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The pervasiveness of racism applies not only to China but also to Taiwan, [798] Singapore, Hong Kong and even the overseas Chinese communities. Thus it is not simply a function of parochialism, of China ’s limited contact with the outside world. Take Hong Kong, for example, which, in contrast to China, has enjoyed a highly cosmopolitan history as a result of colonialism. Although in 2001 the then chief executive Tung Chee-hwa typically described racism as a minor problem, requiring no more than an extremely low-budget, low-profile educational campaign, in fact, it is endemic amongst the Hong Kong Chinese, who comprise around 96 per cent of the population. [799] In a survey of South-East Asians, South Asians and Africans in Hong Kong conducted by the Society of Community Organizations in 2001, around one-third said they had been turned down for a job on the basis of their ethnicity, a similar proportion had been refused rental of a flat, one-third reported that the police discriminated against them on the streets, while nearly half had experienced racial discrimination in hospital. [800] The most common targets are foreign ‘helpers’, usually known as ‘maids’, mainly Filipinas and Indonesians, who are frequently required by their Chinese domestic employers to work absurdly long hours, are treated abysmally, paid little, granted scant freedom, and, in a significant minority of cases, subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Their conditions not infrequently resemble a latter-day form of indentured labour, as is also true in Singapore and Malaysia. [801]

It might reasonably be argued that Hong Kong Chinese racism is a legacy of British rule. After they took possession of the colony following the First Opium War, the British practised systemic racism: English was the sole official language until 1974, the Chinese were prohibited from living in the exclusive Peak area from 1902, there was a miscellany of petty apartheid laws — such as the requirement, until 1897, that Chinese carry night passes — and they were excluded from high-level public employment until as late as the 1970s and, in some departments, until the mid 1990s. [802] With a truly breathtaking disregard for the truth, in 1994 the British had the gall to claim that ‘racial discrimination in Hong Kong is not a problem’. [803] The fact that racism was the currency of British rule only encouraged the Chinese to behave in a similar way towards those whom they regarded to be their inferiors, namely those of darker skin. It would be naive, however, to think that British behaviour was the main cause of Chinese racism: it was clearly a contributory factor, but the fundamental reason lies in Chinese history and culture. After a major campaign in response to the death, in 2000, of Harinder Veriah, a Malaysian of Indian descent, who complained about serious racial discrimination in a Hong Kong hospital, the government was finally forced to acknowledge that racism was a serious problem and in 2008, mainly as a result of this case, belatedly introduced anti-racist legislation for the first time. [804] But Hong Kong, cosmopolitan and international as it is, remains an essentially biracial city, with whites enjoying a privileged status, along with the Chinese, and those of darker skin banished to the margins as second-class residents or migrant workers. [805]

So what of racism in China itself? When a people and government are in denial of their own racism, then evidence of that racism depends on the witness of those who are the object of it and, as a consequence, predominantly on anecdote rather than anything more systematic. Once there is an established culture of anti-racism — as opposed to simply a culture of racism, which is the situation in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong — it becomes possible to paint a more accurate picture of the incidence of racism, though even then the great bulk of it still remains hidden from view. In Chinese societies, and China in particular, there is no culture of anti-racism except at the very margins because the dominant discourse of Han chauvinism has never been seriously challenged. [806] Racist attitudes are seen as normal and acceptable rather than abnormal and objectionable. As M. Dujon Johnson, a black American scholar of China, puts it:

In Chinese society one of the reasons that the issue of race and racism is rarely discussed openly… is because racism is universally accepted and justified… Racism is… an issue that is not addressed among Chinese because most Chinese see themselves as superior to darker-skinned people. Therefore, within the Chinese mindset it would be a waste of time to address an obvious fact of darker-skinned people’s inferiority. [807]

In the Chinese perception there is a clear racial hierarchy. White people are respected, placed on something of a pedestal and treated with considerable deference by the Chinese; in contrast, darker skin is disapproved of and deplored, the darker the skin the more pejorative the reaction. [808] People from other East Asian countries, traditionally regarded as inferior, are not immune. A Filipina friend studying at Beijing University was shocked by the level of discrimination she experienced. Unlike her white colleagues, who were treated with respect, she often found herself ignored in restaurants, with waiters refusing to serve her. Local Chinese would audibly refer to her as ‘stupid’ or ‘ignorant’. One day she was refused entry on to a bus by the conductor in a manner that suggested that she was afflicted with a disease that the other passengers might catch; after such public humiliation she avoided travelling by bus. Dujon Johnson, who conducted a survey of the experience of black Americans and Africans in China and Taiwan based on interviews with them, describes how people frequently moved seats when a black person sat next to them on public transport, or proceeded to rub that part of their body that a black person had innocently brushed against in a crowded place as if it required cleansing. Most depressingly of all, African interviewees indicated that they tried to avoid contact with the Chinese public as much as possible and ‘normally venture out only when it is necessary’. [809]

There has been a long history of discrimination against African students in China. Emmanuel Hevi, a Ghanaian who studied there in the early sixties, wrote: ‘In all their dealings with us the Chinese behaved as if they were dealing with people from whom normal intelligence could not be expected.’ [810] In December 1988, after an incident between Chinese and African students at Heihai University in Nanjing, there was a march of over 3,00 °Chinese students to protest against the presence of African students, with demonstrations subsequently spreading to Shanghai, Beijing and elsewhere. [811] On some of these marches, the climate was so hostile towards African students that a number of universities decided to move them out of their dormitories because of a perceived threat to their physical safety. No attempt was made by the authorities to halt or prevent the demonstrations, which went on for many days, suggesting that they perhaps enjoyed a certain measure of tacit official sympathy. [812] At Wuhan Industrial College, students marched demanding that ‘all blacks be removed from China ’. [813] According to Dujon Johnson, the race riots and demonstrations in 1988 were by no means unique: similar events occurred in Shanghai in 1979 and 1980, in Nanjing in 1979, 1980, 1988 and 1989, and in Beijing in 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1989. [814] In September 2007 there was a report that a group of at least twenty black men, including students, tourists and the son of a Caribbean diplomat, had been arrested by a team of police in black jumpsuits in a Beijing night-club and severely beaten. A white American witness reported that: ‘He had never seen anything so brutal. There was blood on the streets. They were basically beating up any black person they could find.’ [815] It should be borne in mind that a black face remains an extremely rare sight in China: in 2006, there were reported to be 600 Africans in Beijing, 500 in Shanghai, 100 in Shenzhen, and over 10,000 in Guangzhou (with a population of 12 million), mainly as a result of the growing trade with Africa. [816] No doubt this lack of familiarity with black people may partly explain the Chinese sense of suspicion and mistrust, but it cannot be the main explanation for the deep-seated racism. Dujon Johnson’s account of the black experience in China avoids recounting his own experiences except at the very end when he writes, ‘[my experiences] demonstrated to me on a daily basis how life in Chinese society is racially segregated and in many aspects similar to a system of racial apartheid.’ [817]