It was with some interest that we read this story in the New York Times last week. It seems South Korea, like China, has some issues with racism. And South Korea, like China, is a country where the number of foreigners (often people of other races) is increasing. What was interesting about the article, then, is that the South Korean government is starting to do something about racist incidents. For example:
On the evening of July 10, Bonogit Hussain, a 29-year-old Indian man, and Hahn Ji-seon, a female Korean friend, were riding a bus near Seoul when a man in the back began hurling racial and sexist slurs at them.
The situation would be a familiar one to many Korean women who have dated or even — as in Ms. Hahn’s case — simply traveled in the company of a foreign man.
What was different this time, however, was that, once it was reported in the South Korean media, prosecutors sprang into action, charging the man they have identified only as a 31-year-old Mr. Park with contempt, the first time such charges had been applied to an alleged racist offense. Spurred by the case, which is pending in court, rival political parties in Parliament have begun drafting legislation that for the first time would provide a detailed definition of discrimination by race and ethnicity and impose criminal penalties.
That led me to wonder, does China have any kind of law preventing racial discrimination? There are, of course, laws and policies safeguarding ethnic minorities, but what about people of different races, i.e. Lou Jing, who is ethnically Chinese but racially half African? Are there laws that could punish people for hurling racist invective at her in China?
I decided to ask three people who know way, way more about the law than I do. I sent them a list of questions, but the most important one was this: “What, if anything, does the Chinese law have to say about racial and/or ethnic discrimination?”
The first to respond was Dan Harris, of China Law Blog, an international lawyer based in the US. Dan replied:
I have to confess that I know very little about the questions you ask [...] I have to tell you though, that I cannot recall a single instance where any race related issue has come up involving any of our China clients, which helps justify my ignorance on the subject.
The second person I asked was Stan Abrams, of the blog China Hearsay. Stan is a lawyer who’s been living and practicing in Beijing since 1999, and he had this to say in response to my query:
Not much help from my end either, I’m afraid. Never comes up for me either (not exactly a corporate or IP law issue) in practice.
That being said, the law here does contain certain preferences and protections for ethnic minorities. I have come across this in the area of university admissions, and I believe that various other laws/policies contain similar provisions (State and local). I doubt that there is anything in law that collects all these different policies, which means that you will need to look around in various places for this stuff. Beyond the usual keyword searches, I’m not sure where to find this type of thing.
For what it’s worth, I have not heard anything about legal reform in this area. If something was going to be changed with respect to labor law on this specific issue, I would have expected that to have happened in 2007/8, and I don’t think it did.
The third person I asked was Liu Xiaoyuan, the only Chinese lawyer whose name I know, whose practice runs the gamut from criminal defense to traffic accident compensation to marriage law. I didn’t really expect Liu to respond, as we’ve never met or spoken before, but he did. His response — which was quite brief — is translated below:
In China, although there is much prejudice, there is no law on the books about racial prejudice. In fact, Chinese law gives foreigners all sorts of special privileges.
Further searches of the internet also proved fruitless. Dan Harris’s partner at theChina Law Blog, Steve Dickinson, offered me one interpretation why that might be. “There is no concept of race in China,” Dickinson wrote,
…the concept of “race” is a European concept that has no application in China. There is, however, a strong concept of ethnic identity [...] Whether they are the same or not is something that would require a careful set of definitions. My point is that the Chinese care about culture but they do not care about blood. Therefore, your basic identity is the culture you follow, not who were your parents.
He’s right, of course, in saying that the Chinese spend a lot more time talking about ethnicity (民族) than they do about race (种族). But the idea that Chinese care about culture more than blood doesn’t really seem to fit with what happened to Lou Jing, an ethnically Chinese but racially half-African Shanghainese girl who was abused by many Chinese netizens for her skin color and racial background despite the fact that she shared their culture.
If there are laws to defend Lou Jing, and those that will inevitably follow her as the number of foreigners and mixed-race couples in China continues to grow, even Liu Xiaoyuan doesn’t know about them. The next questions, of course, are: should there be? And if so, when will there be such laws?
“Are there laws that could punish people for hurling racist invective at her in China?”
Even if there were (and Liu suggests not) the chances of them being enforced are minimal. Then from Liu:
“In fact, Chinese law gives foreigners all sorts of special privileges.”
What the hell? Isn’t that tangential to the point? Besides, anyone who’s lived and worked in China will know only too well that the opposite applies as often as not.
“My point is that the Chinese care about culture but they do not care about blood.”
I think Steve Dickinson is wrong about that. Anytime I’ve raised the issue of “pure Han blood” as a myth given China’s history, I’ve met with strong denials. Personally, I have no problem with being ‘out of Africa’ or having a mixed European heritage. That’s definitely not true of most Chinese in my opinion. Blood is an issue for them.
And returning to the main point, I know first hand that there is no protection from the law in China against racially motivated invective. When travelling with my wife in China, we’ve (she in particular) endured the most hateful bile imagineable in every port of call. Friends and family advise that the ‘law’ is a pointless avenue of complaint for these attacks.
We were never threatened physically, I should add, but I suspect that’s because we’ve always refused to bite. These constant snipes and comments in passing are unique to China among all the places we have visited. China seriously needs to address this issue – and the first step is to acknowledge the ignorance that underpins the attitude.
In other words, they need to be a bit more Korean – in which endeavour, racially speaking, they can consider themselves to have a head start.
Now everybody knows why Lord Stuart is one of the most racist commentators on this blog.
Grow up, #2.
The premise of your response is without foundation. Case closed.
Try Frank Dikotter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China, for very precise discussions about the consequence of European race discourse being imported into China at the beginning of the 20th century. Also Thomas Mullaney’s work on the ethnographic classification projects of the Republican and post-Revolutionary governments, and their relationship to the formation of Han ethnicity. There’s a wealth of work indicating why Steve Dickinson’s comment is, to be polite, historically simplistic.
I think the laws that gives preference towards foreigners and minorities does more harm than good because it does not make equal rights to everyone. It gives a free pass for foreigners and minorities to commit crime and the Native Hans to complain about it.
What a joke. You want China to punish people for saying “bad words” while whites regularly hurl racial slurs at non-whites in *their own countries*?
China should have laws making it illegal to give special treatment to whites and other foreigners, and that should be it.
but what about people of different races, i.e. Lou Jing, who is ethnically Chinese but racially half African? Are there laws that could punish people for hurling racist invective at her in China?
If you’re half anything you’re not Chinese. End of story.
yes, with all due respect to Steve Dickinson, his view’s are typical of what Westerners thought about traditional China about 20 years ago. Since then, there has been more research on Chinese views of race–Dikotter is a good start.
It’s true that the Chinese term zhongzu 种族 isn’t used very much. But in many Western countries the term ‘ethnicity’ replaced ‘race’ years ago too (with the exception that we still say ‘racism’ not ‘ethnicism’).
Interesting question though–what laws if any does China have to against race/ethnicity based discrimination?
s’s comment above “If you’re half anything you’re not Chinese. End of story.”
–a good example against what Steve Dickinson says. Obviously its not about culture and language, it’s all about genetic heritage.
Yes, there is a lot to do with blood. A pure Chinese race technically does exist- the members just don’t really realize it.
The rest were acculturated or have Chinese admixture. Regardless, since the 20th century the game has changed. If other ethnic groups are going to use race to discriminate against Chinese and East Asians, we have no choice but to do the same.
Lou Jing might have come out of a Shanghainese massage parlor worker, but she is 0% Chinese. She does not represent the culture, language, interests or genetics of the Chinese. In fact she is half hanjian and half-foreigner, making her negative 50% Chinese.
“Our ethnic homogeneity is a blessing,” said one of the critics, Lee Sung-bok, a bricklayer who said his job was threatened by migrant workers. “If they keep flooding in, who can guarantee our country won’t be torn apart by ethnic war as in Sri Lanka?”
This man should be given a medal. He is a genius compared to these left-wing Western windbags trying to criticize Korea without understanding her history.
Or without understanding *world* history- no multiracial state has ever survived for longer than a few hundred years. Only in Japan, China and Korea were there ever more than one race interacting peacefully- but then they just turned into one ethnic group, defeating the whole purpose of multiculturalism.
@ S: Your attitude towards Lou Jing is deeply disturbing. If she isn’t Chinese, what is she? And why should she have to abandon the language, nation, culture, etc. that she was raised in just because of a decision her mother and father made? It could just as easily be you, you know. All that separates you and Lou Jing is luck (and, I suspect, a little bit of human decency, which you seem to lack)
And yes, whites do abuse other races in “their own” countries. But we also have laws to protect people of other races. While it doesn’t mean racism never happens, “hurling racial slurs” is considered a form of hate speech in the United States, and is illegal. Discriminating on the basis of race is illegal, except in college admissions, where minority applicants are generally favored over whites.
As for your interpretation of world history well…I guess you and Hitler have more in common than I might have originally suspected.
Out of curiosity, by the way, where do you live? Your English is good enough that I assume you at least studied abroad, so what percent Chinese does that make you? I would think by your standards, that’s at least -20%, right?
Ouch, a whole comment gone! Just like that! It probably took you a long time to type all that, didn’t it?
THATS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU KEEP MAKING PERSONAL ATTACKS ON OTHER COMMENTERS.
If I see you doing this ONE more time, I will delete every single post you make here in the future, regardless of its content. I’m tired of warning you.
-ed.
As you can see, American whites as well as the whole white race, have a whole *subculture* of hate, white power and domination.
There is nothing like it in China or the history of China. Chinese people will at worst think some other ethnic group is violent or uncultured, (just as mainstream peoples of European descent either think all non-Christians and/or non-democracies are barbaric), but Chinese people have never advocated killing an entire world’s worth of non-Chinese:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turner_Diaries
As of 2000 it was reported to have sold about 500,000 copies.
This is at least one copy 500,000 households, at least 2 million people, not counting those read online and shared between individuals.
The fact that such a disgusting work can earn millions in America is telling, as is the fact that more than 60% of white voters voted for McCain.
“China should have laws making it illegal to give special treatment to whites and other foreigners, and that should be it.”
It’s the “whites” in that response that makes it art in the context of this discussion.
“I guess you and Hitler have more in common than I might have originally suspected.”
You said it, Custer. And it very, very disturbing.
@ s: What’s your point, exactly? That white people are racist? A bit of pot calling the kettle black going on there, don’t you think?
There’s nothing like that in the history of China because China has been racially homogenous, not because Chinese people are somehow inherently less racist than anyone else. Give it a few years for the number of white and black foreigners living in Africa to grow to the extent that average Chinese start having some contact with them. You’ll have your very own “Turner Diaries” in short order, I expect.
Case closed? Lord Stuart’s pathetic struggles to be the voice of authority and control in every one of his comments and his desire to win over other people – especially bloggers from other races – in the virtual world are amusing. Oh the insecurity!
There’s nothing like that in the history of China because China has been racially homogenous, not because Chinese people are somehow inherently less racist than anyone else.
Sorry, that’s just ignorance speaking on your part-
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_h5L0bq0pIhY/Rz7NM32qVPI/AAAAAAAAAOY/1sVUXa2ER9Q/s320/Cavallisforzageneclusters.jpg
See the “Tibetan” dot? That’s about where the North Chinese are. Measure the distance with your fingers if you please; you’ll notice that Europeans are more like Subsaharan Africans than the North Chinese are like Southeast Asians.
The closest relatives of the North Chinese are probably other East Asians, then North American Indians, then (I hate to say it) ‘Caucasians’, and *then* Southeast Asians.
Just because America’s racist media tells you that we “all look the same” doesn’t mean it’s true.
Give it a few years for the number of white and black foreigners living in Africa to grow to the extent that average Chinese start having some contact with them.
They’ll hate you for sure, but all I can say is “in your dreams”.
Custer, read this, especially the comments because they’re fun:
http://nba.fanhouse.com/2009/11/04/nba-tv-analyst-calls-yi-jianlian-a-chinaman-later-apologizes/
But I find myself strangely agreeing with some of the comments. It was in the 19th century and it’s time to reclaim it and non-slur-rify the word.
@ s: Wait, so which is it? China is a racially diverse nation, or an ethnically pure one that Luo Jing can’t be a part of?
Anyway, this discussion is unproductive and only getting worse, so I’m done with it, but I’ll leave you with a piece of advice (which you’ll inevitably ignore): you may want to consider shortening your posts just a little bit to cut out the parts that make it blatantly obvious you’re just angry some white guy you once saw was dating a hot Chinese girl.
Take it from someone who knows: take a deep breath, then get over it. You’re going to be OK.
Case closed? Lord Stuart’s pathetic struggles to be the voice of authority and control in every one of his comments and his desire to win over other people – especially bloggers from other races – in the virtual world are amusing. Oh the insecurity!
He’s a total dork.
There’s nothing like that in the history of China because China has been racially homogenous
I forgot to address this specifically. I know Western liberals are delusional (whereas Western conservatives are just stupid and evil) so I’ll forgive you for this astonishingly ignorant comment.
Back when most Europeans were still living in caves, the Chinese had already established contact with Southeast Asians, Indians, Arabs, Persians, Northeast Asians, the Japanese, and Koreans. They already met Africans via the Arabs- but generally refused to purchase any as slaves, given that slavery (esp. of non-criminals and the elderly) was generally considered abhorrent in Chinese society.
China perhaps has the most extensive contact with religions, races, and other assorted ethnic groups than any other polity of the world. It’s just that Westerners, in their ethnocentric ignorance, diminish the great differences within China and Asia at large.
@ S: “contact” and including those people in society are two very, very different things. No one said China didn’t have lots of outside contact.
Also, please note as mentioned in your post above (which I edited), if you make a personal attack on another commenter again, all your future comments will be deleted regardless of their content.
@ s: Wait, so which is it? China is a racially diverse nation, or an ethnically pure one that Luo Jing can’t be a part of?
It’s a racially diverse nation. Membership is just closed now. Please stop bugging them.
just a little bit to cut out the parts that make it blatantly obvious you’re just angry some white guy you once saw was dating a hot Chinese girl.
Honestly I’ve never seen this happen in my life. I know some older couples where the woman might have been decent looking in her youth, but other than that I see many extremely ugly Chinese men and plain or unattractive Chinese women dating attractive or fairly attractive whites.
The only time I’ve seen an attractive “Asian” girl with a non-Asian man was a Korean adoptee.
I can start taking pictures and creating facial composites if you really want to take this further, or I can show you some statistics you really won’t like. Up to you.
@ S: “contact” and including those people in society are two very, very different things. No one said China didn’t have lots of outside contact.
And being “racist” isn’t just about domestic policy. Killing off nearly an entire race of people is racist. Enslaving people because they are black is racist. Dropping Agent Orange on Vietnamese is racist. Bombing Arabs because they’re Muslims is both racist and religious bigotry.
China had the opportunity to do all of that and worse at many times, especially during the height of the Song Dynasty, but did not. They chose to suffer food shortages, deforestation, hard labor and a lack of natural resources even though their neighbors in all directions (but North) were easy pickings.
Ouch, a whole comment gone! Just like that! It probably took you a long time to type all that, didn’t it?
Good thing I save all of my longer comments so I can just post them on other forums.
Good. Take your race-baiting ad hominem crap elsewhere.
The bottom line here, whatever the law prescribes, is that China is some way behind the curve in the way it percieves both race as a concept and in the attitudes of people towards inter-racial relationships in particular.
I’m not saying that there isn’t a sound historical explanation, but, based partly on my own experiences, some of the views expressed above are more mainstream than lunatic fringe. China needs to start getting more serious about the way it deals with this issue.
For starters, CCTV should stop producing those formulaic, stereotyping dramas whereby a Chinese girl has married/is dating a foreigner who turns out – wait for it – to be a really bad apple (bully, cheat, drunkard, drug dealer). I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that her saviour turns out to be a 100% Chinese childhood sweetheart who drives the aforementioned lousy laowai out of the middle kingdom before reclaiming his rightful prize.
If those programs were produced by the department of satire, they’d be damn funny. But they’re not.
The bottom line here, whatever the law prescribes, is that China is some way behind the curve in the way it percieves both race as a concept and in the attitudes of people towards inter-racial relationships in particular.
No it isn’t. It has always been ahead of the pack. Chinese people have married Turks, Persians, Tais, Viets and Austronesians. Then they realized that it’s pointless, and that interracial relationships are nothing more than a racist power play that are fundamentally unequal.
China needs to start getting more serious about the way it deals with this issue.
Yes, deportations and removing citizenship for starters.
For starters, CCTV should stop producing those formulaic, stereotyping dramas whereby a Chinese girl has married/is dating a foreigner who turns out – wait for it – to be a really bad apple (bully, cheat, drunkard, drug dealer)
I guess Hollywood’s time honored tradition of portraying “Asian” women as sex slaves or manipulative “Dragon Ladies” will have to go first.
And just how many white male Asian female “pairings” do you see in Hollywood films compared to the reverse? It’s nearly a 100:1 ratio, where in REAL LIFE, it has historically been the other way around.
The CCTV version is, though flawed, far closer to reality than the Western media as usual…
Ladies and gentlemen， please welcome our poor little angel，Lou Jing！
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/malcolmmoore/100015804/chinas-black-pop-idol-does-not-expose-her-nations-racism/
Two kinds of CCTV’s dramas:1) CCP’s efforts in the anti-Japanese war and the civil war, and 2) historical dramas set in the Han, Tang, Ming or other dynasties. It’s been years since CCTV produced any modern drama. Or did – to quote someone above – Lord Stuart mistake local channels such as Shandong or Hubei Satellite TV as CCTV? Simplistic generalizations abound in his post. Interracial couples in Beijing and Shanghai are treated the same as in NY or Paris, which is they are ignored by fellow passengers and pedestrians. How many white guys with Chinese girlfriends take the subway or walk on the streets everyday? According to Lord Stuart, you’d think everyone of them gets harrased regularly. As for the rural areas, interracial couples are no more uncomfortable in a small village in Anhui than in a redneck town in the Deep South.
Lord Stuart’s personal experience? There’s a good chance people said bad things to him and his wife not because of ethnicity but because of his personality as is shown in all those hostile, provocative, intolerant and simplistically generalizing comments of his. Several months back he said here when Chinese people asked him if he liked their food he loved to say no and then mock the responses and expressions on their faces. It’s no wonder people struck back.
“Lou Jing might have come out of a Shanghainese massage parlor worker, but she is 0% Chinese. She does not represent the culture, language, interests or genetics of the Chinese. In fact she is half hanjian and half-foreigner, making her negative 50% Chinese.”
Be mature, please. Lou Jing is Chinese, 100 percent, this is a point of view held by all decent people in China.
I agree with that Telegraph guy. Lou Jing’s experience on stage was disturbing, but her experience before that throughout her life shows the exact opposite. The fact that she didn’t feel her skin was a problem for all those years indicates that at least her family, friends, schoolmates and acquaintances in Shanghai were perfectly fine with her African heritage. And the fact that she was recommended to the TV contest shows that her school and the people around her were proud of her. But somehow that point got lost.
As I said before, Lou Jing opened a new chapter. If next year there’s another black-Chinese girl coming into the national spotlight, things would be get much better. And I’ve always felt Lou Jing’s incident says more about the moral policing tendency of the Chinese netizens (because of Lou’s mom and birth out of wedlock), as seen in say the HK racy photo gate, than their racial views.
At least half a dozen Chinese women I know, including a member from my extended family and a very close friend, married foreigners and gave birth to cute babies. From my talks with them, they have never been harassed or treated horribly on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai where they live. Staring on the street sometimes, but not even whistles.
And I’m wondering: Custer why don’t you interview Lou Jing yourself? Or black people in China? Talk to interracial couples. Do surveys. Get a big picture. Perhaps you can start with the black community in Guangzhou and see their interactions with the local residents. Without all those things, this blog will always be stuck in “Chinese people are racists! vs. No! Whites are even more racist!” mode.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/01/lou-jing-chinese-talent-show
A snippet:
“Chip Tsao, one of Hong Kong’s leading columnists and cultural commentators, believes that a child of a Chinese woman and a black person hits all the buttons that cause prejudice among Chinese. “It’s an obnoxious novelty,” he said, adding that Chinese prejudice against black people was part of “prejudice against people less well-off than themselves”.
There was, he said, greater acceptance of Europeans because they were viewed as successful, but mixed Chinese/white European couples frequently attracted racist comment.”
In this, Mr Tsao is entirely correct.
［OK, you’ve had you’re fun. No more personal attacks or you lose commenting privileges. -ed]
I respectfully refer #34 to #3.
So wooddoo, if I do a bit of mathematical extrapolation, that should mean that I should be able to find at least 60 Chinese men married to foreign women, right? I mean, that’s what S’s dogma says.
I kid, I kid.
Yes, you kid. Because I never read s’s comments. They’re long and not that funny. What did you mean by that number?
@ wooddoo: That’s a good point. Surveys are far beyond my capabilities, time-wise — let’s remember that (a) I live in the US right now and (b) I have a very full-time job — but I could do some interviews if I had contact information. I’d love to interview some people in the Guangzhou African communities, but the furthest south I’ve ever been is Chengdu. All my contacts (Chinese and foreign) are in the north, most of them in Harbin. That said I may try to do some interviews at some point.
I’m not sure that’s going to stem the tide of “whites are more racist” “no Chinese are more racist” arguments, though. People like s see everything through the lens of their own bias, so if I interview some Africans who live in China and find they all feel Chinese people are generally racist, he’s just going to write that off as Uncle Toms trying to ingratiate themselves with whitey to elevate the status of black people about Chinese on the white supremacist racial totem pole, and other people are just going to use it as an excuse to say that ALL Chinese people are racist, etc. etc.
I’m pretty sure the only cure for that kind of person is some kind of formative personal experience, like how some gay-bashing parents turn around and become supporting and open-minded when one of their children turns out to be gay.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Half the comments seem to be one “side” pointing out the racism of the other “side.” I don’t think any rational person believes either China or the United States are free of racism, but scolding “the other” is a waste of time.
Dan
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Half the comments seem to be one “side” pointing out the racism of the other “side.” I don’t think any rational person believes either China or the United States are free of racism, but scolding “the other” is a waste of time.
Dan
(I get asked about my height repeatedly)
Wow, whites *really* can’t avoid racism at all in their reports on China, can they? Would I report on a European country and say I keep getting asked about my intelligence? No.
That and the Chinese aren’t particularly short in the North- being the second tallest group of human beings on the planet and all.
As for the rural areas, interracial couples are no more uncomfortable in a small village in Anhui than in a redneck town in the Deep South.
I highly, highly doubt that. White male “Asian” female couples are assaulted at Midwestern Universities. I really a doubt a Russian woman and Chinese man would be hospitalized in Harbin or Hunan or Anhui.
Oh and Custer, here are some 5,000 comments on an article about Jews supporting hate crime laws protecting gays…
http://img200.imageshack.us/i/americancommentsonhatec.png/
I really should make whiteysmack.com
Dude, just go back to Asiafinest already. I can’t think of a single time where any of your comments have been free of racism, dogmatic assertions, or victimhood.
where any of your comments have been free of racism, dogmatic assertions, or victimhood.
Aw, sucks doesn’t it? I’m playing the role of Western media, you’re China.
Racism exists in China and some non-white people (blacks or Indians) may encounter some rude, ignorant, racist Chinese people – such may be the case of stuart (how rude, ignorant or racist he himself is is not the point here, even a rogue should not be subject to racist discrimination).
Let me say sorry (on behalf of myself of course) to those who had this kind of unpleasant encounters in China. Chinese people should work hard on this front.
Looking on the bright side, Guangzhou today has 100,000 to 200,000 African people there. Most encouraging of all, most of them are small merchants – a fact in itself breaks many western (and Chinese) stereotypes. It proves that Africans are as entrepreneurial as the Wenzhou people. This raises a further question – why in China but not in western countries?
C. Custer
Instigating ethnic hatred is a criminal offence in China, here are what I found on internet research.
煽动民族仇恨、民族歧视
http://www.148com.com/html/604/82652.html
Let me say sorry (on behalf of myself of course) to those who had this kind of unpleasant encounters in China. Chinese people should work hard on this front.
Do they apologize for the riots in Indonesia, anti-Chinese attacks in Africa and Papua New Guinea and New Zealand? Or racism in Europe, America, Australia or Canada?
These people are far, FAR more racist against the Chinese than the other way around. So yes, China needs to work hard on this issue- by cracking some racist foreigner skulls.
Looking on the bright side, Guangzhou today has 100,000 to 200,000 African people there.
Just curious but how is this a bright side? The fact that they’re merchants might be a bright side, but simply having x ethnic group in a foreign country is not always a good thing.
It proves that Africans are as entrepreneurial as the Wenzhou people.
100-200 thousand is too small a sample size.
See, S, this is the trouble with people like you.
A guy like you would have been pro-segregation prior to the American Civil Rights Movement. You’d have supported the basic premise of Hitler’s desire to deport the Jews in favor of a master race. The basic premise of the Armenian genocide — to cleanse Turkey of Armenian foreigners, was also a good idea in your eyes. So was Milosevic’s desire to cleanse Yugoslavia. I’m sure you thought Arab cleansing of the Darfur minorities was another landmark progressive idea. I’ll bet the anti-African riots in Shanghai could be chalked up as another brilliant expression of the people.
All in the name of protecting your idolized, homogenous nation, right? It’s not too far a cry from these ideals to supporting them with a supposed master race dogma, which already seems well laced throughout your posts. And you’ve already suggested that you think violence is a justifiable means to your glorious end. Perhaps I was wrong when I said that you simply support the basic principle behind all the events I listed above. Maybe I wouldn’t be too far off if I said you support all the gruesome brutality that went along with them. But I’m sure it was white males who did every last bit of that, right? I mean, they are responsible for everything that’s wrong with China. Right? Or maybe, like Custer said, you’re just mad because you saw a white guy with a hot Chinese girl and assumed that she was a 汉奸 and that when he returns to his home country and the customs agent asks him, “What was the purpose of your visit to China?” he will unequivocally answer with a stern gaze, “To sleep with as many Chinese women as possible.”
No, I would not be pro-segregation because I’m fundamentally opposed to the presence of whites in America, period. You have NO RIGHT to force yourselves on the Native Americans.
No, I would not have supported Hitler’s movement to attack Jews. I would have opposed the persecution of Jews in their homeland initially, which caused them to flee in the first place.
As for the Turkish genocide of Armenians, I think the idea of the nation of Turkey was always a joke to begin with.
But I’m sure it was white males who did every last bit of that, right?
Lets see, you did segregation. You did slavery. You did the Native American genocide (and are continuing it). You slaughtered Australian Aborigines. You marginalized the Maori, killed at least 30% of Congo’s population, starved the Bengals, flooded China with opium, rejected Japan’s proposal for racial equality in the UN, fostered racial division in Sudan and Rwanda, destroyed Latin American democracies, bombed Southeast Asia and dumped Agent Orange, killed millions of Koreans after agreeing between yourselves to divide the peninsula.
And that’s not even mentioning your corporations.
Or maybe, like Custer said, you’re just mad because you saw a white guy with a hot Chinese girl
“Hot” Chinese girls do not date white men, unless they’re the type who are just looking for money.
Gotta love how you equate a non-white looking to protect his country to various white males killing hundreds of millions all around the world in the past 500 years.
All in the name of protecting your idolized, homogenous nation, right?
China is not homogeneous and the reason you think so is because you believe we “all look the same”.
The reason you do that because you think your “right” to “your Oriental women” is more meaningful than the lives of 30 million Africans, 60 million Amerinds, 10 million Bengalis, 6 million Jews, etc.
Stop thinking of all Chinese women as your exclusive, white male, sexual property and maybe my posts will give you less angst.
Here is tolerant America for you, by the way:
http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/1:y_news:9db40214d30ea530e7356ea014a004f3/Next-steps-for-gay-marriage
Something to add to whiteysmack.com
Right, whereas in China, land of tolerance, gay marriage is legal everywhere. Goddamn Americans and their intolerance against gays! If only we were tolerant, like China!
Oh wait, no, what I meant was that gay marriage is illegal in China, because out of the 2,937 delegates in the National People’s Congress, Li Yinhe couldn’t even get 35 to support it (the number required to have a bill actually introduced). Whoops!
As a sidenote, no one here considers asian girls the exclusive sexual property of white men. What some of us, I think, believe, is that women (and men) of all races should be free to choose whoever they like, regardless of race or nationality. That means it’s OK for a white guy to date an asian girl if they’re both into it, just as an asian guy can date a white girl, or a black girl, or whoever. The only person on this site who has a problem with girls dating outside their race is (shocker): you.
is that women (and men) of all races should be free to choose whoever they like, regardless of race or nationality.
Such pretty words, but your concept of “love” gets ground to dust by international media brainwashing and power imbalances.
China does not have gay marriage, but it does not have many rabid gay-hating psychopaths. It used to though, in some areas of the South, but lovely Western imperialism and then lovely Western Communism reared their ugly heads.
I wonder if you see how deeply racist your assumption that there’s always a power imbalance in interracial relationships is. Of course, there are many examples of imbalance (both in interracial couples and couples of the same race), but do you really mean to suggest that (for example) there are no Chinese women strong enough to have an equal relationship with a white man?
That is it used to have some crude form of same-sex marriage, not Westboro fanatics, lol.
there are no Chinese women strong enough to have an equal relationship with a white man?
There are. But the strong ones tend to be the smart ones… and they’re turned off by factors like history, socioeconomics, etc. The racism and arrogance thing on the part of whites doesn’t help either.
No truly strong “Asian” woman would run off with a white man. That sends a message to all those that she is trying to “prove wrong” that she took the easy way out, defeating the whole purpose of independence.
I’ll do my best to be polite, sorry if I snap, but the hypocrisy of media outlets of countries full of hateful bigots calling a relatively non-racist country like China racist infuriates me. It just screams ignorance.
So my question is when, do you recall, were there ever any inter-ethnic relationships that were NOT unbalanced?
Mongols with the Russians? Japanese with the Ainu? Taiwanese with the Aborigines? Whites with Native Americans? Ottomans with Greeks? Romans with the Gauls? Angles with the British? American colonists with enslaved Africans?
These are nothing more than the crudest forms of power play imaginable, going from pure rape to some kind of exploitation of post-colonial schizophrenia.
The mere notion of opening up a country of people who are misrepresented and disparaged in the international media, and earn on average $3,000 a year, to some sick idea of “globalized sex market” is astonishing to me. I believe in protectionism of all kinds, and yes I frown upon Taiwanese or Hong Kongers in rural areas of China or sniping wives from Southeast Asia. I see it as no different than Chinese men who take advantage of North Korean women.
No offense but I find it absolutely vile.
Of course inter-ethnic relationships, on a national scale, are always imbalanced. I’m not sure that has as much to do with race/ethnicity as it has to do with the nature of international politics, though.
But the fact that you discount the possibility of equality on the individual level is mind-numbingly arrogant. Essentially, you are claiming that you know everyone in the world better than they know themselves, and that you’re a better judge of what they want and need in a spouse than they are.
There are situations where 15, 16 year old girls and boys can genuinely fall in love with a man twice their age…
But I’m not about to assume the best. I, like most non-Westerners, have been exposed to too much ‘reality’ to ever have that kind of worldview.
As far as international politics goes China is very, very far from racist. Korea is pretty angry and they have a right to be, yet I wouldn’t call them horribly racist either.
You keep saying China is going to see more foreigners and that they better get used to it and adjust… I just don’t see that happening, and if it does it will be a lot of (overwhelmingly male) expats from foreign countries (overwhelmingly other East Asians), creating an imbalance.
Unless you are suggesting foreigner women proportionally represented in the pool of expats in China, and that women (lets face it) don’t have the tendency to marry those with greater wealth (while men go after looks).
“I’ll do my best to be polite, sorry if I snap…”
You don’t so much snap as implode. We’ll see about the apology.
“But the strong ones tend to be the smart ones… and they’re turned off by factors like history, socioeconomics, etc…defeating the whole purpose of independence”
In which case, she really wasn’t that smart after all; and she was conforming to societal pressure rather than demonstrating her independence.
Do you see?
In which case, she really wasn’t that smart after all; and she was conforming to societal pressure rather than demonstrating her independence.
Conforming to pressure would be bowing to the internationalized ideal of white supremacy. Refusing the advances of a racist white male shows integrity and values.
The strong ones are creating said social pressure- to steer the weaker ones away from yours.
I respectfully refer #63 to #3 via #34
S –
Wow, the hate radiates off of you like heat from the sun! That hate will kill you. Let it go, you can’t change the past. Marry a nice girl, have kids, and relax!
As a Chinese Trinidadian (that is my mother is Chinese and my father is Trinidadian), I can relate to what Lou Jing must go through to a certain extent. I think if you are of mixed heritage (w/black), things will be much more difficult in the north of China then in the south. I have lived in Shanghai when I was younger and have traveled to Guangzhou. I rarely got stares in Guangzhou to say the least and many thought that I was just another Chinese person (some think I am Hakka or Canto (my mom is Canto). In Shanghai I really confused people I guess with my look people would stare a bit, but people would also called me Jiejie or Ayi. But when I went back five years later no one even stared so I think times in China are getting better. Of course, I couldn’t know Lou Jing’s daily interactions with other Chinese because I don’t know the community that she was growing up in, but to me it seems like they embraced her like they should!
As for people saying that China is racist or America is racist, I say every country has their “status quo” and has racism. More countries are more open then others though and the degree of racism depends on the history of the country etc. China’s racism and America’s racism is different.
C. Custer:
Discriminating on the basis of race is illegal, except in college admissions, where minority applicants are generally favored over whites.
A bit of an over-simplification. Depends on which minority you are. Asians are almost never favored over whites, and most famously so in California. In fact, I would say that Asians (American and foreign) are severely discriminated against in states where they are sizable minorities, like California. Also, not all universities have policies that favor minorities, or if they do, they might be restricted to the law or med schools, as an example.
A run of the mill state university won’t have the same policies as a prestigious state university like Michigan, and then private universities have distinct policies as well.
Thank you, Kim from 66 lou.
Custer, Kim from 66 is what I was talking about. Mixed-race children and their experiences in China are the ones that are most relevant and convincing. I hope to read more about that. In your first blog about racism in China, there was a comment made by someone who said he was black. Out of all the comments, I only remember his words because I felt those was relevant. Sadly those people are quite rare across the expat blogs about racism. And if they do come up with the conclusion that the Chinese are racist then it should serve as concrete proof for people to start making changes. You remember the dispute you had with Hecaitou (sp?). The Chinese bloggers would have had more understanding if they were talking to someone who was actually black or over the black person’s true experiences instead of over a picture with no human touch. Expats interviewing black people in China is not that hard. But I agree with you that somehow it’s inevitable that anything here, good or bad, will be turned into a shout match between a bunch of people condemning the Chinese as racist on one side and s with his blah blah blah on the other…
If you want to talk racism ask Vietnamese or Hmong children growing up with blacks and Latinos in the US.
Chinese “racism” is a non-issue and trying to “solve” the “problem” before real issues like rural poverty smacks of self-hatred and betrayal.
Why is it so important to have a specific hate crime law? The law exist out of practical needs but I don’t see the relevance here. Han Chinese do not have a history of lynching and you see the Han outcries out of the Urumqi was asking the government to eradicate the 二少一宽 (two restraints and one leniency) policy and enforce justice evenly among all ethnic groups.
And IMHO, for the countries that do have such a law, all it can do is to sugarcoat some etiquette over the racism. Not particularly useful anyway.
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