtedness to China are plain facts. An article widely circulated in China in 2008 asserted “China is liberating Africa for the second time!”Footnote ³¹ This perception of Sino-African relations not only ignores Africa's political support of China since the 1960s (such as in China's replacement of Taiwan in the UN in the early 1970s and its struggle defending its human rights records since Tiananmen Square in 1989) and the importance of Africa's natural resources to China's economy, but also white-washes the history of China's bad influence in Africa, including its support of notorious dictators such as Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko in the 1970s, the Chinese proxy wars in Zaire and Angola contesting Moscow's influence, and the Cultural Revolution's appeals to African radicals.

Chinese Netizens' Responses to the Questions

Liu's first essay has provoked more cyber discussions than the second. In general, most comments appreciate Liu speaking the “truth” and some echo nasty racist language and social Darwinist interpretations. In the influential China.com and its subdivision military.club.china.com, 127 votes agree with the author and only two disagree. One reply stated: “I said this before: in history we Chinese did not colonize and exploit others, and that is why we are looked down today … Don't treat these niggers like humans, otherwise they won't see you as human.” The popular Sina.com has numerous comments on Liu's essay, with one saying: “I also have worked in Africa and I am sure all Chinese in Africa have the same feeling. Only colonization can force these gorillas to respect you.” Another claims: “What the author [Liu] told us is like the story of the farmer and the snake [that is, that Africans are like the snake in Aesop's fable that bites the hand of its saviour].” After the Guangzhou incident, some Chinese netizens in Africa joined the discussion by using their African experience. On Sina.com, one commented: “I have worked on construction engineering in Africa. These niggers are born subhuman. They tremble before whites, but when they see Chinese, they either play on your sympathies or extort you, both for money.”Footnote ³²

Many comments agreed with Liu's view on the correlation between China's aid to Africa and the China–Taiwan competition, and his support of “national unity.” Some attributed China's “benign” policies towards Africa to Chinese culture which was described as being peaceful and friendly to others in a hope of reciprocity. Instead of dispensing gifts, many in China.com believe, it is now time for the Chinese to show muscle. “We cannot just give them the carrot; we must show them the stick, too” and “Without the protection of the bayonets and guns of the army, there is no way merchants and travellers can stay safe in alien lands.” One essay with the title “China: don't spoil Africa!” (Zhongguo buneng niai feizhou 中国不能溺爱非洲) by Zhou Kaiyi blamed China's “unconditional” aid for the African thanklessness. He said China had been a “model” nation with its peaceful foreign policy of wang dao (王道, roughly translated as winning the hearts and minds of people by benign and paternalistic imperial policies), instead of ba dao (霸道, military hegemony); but whenever China was forced to fight, the world was impressed and treated it with more respect.Footnote ³³ This online discussion is still ongoing and the most recent popular piece was entitled “The difference between the Chinese passport and US passport in Africa (Zhongguo huzhao he Meiguo hu zhao zai Feizhou de chabie 中国护照和美国护照在非洲的差别). ZT (apparently a pseudonym) detailed his difficult experience travelling in Africa with a Chinese passport in contrast to his fellow traveller with a US passport. In a reflective tone, he ended his essay with an appeal to the current Chinese leadership to take a lesson from Zheng He, the Ming Dynasty's admiral, who “showed off China's power and wealth in Africa” but “failed to leave us any piece of land there.”Footnote ³⁴

Harsh online criticism of Liu's and similar racist discourse does exist in China, but is much less visible. However, many Chinese netizens in North America are appalled by Liu's essay and its approval by so many netizens in China. The popular China News Digest, a Chinese webpage based in Canada, had a blog to discuss the essay. One contributor stated that “This is typical logic of a racist plus an upstart.” Others pointed out that “the Chinese have brought with them the corruption and bribery they are used to in China to Africa, and [the Africans] become used to it.” Because the Chinese established “under-the-table rules” (qianguize 潜规则) in Africa, “your yellow faces invite the police to come for ‘extra income’.” Some comments blamed China's “dollar diplomacy” against Taiwan for Africa's lack of appreciation for and even extraction of Chinese aid.Footnote ³⁵

“The Divine Dragon and the Black Africa in My Eyes”: An Earlier Discussion

Cyber racism against Africans actually started much earlier. One example is ZT's online essays. His “The divine dragon and the black Africa in my eyes” appeared in November 2006.Footnote ³⁶ ZT claimed to have worked in Africa for six years and had written another online essay earlier under the title “African blacks deserve no pity”Footnote ³⁷ for which he said he had come under attack from some Chinese advocating “universal compassion.” In “The divine dragon,” he reiterated what he had said in that earlier essay: he used to be as naïve as those “universalists” but six years in Africa as a French–Chinese translator had completely changed his view. The Africans were greedy, cruel and racist against the Chinese. The police often targeted Chinese because they understood that as long as a case involved a Chinese, they could squeeze some money out of it. He conceded that Chinese behaviour in Africa did contribute to the African attitude towards the Chinese, but for him Africans were malicious by nature while Chinese just behaved inappropriately. He also deplored the fact that it was mainland–Taiwan competition that had enhanced the African appetite for Chinese aid. He believed his aversion to Africans was shared by all Chinese who had worked in Africa. Responding to the discussion about a love affair between a Chinese girl working in Africa and an African, ZT said that it was “unthinkable” that a “little sister” fell in love with a black man, but it was even more “inconceivable” that when people tried to dissuade the girl, she got so upset.

Another essay, using the number 01240303 as authorship, was entitled “The Chinese blood and tears in Africa in the eyes of a Chinese–French interpreter – to those younger brothers and sisters who are about to or plan to go to Africa.”Footnote ³⁸ It paid tribute to “The divine dragon and the black Africa in my eyes” for being “objective” and “speaking the truth.” Six years working in Cameroon, the author said, had taught him “a history of the blood and tears of the Chinese who were discriminated against, oppressed and humiliated in Africa.” The essay started with the author's first experience in Africa: going through Cameroon customs. While blacks and whites easily passed through, the Chinese were double-checked until cash was handed over. The author detailed “African greed, slyness, selfishness and laziness” and quoted another “gentleman who had spent even longer time in Africa: … whoever eradicates this continent will contribute significantly to mankind!” Declaring “there is nothing racist in my mind and I am definitely not a racist,” he told of how, when he finally left Africa and arrived at Paris airport, he ignored the first taxi (with a black driver) and walked to the second one. When the black driver protested, he said “I replied politely, ‘sir, I just came back from Africa and I don't want to see the black colour again!’” The essay emphasized that it was diplomatic needs that forced China to act compliantly in Africa and fail to protect its citizens. As the author phrased it in a perfect rhythm in Chinese, “China trembles when those small African countries yell; China takes a deep breath when those small African countries fart.”Footnote ³⁹

The Chinese Plight in Africa: Another Point of View

There is no reason to doubt the truthfulness of episodes about maltreatment of Chinese. In Tanzania, a country known for the TanZam railroad, the official discriminatory policies targeting Chinese has made the situation harsher for them. In Dar es Salaam on 20 November 2008, the Chinese became the only target of the government's large-scale anti-illegal immigration action. In the cyber forum for Chinese in Africa, the major article discussing the incident was entitled “Tanzania is forcing the Chinese out. How far will Tanzanian–Chinese relations go?” and described the incident as “anti-Chinese” and “humiliating China.”Footnote ⁴⁰

The source of the Chinese predicament in Africa is complicated. Corruption, abuse of power and bureaucraticism in Africa are apparently part of it. But as an intruding power, China has also contributed to it. The Chinese government has supported dictatorial or even genocidal regimes in exchange for oil and raw materials; it provides unfair labour contracts and low salaries for locally recruited workers; there is a lack of labour protection and discouragement of unionization; Chinese firms hire Chinese instead of local African workers; they are insensitive to local culture and religion; and there is an apprehension that China dumps low-quality products instead of helping Africa develop its own manufacturing industry. All these help to create a hostile atmosphere.Footnote ⁴¹ Dubious practices in Chinese private businesses may also contribute to African local resistance to individual Chinese. Gregor Doubler's investigation of Chinese migrant shop owners in Namibia describes how Chinese merchants allied with the local elite to play illegal or deceptive tricks in their business. These practices have led to “public uneasiness about the growing number of Chinese” and have had “repercussions on [Namibian] immigration policy.” Footnote ⁴² Last but not least is the dark side of Chinese commercial culture and business ethics. A ministry of commerce spokesperson admitted that while 60 per cent of the goods China imported from Africa were oil and raw materials, “a significant amount of Chinese merchandise sold in Africa is fake and inferior (jiamao weilie 假冒伪劣).”Footnote ⁴³

The difficulties Chinese business communities have encountered in Africa are not unique to the continent. In summer 2009 the popular finance.ifeng.com cried out for a “national discussion” on the “global plight of the Chinese merchants,” detailing cases in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America since 2004.Footnote ⁴⁴ More significantly, a Chinese government campaign, “Establish a civil image for overseas Chinese citizens” (shuli haiwai Zhongguo gongmin wenming xingxiang 树立海外中国公民文明形象), was initiated in July 2009 by the Chinese foreign ministry.Footnote ⁴⁵ The ministry sent officials to cities and counties with large numbers of overseas workers and merchants to urge the local governments to participate in the campaign. According to the official attending the Qingtian county (Fujian province) meeting, illegal and indecent conduct by Chinese working in foreign countries “have threatened the interest and security of the Chinese overseas workers and enterprises, damaged the image of the Chinese state, caused unnecessary burdens to the Chinese diplomatic agencies and consumed China's diplomatic resources.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Many Chinese embassies and consulates have summoned representatives of their host countries' Chinese communities to relay the message.

Conclusion: Racial Discourse and Chinese Nationalism since the 1980s

Cyber discussions on Africans in China and Chinese in Africa are infused with the racial discourse of modern Chinese history which surfaced in campus racism. Both campus racism and cyber racism developed along the line of the global racial hierarchy that was rooted in Chinese ethnocentrism and constructed with social Darwinism, but has survived since 1949. The official historical account of “Chinese aid to Africa,” part of a broader national memory problem, and Maoist world revolution rhetoric reinforced this discourse. This ranks China in the world order and defines its relations with different parts of the world, explaining the problems it faces. The rhetoric and vocabulary used in both racisms are strikingly similar. Contemporary Chinese intellectuals are sensitive to the Western “orientalist” attitude towards China, but the Chinese perception of Africa or blacks is also essentialized and racialized to perpetuate the negative image of Africa as the “primitive and inferior Other.”

This discourse colours discussions on social and cultural issues, such as the academic environment in Chinese universities, social wellbeing in some Chinese urban centres, and sexual relationships between Chinese and foreigners. But it also informs discussions of China's policy towards Africa. The campus racism questions this policy for wasting resources that could be used for China's modernization and allying with underdeveloped countries. The cyber racism demands action on Taiwan so as to eliminate it as a rival in Africa, and promotes a tougher foreign policy to improve China's global-power status and protect Chinese working overseas. It echoes “diplomacy backed by force; trade with swords in hands” (waijiao shiqiang, chiqian jingshang 外交恃强, 持剑经商), a slogan in Unhappy China, a 2008 chauvinist best seller. Such demand sometimes creates tensions between the overseas Chinese business community and China's diplomatic installations. Seeing themselves as independent pioneers of China's new economic frontiers, many Chinese businessmen and workers claiming to be victimized in Africa complain about the indifference of Chinese diplomacy to its countrymen's miseries. They attribute the lack of diplomatic support to the government's unwillingness to help ordinary Chinese for fear of provoking diplomatic disputes. The diplomats, however, as the foreign ministry official sent to Qintian county said, blame them for wasting China's diplomatic sources by implicating themselves in legally ambiguous situations and demanding unreasonable help.Footnote ⁴⁷

Racial discourse may have larger implications, as it distorts the nature of sociopolitical problems, diverts attentions from domestic issues to foreign factors and fans racial hatred. The Chinese netizens know about the moral, social and cultural problems of Chinese in Africa, as Liu's second essay and many others' comments clearly show. But the discrimination of Chinese by an inferior race, rather than a sociopolitical and cultural analysis, has been taken by many as the root of the problem. Paradoxically, these Chinese are racially supersensitive and super-insensitive at the same time. The paradox continues a history with China as a victim of foreign racism while denying its own racism. This racial perspective is also reflected in protests about foreign “prejudices” against China in recent years. As China rises, many (especially the fengqing, the indignant patriotic youth) believe that an old-style colonial and racist mentality has reappeared to stigmatize China, but disguised in new rhetoric such as human rights and democracy. Like the Chinese in Africa, these protestors are not necessarily blind to the roots of China's problematic image. Abhorring foreign criticism, however, they ascribe racial biases to such criticism. In the meantime, the language in their discussions is itself racist.Footnote ⁴⁸

Cyber racism against Africans is certainly not the only racial thinking but it is perhaps the most explicit and blatant one. Manifestations of racial stereotypes, hierarchy perception and insensitivity are not difficult to spot in Chinese culture and daily life. For example, “black man,” the most popular toothpaste in China, still uses 黑人 (heiren, black man) as its brand name although its English name has been changed from “Darkie” to “Darlie.” To exploit its market success, a competing product is branded as 黑妹 (heimei, black girl) and has even been distributed in hotel rooms. At the railway station in Beijing's international airport in 2010, foreigners who had just arrived would see a big poster advertising yili 伊利, the “only designated milk product” for the World Expo in 2010, on which one Chinese boy and three white children are proudly raising their thumbs for the milk. No other races are represented although the advertisement line reads “Share China's best milk with 70 million visitors.” In 2008, a drama named “Looking for Li Wei” (Xunzhao Li Wei 寻找李伟) was staged in Columbia University by the Chinese Student Association. The dialogue involved explicit racist language against blacks at one point, and the audience responded with loud laughter. This incident prompted some black organizations to express their concern and provoked web discussions among Chinese students. Some of them admitted that the laughing reflected the lack of education about racial equality and sensitivity in China.Footnote ⁴⁹

Together with these episodic events, a systematic discourse of race has developed in much more articulate, sophisticated and explicit ways in education and pop culture to accommodate contemporary Chinese nationalism. This discourse perceives a racial purity and continuity of the Chinese and interprets them as sources of the endurance and power of the Chinese nation. This subject requires another focused study to elaborate, but a brief overview will broaden the context for the anti-African discourse. Sautman, for example, analysed in 2001 politics of paleoanthropological nationalism, which is “the official popularization of claims that Peking Man and other fossilized hominids – members of the primate family to which modern humans belong – evidence the unequalled longevity and unity of the Chinese people (Zhonghua minzu).”Footnote ⁵⁰ Zhoukoudian 周口店, the site of Peking Man, has recently been officially designated as one of the “One Hundred Bases of Patriotic Education.”Footnote ⁵¹

In this regard, more serious attention should be paid to discourse of race in pop culture which reaches a broader audience. Dikötter noticed, in 1993, that “The River Elegy” (Heshang 河殇, a 1988 popular television programme deploring China's bumpy road towards modernization) emphasized biological components in defining “Chineseness.”Footnote ⁵² Sautman pointed out the importance of the myth of a divine “Dragon” and biological characteristics of the Han Chinese in constructing a racially based nationalism. In his article on the subject, Sautman briefly discussed a song, popular in both Taiwan and the mainland, entitled “Descendents of the Dragon” (long de chuanren 龙的传人), which projected “black eyes, black hair and yellow skin” and claimed “forever, we are descendants of the Dragon.”Footnote ⁵³ More discussion on the song's creation, popularity and imitation could throw significant light on the development of discourse of race in Chinese nationalism. The song was created in Taiwan to boost the Taiwanese nationalism – as the genuine Chinese, not Taiwanese – when the United States switched its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1978. It began to gain popularity in the mainland in the early 1980s and now is even officially recommended as one of the 100 “patriotic songs.”Footnote ⁵⁴

Following it, there has been a flurry of patriotic songs projecting biological characteristics and environmental elements (such as the yellow soil, the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers) of the Chinese nation, most of which were composed for singers from the non-mainland Chinese world. For these pop stars, their biological characteristics seem to be the only unquestionable evidence of their “Chineseness” that can help them enter the mainland market.Footnote ⁵⁵ In 2006, Wang Lihong 王立宏, a Taiwanese singer born in the United States, adopted a new line to “Descendents of the Dragon” – “though growing up on foreign lands, I am still a descendant of the Dragon” – which instantly enhanced his popularity in the mainland. But Xie Tingfeng 谢霆锋, currently the most popular singer in China (who was born and raised in Hong Kong), has surpassed all of them by singing two songs, “The Yellow Race” (Huangzhongren 黄种人) and “Yellow” (Huang 黄), created in 2006 and 2007 respectively and dedicated to China's hosting of the Olympics. The racist language in these songs, such as “the Yellow Race is now marching on the world,” combined with nationalist claims such as “After 5,000 years, finally it is the time for us to show up on the stage,” coloured Xie's popularity among his young Chinese fans.Footnote ⁵⁶ The cover of his album introduces these songs as reflecting “the essence of Chinese culture” and “the spirit of the new generation.”

I am tempted to call this phenomenon “patriotic tributes,” paid by overseas Chinese pop stars to gain access to the mainland market. Sincerely or not, they effectively help to create an imaginary Beijing-centred Chinese world bound by a perceived ubiquitous and everlasting Chineseness that transcends political boundaries, citizenship status and social settings. This Chineseness appeals to primordial elements such as the “pure” common blood derived from perceived common ancestors such as Emperors Yan and Huang, physical characteristics (“two blacks and one yellow”), totemic symbolism (an imagined divine “dragon” native to China but patron to all “Chinese” globally), unfathomable natural inheritance or bequests (“Chinese heart” and “yellow soil”), and an unbreakable and far-extended umbilical tie (China as the “mother” to all “Chinese” at all corners of the world). Chineseness is racially mystified and essentialized not only to define a person's identity and loyalty, but also to explain the power, cohesiveness and longevity of the Chinese nation, thus serving Beijing's agenda of rallying support from Chinese communities globally, as well as for the regime's domestic consumption of patriotic education.

The discourse, ironically, can also facilitate enemies of Chinese nationalism. Taiwan's independence movement, for example, has exploited the results of blood type analysis and genetics of Taiwanese to suggest a significant racial difference between Taiwanese and northern Chinese, supposedly the direct descendents of Emperors Yan and Huang. The Taiwanese, they argue, are descendents of southern Chinese and south-eastern Asians, a very mixed race, or 杂种 (za zhong, a derogatory term to refer to people whose blood is not pure), and are therefore not descendents of Yan and Huang.Footnote ⁵⁷

Racism and nationalism have long been tied together in modern Chinese history. Every Chinese knows that the greatest evil to avoid is “nation destroyed and race annihilated” (wangguo miezhong 亡国灭种). The development from campus racism to cyber racism shows how nationalism and racism have justified and reinforced each other in the perception of the Sino-African connections against a more general background of racial discourse since the 1980s. As China emerges as a global power, this racism in the name of national interest or patriotism grows unchecked. If China's insistence on its “national characteristics” as opposed to so-called “universal values” is taken into consideration, then George Mosse's analysis of late 19th-century nationalism in the then emerging powers still sounds relevant: “If nations identified a national character in a consistent manner, then nationalism and racism drew much closer together.”Footnote ⁵⁸