On June 13th, BBC released an investigative video report, “Racism for Sale” on anti-Black racism in China. It is about 50 minutes long.
The reporter, Runako Celina, lived in China for a few years in Beijing and she suffered in-your-face racism frequently. In February 2020, a video of a group of African kids shouting “I am Black monster and I have low IQ, yeah!” shocked and angered the Black community in China. Runako then teamed with her BBC colleagues to find the man who made the video.
The whole video is worth watching; but if your time is short, there is a 9 minutes version.
Meanwhile, other western media just reported the result of the 2022 African Youth Survey that “China [is perceived] as the most influential – and positive – player on the continent, followed in descending order by the US, the AU, the EU, the WTO and the UK. But there is also a growing negative sentiment about China and foreign companies who extract the continent’s raw materials without properly reinvesting in the countries where they are taking it from.” The African Youth Survey was done by the Ichikowitz Family Foundation, based in South Africa. The first survey was conducted in 2020. If you want to read the full report, you can fill up their form, or directly click here.
There is a big mismatch between African people and Chinese people in their perception of each other. In my own personal life, I feel that way too. Almost every African friend I know is fascinated by China and often expressed interest to visit the country, seemingly totally unaware of the rampant racism against Black people in Chinese culture. And meanwhile almost every Chinese I know has some racist sentiment one way or another. It is rare to meet a Chinese who does not hold “standard Chinese” prejudice against Black people.
Many years ago, when I lived in New York, I still believed that the African civilization was more backward than other part of the world, especially China. I said that to a stranger I met in the central park. She firmly told me that was not true and recommended me to seek out more knowledge about the basis of ranking civilization this way.
That incidence left a deep impression on me. Since then, I have learned about world history, and the poverty issue in Africa. Most importantly, I have learned that the old way of ranking civilizations is a biased way to see the world. But let me tell you, this way of ranking civilizations is deeply embedded in the Chinese education, and most of the Chinese who grew up with this education believe it without any doubt. I am lucky that someone challenged me on that!
Often, for the Chinese, the more educated they are, the more racist they are, because the Chinese education brainwashed all of us into thinking everything can be ranked. All students are ranked. The smart and hard working ones naturally ranked top. Likewise, China is the greatest country in the world because we are smart and hard working. Poorer countries are stupid and lazy.
In 2016, when the United States of America was going through an election and a racist white man became the president, many people who are familiar with Chinese intellectuals were shocked to see that most of them supported this white racist. That is when I read an article that traced back our anti-Black racism to the very discovering and promoting of China as a nation. It was eye-opening, since I am not that familiar with Chinese intellectual history. The article described how after the opium war, leading Chinese intellectuals looked to the west for democracy and science as ways to move forward. And then, the west was also very racist, and that racism was embedded in science as well. So, Chinese took the racism in, ranked people by the shade of their colour, consider Chinese, yellow, below white but above Black.
When civil rights movement took off in the west, China was in its own ideological bubble and we never learned the lessons on how inhumane and wrong racism is. Even the best educated Chinese who lived in the west for years, still believe in the racism myth. And even those who oppose Trump still believe there is some truth in his racism and cited the Bell Curve as scientific evidence.
A high speed train from Shanghai to Beijing was stopped in Jinan, Shandong, because they found one positive case in car number 2. Everyone in cars 1-3 needed to get off to be checked. Many people resisted getting off the train, but eventually, most people got off after a long standoff. Then they were kept in the basement in the train station for a long time, and told that they were to go to an hotel in Jinan for quarantine, and get their ID registered. Instead they were driven to a small town 200 km away, and the destination is a Fangcang hospital. Some people got off the bus to check the condition and came back with conclusion that it is dirty and unlivable. So people refused to get off. That was 6:30pm. After negotiation, at midnight, they were offered another place 80 km away. One of the passengers overheard the drivers whispering to each other that a few days ago people who were driven to the other place also refused to get off.
The passengers realized that they were lied all the time, every department involved was dead serious in passing them off to others as hot potatoes. And then news came that the positive case was re-tested three times and each time it was negative! The whole experience was posted on social media.
It is not uncommon that Chinese people wake up one morning finding their lifetime savings gone. Really. So common that when a group of small local banks froze accounts of their customers, with total asset value of 40 billion yuan, the news did not get much attention. Except, of course, the thousands of people who have lost all of their money tried their best for the public attention. They started organized themselves on social media and in person to protest. But China is so big, so many things happening every day, they got nowhere.
On June 12th, they woke up finding another surprise: the health code on their mobile phone went red. When your health code became red, you can’t go to any public place, you can’t travel using public transport or check in a hotel.
Who gave the red code? Local government! So, finally, public were shocked and paying attention, from social media to official media, it became news of the day! Even BBC is reporting it: Henan: China COVID app restricts residents after banking protests.
People who have paid attention to the abuse of health code on rights activists commented that this is not new, but the scale of it is impressive.
There is very little update on the victims; on Weibo, there was a rumour that one victim died in the hospital. There is also a list of injuries circulated on social media, showing multiple fractures in the head. Others complained that attempts to visit them were rejected, because several people with unknown/police background were guarding the entrance. People were asked extensively of their identity. Even flowers sent to the victims were treated as suspicious and police called the florist shop for sender’s identity.
Since the government is treating the incident as gang violence, they asked citizens to report to them mafia violence. So, a long line was formed with people who believe the government and want to report their cases.