Is There Really No Racism in China?

Most of us have heard a Chinese friend say, quite confidently, that there is no racism in China. Students have asked me about racism in America, imagining, perhaps a 1950s pre-civil rights era place, where African Americans are forced into separate schools and routinely beaten. Of course, explaining the subtleties of race in a country where multiculturalism is an unknown concept is nearly impossible. Part of the reason most Chinese can assert that China lacks racism is because China, for the most part, lacks race.

But recent events in Xinjiang province remind everyone in China that there are indeed races here, and that cultural differences do exist. The Uighurs in Xinjiang are perhaps the most ethnically and culturally different from the Han majority of all of China’s 56 minorities. They do not share a common Confucian based cultural ethic, a religion, or a language, with the Han. They even look different. By all definitions that most societies use to define race, the Uighurs are a different one from the Han, and what’s more, they are distinctly visible in almost every larger city, often living in enclaves of their own, sometimes speaking rather poor Mandarin, wearing distinctive clothing, and just standing out in general.

Photo: sandandtsunamis

According to the authorities here in China, recent rioting in Xinjiang was sparked by Uighurs gathering to protest the killing of two Uighur workers in a factory in Guangdong province. Apparently there was a feeling that not enough had been done and that the deaths had been largely ignored due to the victims being minorities. Of course the violence which erupted, targeted largely at the Han majority, is deplorable and, make no mistake, there is certainly no justification for such violent acts, however, perhaps we should consider, for just a moment, the original complaint of the demonstrators, and ask, did they have a point, one that got lost amidst all the violence and mayhem that followed?

Even before these recent events, if you asked many Han Chinese people, average people you’d meet on the street, how they felt about people from Xinjiang, particularly Uighurs, you’d have no small number of people telling you they couldn’t be trusted, that they were thieves, kidnappers, and possibly terrorists. My own husband resisted the idea of traveling to Xinjiang for years, claiming the place was “too dangerous,” and that “terrorists” lived there (in a stroke of irony, I had finally convinced him to take a trip to Xinjiang this year, when these events happened. I figure our trip is now postponed until at least 2020). Part of this is due to the fact that the Han Chinese and these Islamic, Central Asian people find it hard to find a common ground, outside of their shared Nationality. Another, rather big part, I am sure, is due to high profile Islamic terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, and Hollywood movies portraying terror, almost universally, as the result of Islam. And Xinjiang does have fundamentalist groups, radical Islamic elements, and yes, probably a few terrorists or wannabe terrorists. However, fearing and distrusting the Uighur guy selling walnuts on the street or the owner of the restaurant where we happily eat noodles and mutton is about as misguided as an American blaming the Pakistani family next door for 9-11, and is, of course, an example of just the racism that isn’t supposed to exist in China.

Photo: Wikimedia

So which is it? Is there racism here or not? The truth is, China has never dealt well with difference, especially within the citizenry. While lip-service is played to the idea of preserving minority culture, it is clear that most of the Han majority are far more comfortable with the kind of culture you see in Lijiang than the kind of culture you might see in a place like Kashgar. One kind of