Since the appalling killing of George Floyd in late May and the nationwide protests that followed, a growing number of Americans have been calling for a national reckoning on race. In addition to calls for lawmakers to address the racial disparity in instances of police brutality, attention is being drawn to the less noble parts of America’s history, tainted by racist institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow laws and their legacy today. Indeed, America and other western nations are now experiencing what some have called a new “racial awakening.”
It is a positive thing that more attention is being paid to the manner in which dark-skinned people have been treated in the west. A society that is able to contend honestly with the ugly aspects of its history will have greater legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens, and will instill a healthier and more sustainable patriotism. But this self-criticism must not blind us to the racist transgressions of countries in other parts of the world. This is particularly important today, when the world is confronted with the most threatening racist superpower in almost a century: the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
It’s rare to hear China mentioned in anti-racist discourse. The near exclusive focus on the racist legacies of Anglo-European countries has even led some to the misguided belief that China has no problems with racism at all. Yet a close examination of the ideological underpinnings of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exposes China as one of the world’s most racist nations.
At its origins, the PRC was held together by a farrago of Marxist-Leninist ideology, cult worship of the PRC’s first chairman, Mao Zedong, and bits of lip service to Confucian values, sprinkled in at opportune times. This proved to be an unstable foundation for a nation, as evidenced most clearly by the horrific number of deaths during Mao’s rule. Accordingly, the PRC’s leaders after Mao chose to gradually shift away from this mixture, in favor of more practical governing philosophies.
Today, the official ideology of the PRC is “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” But, given much of the modern Chinese economy’s turn towards state-directed market capitalism, the latter half of this term tends to be more strongly emphasized.
“Chinese characteristics” comprises a number of components, some of which are beneficial. Confucian culture, for instance, is arguably a positive influence on China. One corrupting characteristic, however, is the idea that the Han Chinese ethnicity is superior to all others—an idea that has been described as “Han-centrism.” Unfortunately, it is this characteristic that has been most prevalent in recent years.
Han-centrism is based on the belief that the Han Chinese are “racially pure and the true descendants of the ‘Ancestral Nation.’” Racism is prohibited by the Chinese constitution—but, like many of the constitution’s other provisions, this is only selectively enforced. It isn’t uncommon for sentiments of Han ethno-supremacy to be voiced explicitly in China—particularly on Chinese social media sites, where citizens can easily frame their racism in the state-sanctioned language of “patriotic anger.”
More often, though, Han-centrism takes less explicit forms. The most far-reaching and deeply ingrained of these is the CCP’s appalling Chinese history curriculum. In Chinese schools, China’s history is taught with a monomaniacal focus on the century of humiliation, which began with the Opium Wars of the mid-nineteenth century and ended with the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Teaching anything that could fall into the category of mistakes made by the CCP is strictly prohibited, as are subjects like citizens’ rights and universal values. The goal is to instill within every Chinese citizen the axiomatic belief that the Chinese Communist Party has succeeded in making China strong again, but that its new-found position is precarious, and must be consistently defended against attacks by those who wish to see it returned to its previous state of weakness. Crucially, these perceived attacks don’t just come from outside China, but also from within, in the form of non-Han minority groups, who obdurately refuse to acquiesce to the CCP’s demands of complete acculturation.
It’s easy to draw a direct line between the pernicious beliefs of Han-centrism and the CCP’s treatment of China’s ethnic minorities today. The most egregious example is China’s crimes against the Uyghurs—an ethnically Turkic, predominantly Muslim minority group—in China’s far western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), also commonly referred to as East Turkistan. Since around 2014, the CCP has established thousands of concentration camps—euphemistically called re-education camps—where they have imprisoned, brainwashed and often tortured, raped and killed at least one million Uyghurs. Some have argued convincingly that these crimes meet each of the five criteria listed in the UN Genocide Convention, fulfilling any one of which can be considered genocide.
The CCP attempts to justify their operation in Xinjiang by framing it as a necessary counter-extremism policy, and this framing is easier to understand when viewed through the lens of Han-centric ideology. Disaffected, uncooperative minorities within China cannot be acknowledged as marginalized peoples with legitimate grievances. They must always be, by definition, extremists. This is because, according to Han-centrism, minority ethnic groups who don’t fully buy in to what a popular Han-centrist blogger calls “the Han ethnic group’s invigoration and China’s gaining of wealth and power” will always pose an unacceptable threat to social order.
Han Chinese civilians are largely supportive of the counter extremism policies in Xinjiang for the same reason: they believe that without the omnipresent paternalistic influence of the Han-centric government, the Uyghurs will inevitably rise up against the Han. And, perhaps with some help from Western imperialists, unseat the Han from power in China, and relegate them to their former state of humiliation.
So why isn’t there a massive anti-racism movement against China? Surely if the United States or another western nation were corralling its ethnic minorities into concentration camps to be re-educated or if its school systems indoctrinated children with paranoid, racist pseudo-history, which taught them to view minorities as ticking time bombs of subversion, there would be an unceasing effort to stop it—and rightfully so. But we hardly ever hear anti-racism activists in the west speak plainly about the fact that contemporary China is probably the most institutionally racist nation on the planet today. This is a travesty.
It is insulting to the Turkic minorities in China, who are being targeted in the most odious way possible because of their race, to focus our energies exclusively on combating racism in western countries. The oppressed racial minorities in China have no ability to protest in the street, because they’d be snatched up by police and thrown into a cell, if not simply shot. They have no ability to appeal for more legal protections, because what’s happening to them isn’t legal under Chinese law to begin with. The Chinese Communist Party has made it all too clear that they aren’t interested in dealing with the Uyghurs as concerned citizens. They see them only as an incorrigible, inferior race of people, who must be edified by any means necessary to ensure the protection of Han dominance.
The West has a responsibility to face up to its racist past, and correct unacceptable policies and behaviors that still linger on into the present day. But more attention on China is needed if we’re serious about fighting racism. The anti-racist movement must call out China for their campaign of Uyghur genocide.
7 comments
Well that’s easy: they’re not actually racist, they’re anti-western and specifically anti-white.
They can’t get worked up about about Chinese racism. It’s not a problem for them. Plus, if they did that they’d be on the same side as Trump – they’d rather eat broken glass. Hope this cleared it up for you.
The reason that anti-racists don’t target China is that there is no advantage for them to do it. They want concessions from their own nations not foreign ones. Beijing isn’t handing out positions on diversity councils to activists or funding equity university departments. Why would they ? What advantage is there for China or for the Chinese of any ethnicity ?
A more interesting article to write would be “Why China should ditch nationalism and adopt anti-racism as it’s guiding philosophy”. All you would have to show the great advances that anti-racism has bought to the west
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Grayson Slover states he works for Quilliam International and has recently visted East Turkestan, a nation which doesn’t exist. Wikipedia says;
“Starting in the 20th century, Uyghur separatists and their supporters used East Turkestan (or Uyghurstan) as an appellation for the whole of Xinjiang or for a future independent state in present-day Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Turkestan
Did he enter Xinjiang ? Did he enter legally ? Was he working for Quilliam whilst there ? Perhaps Grayson can answer these questions and maybe he can share with the public any information he has about The Turkestan Islamic Party. He might be able to tell us why thousands of armed Uyughrs are currently in Jisr al Shurghur, a town in northern Syria’s Idlib province and territory controlled by Hayat Tahrir Al-sham, formerly known as Jahbat Al-Nusra the Syria branch of Al Qaeda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkistan_Islamic_Party_in_Syria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jisr_al-Shughur
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayat_Tahrir_al-Sham
Perhaps Grayson can also explain how all of this fits into Quilliam international’s goals of fighting extremism and what is their interpretation of the old saying “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”
Grayson Slover also says he is going to donate all of the proceeds of his new book but he doesn’t say to whom. Or to which organization.
I’m not sure the question posed here is a valid one. How are we defining “anti-racist”? And what exactly does “free pass” mean?
I’m aware of a great deal of awareness of Chinese racism. For example, I’ve seen loads of coverage on the oppression of Tibetans, for decades. This is an ethnic group not mentioned in the article, btw, (to which I could ask, “Why is Grayson Slover giving China a free pass on its treatment of Tibet?” But I won’t, because I’m a reasonable person.)
I’ve also seen increased awareness of the plight of Uyghurs, and Chinese racism against Africans is becoming more and more apparent every day (something else Grayson Slover overlooked. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you.)
I think this article might be a variant of what-aboutism. Nearly every country has some problem with racism, and nobody should be expected to be aware of every kind of racism that exists.
India still has problems with caste discrimination, even though it has been legislatively prohibited. Indonesia had all kinds of discriminatory laws against Chinese people until Suharto was forced from office, and even now there’s discrimination against Chinese, because the majority of Chinese Indonesians are Christian, in a Muslim majority nation. In fact, a sitting Christian, Chinese mayor of Jakarta was convicted and imprisoned for blasphemy in 2016.
There’s anti-semitism and anti-Zionism in every Muslim nation. There’s Islamaphobia in Israel. Canada has a history of discrimination against its First Nations. I could go on all day.
Why hasn’t Grayson Slover written articles about all that? I would imagine it’s because he’s very busy, like all of us, fighting racism in other places. Or maybe he has written them, because that’s his job, and I haven’t had time to read them, because that’s not my job.
I think I make it pretty clear in the piece that my argument is that China is MORE racist than other countries, and that we should criticize them proportionally. I’m certainly not saying that we shouldn’t criticize racism elsewhere (I have written about racism in countries other than China, btw).
If there’s some other global superpower I don’t know about that’s centering its education curriculum on racist xenophobia, and operating thousands of concentration camps to carry out ethnic cleansing, I’d be happy to write my next piece criticizing them.
I think the questions raised by this comment are fair. The author responds by clearly stating his assertion that racism in China is comparatively greater.
Perhaps I missed the portion where the author quantitatively substantiates his view. If there was a metric referenced, I didn’t see that portion of the essay. What are the measurable terms by which we are supposed to conclude our agreement?
Further, I’ve read many similar articles which have, like this one, failed to clearly define the terms used by the writer. What is a precise definition for “racism” and what are the underlying political principles or moral values that render it so reprehensible as to obligate our collective response?
If any author wishes to cite injustice as the main concern, shouldn’t he first establish the philosophical principles to define his notion of justice? Shouldn’t he then explain how his definition qualifies his authority to admonish and advise others as to their conduct?
If he does so, then he will have a cogent, well-defined argument. However, i don’t think he has met this standard. Like most of claptrap being published on systemic racism, it is to the advantage of the claimant to leave his ideas ambiguous and reliant on the interpretation of the reader.
It’s true that human beings have done and will do horrible things to each other. It’s also true that a portion of these things are motivated by nothing other than superficial differences. However, to imply that this behavior is a bug rather than a feature is to appeal to the unreal, and vague assertions that it can and should be remedied ultimately have the effect of cheapening the argument, which does a disservice to all.
It’s my observation that author means well, but that is all.
“”The goal is to instill within every Chinese citizen the axiomatic belief that the Chinese Communist Party has succeeded in making China strong again, but that its new-found position is precarious, and must be consistently defended against attacks by those who wish to see it returned to its previous state of weakness.” In other words, Make China Great Again! (MCGA)
I strongly agree with this author. I have noticed the same free pass given to China over its treatment of Tibet and its insistence that Taiwan is a part of China. Why is China not subjected to the same criticism as Israel is? Why is Taiwan considered part of China when the UK is not regarded as part of France? Saddam Hussein was condemned for saying Kuwait was really part if Iraq, but he was far more justified in saying that than China is in claiming Taiwan as part of mainland China. China has treated the Tibetans and the Uighyrs as badly, or even worse, than the Israelis have treated the Palestinians. When I have said these things to people on the left, they claim that we should limit ourselves to what is happening in our own countries. Even by that analysis, why the criticism of Israel and not China when both nations deserve it? This is more anti-Westernism than it is anything else, in my view.