By Tianlong Yu

Preference for lighter over darker skin color, or colorism, is certainly alive and well in China. I remember while growing up my mother often praised how the several Korean-Chinese girls in my neighborhood school were “pretty” because they had lighter skin color than us. There is a well-known saying we are all familiar with: "A white face covers a hundred ugly things." It is said that young people today seek potential spouses based on some popular criteria, among which are, “tall, rich, and handsome” for men and “white, rich, and beautiful” for women. Naked materialist pursuit of wealth aside, light skin has seemingly become an aesthetic standard. White is the sought-after ideal color. Such beauty standards valuing white skin, of course, harbor a well-established phobia of dark skin colors such as black, viewed by some as “dirty.” 

A Chinese TV commercial on detergent caused an uproar in 2016. In the ad, a black man and a young Chinese woman are flirting; as he leans in for a kiss she thrusts a detergent capsule in his mouth and bundles him into a washer. She sits atop the machine as the man spins and screams inside until, to her apparent delight, out pops a handsome Chinese man dressed in a clean, white t-shirt. This offensive advertising caused outrage on both the Chinese and wider web, with many users blasting it for being racist. “My God,” wrote one user on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, “don't Chinese marketing people get any education about race?” “If you don't understand why it's racist, congratulations, you're a racist," wrote another, after some commentators tried to defend the ad. So, in China, colorism is unequivocally tied to racism against a particular group of people. A large number of Africans now live in China, particularly in southern Guangdong province. Many have complained of facing discrimination and prejudice from locals.

Despite the increasing demographic diversity, China remains largely a racially homogenous nation; and racism does not seem to be institutionalized as it is in, say, the United States. Yet, widespread colorism in China and its occasional escalation to racism cannot be seen as separate from other socio-cultural constructs. I recall the few Korean girls in my community belonged to some well-off families on the military base nearby, so I guess my mother’s praise of their lighter skin color probably hid her unspoken envy for their higher socioeconomic status. The black people living and working in south China today mostly came from African countries, which Chinese have traditionally viewed as poor, backward, and “third-world.” So, the discriminatory colorism is entangled with, and may be bred or fueled by, classism. Nothing says this better than the aforementioned popular spouse-judging standard that centers on money.   

And it is more than classism. The Chinese look down on poor African peoples as “third-world” even though China has long been categorized as a “third world” country itself, and many of the African-bashing Chinese may not be so better off themselves economically. This might have something to do with a historical sense of national pride many Chinese are born with. China has presided over a non-stop 5000-year-long civilization, and the country has been isolated from the outside world for most of its history. Proud of their own achievement but also out of real ignorance of others, Chinese often deemed their country as the Central Kingdom and called everyone else “savage.” When Western powers broke open the Manchurian Court during its final rule in late 19th century with opium and guns and forced unfair treaties upon the weak and corrupt government; the defeated Emperor and his subjects, it is said, still demanded their foreign conquers to knee down before them in meetings, apparently to save nothing but face. It was Sino-centrism in painful but spectacular display.

The accumulative effect of culture, as such, no doubt plays an active role today as Chinese people find themselves in an increasingly diverse world even within their national boundaries. Racially homogenous perhaps, but China has always been a multicultural society with multiple groups of varying ethnicities, religions, and languages, etc., co-existing along with the Han-majority group, and not always peacefully at times. Ethnic and class conflicts have swept many regions in recent years as discrimination reflective of differences in gender, sexuality, religion, language, and disability are all on the rise. And yet, social differences and conflicts are often silenced in a political culture of stability and conformity. As the colorist-racist incidents have shown, many Chinese are woefully ill prepared for such multicultural reality. A national reckoning is needed; and educators must take some major responsibility to educate for real inclusion, equity, and social justice.