Racialist Nationalist influences in Chinese Society & Socialism 🇨🇳
Racial thinking entered China in the late 19th/early 20th century via Western influences (Social Darwinism, eugenics) amid humiliation by Western/Japanese imperialism. Reformers and revolutionaries adopted ideas of "yellow race" competition with "whites," framing Han/Chinese as a racial-national entity for survival and revival. Frank Dikötter's work (The Discourse of Race in Modern China) documents how Chinese intellectuals embraced and adapted these ideas; racial categorization became widespread, influencing nationalism.
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Scientific racial anthropology persisted longer in China than in the West post-WWII. A 2003 study of Acta Anthropologica Sinica found the race concept "alive and well" in Chinese biological anthropology, with typological approaches to human variation. The authors conducted a content analysis of China’s main biological anthropology journal (Acta Anthropologica Sinica) to assess the status of the race concept among Chinese scientists and to highlight national differences. The article was mainly focused on 74 issues containing articles on human variation (779 total articles; 324 of them, or 41%, directly related to human biological variation).
The striking find is that 100% of all 324 articles mentioning human biological variation used racial conceptions, and the concept as a whole is treated as straightforward and “natural.” Since these researchers are also university teachers, this acceptance of race is likely being passed on to the next generation of Chinese scientists. (1st image)
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Surveys and studies show notable racial/ethnic attitudes. A 2016 Gallup poll found ~30% of Chinese respondents agreeing some races are superior (higher in Hong Kong). Online discourse reveals anti-Black racism, stereotypes of minorities, and Han supremacist forums. Research on danmu comments showed high negative racial sentiments toward Black people. Anti-African incidents and pathologization occur.
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After Mao, especially under Deng and accelerated by Xi Jinping, the CCP increasingly emphasized nationalism as a legitimizing ideology as pure Marxist class rhetoric waned. Key sources:
Yongnian Guo (2019): "From Marxism to nationalism: The Chinese Communist Party's discursive shift in the post-Mao era." Argues the "Chinese Dream" and Xi-era ideology represent a philosophical departure from Marxism/Maoism toward nationalism. These are "logically irreconcilable" in key areas (e.g., views on tradition, permanence/change, unity/conflict). The CCP cannot fully be both nationalists and Marxists simultaneously."
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