Does China have a racist culture?

Martin Jacques comments on the Chinese reaction to Condoleezza Rice's recent visit to east Asia:

One way of taking the temperature in China is the internet, a very important indicator of public opinion in a country where more traditional media are tightly controlled. The importance of - and recent upsurge in - nationalism, for example, has found powerful expression on Chinese websites. The internet response to Rice's visit has been revealing. The racist character of much of it has moved liberals to protest, most significantly Liu Xiaobo, a veteran critic of mass movements in China since Tiananmen, who has written a response on the New Century Net website.

He says that of 800 messages he has read about her visit, no less than 70 involved racist comments about her colour: of these, only two were relatively moderate; the rest were vicious, describing Rice as a "black ghost", "black dog", "black woman" and "black bitch". One stated, "You are not even like a black ghost, a really low form of life," and another, "Her brain is even more black than her skin." One writer said: "I don't support racism, but this black ghost really makes people angry, the appearance of a little black who has made good."

In fact, the reaction is not that surprising. Although it is rarely written about or commented upon, Chinese culture remains deeply racist. For the most part, the Chinese are in denial of their own racism, while white commentators, in their great majority, are either oblivious of it, or simply regard it as unimportant. Intended or unintended, this is an integral part of the white mentality, a product of the fact that whites never experience systemic racism and historically have meted out more than anyone else. Even liberals tend to look the other way.

There are, of course, exceptions: the best book on Chinese racism, The Discourse of Race in Modern China, is by Frank Dikotter, a British academic. But in the recent - and welcome - avalanche of Chinese coverage, especially the BBC's China week, for example, you would have been hard-pressed to find any reference to racism, except in the context of Tibet or Xinjiang province. Hong Kong was a British colony for almost 150 years and yet the racist attitude of the Chinese there towards people of darker skin was virtually never remarked upon. Needless to say, the British made no attempt to introduce anti-racist legislation.

Chinese people commonly believe they are superior to those of darker skin. The attitude towards whites, as Liu points out in his article, is much more complex. They tend to acknowledge the historical achievements of the west, but at the same time resent western hegemony and despise aspects of western culture, many believing that at some point in the future the innate virtue of Chinese civilisation will again assert itself. The Chinese thus tend to display a combination of respect and envy, superiority and inferiority, towards western culture. It is difficult to think of another major culture - with the possible exception of the Japanese - that regards the west with such a sense of inner self-confidence. The fact that Rice is black in a country the Chinese view as essentially white must be profoundly confusing to a people - the Han Chinese - whose perception of their own nation is overwhelmingly monoracial.

Around the Blogosphere:

Chinese Racism and Nationalism

China's Culture of Racism

China's Internet Censors Allow Racist/Sexist Condi Posts