Hundreds of millions of Chinese are
still in virtual coronavirus quarantine and yet to report for work in the Chinese
New Year, millions of firms are facing bankruptcy and the
country’s factory activity shrank at a record rate in February.
With such gloomy circumstances and so much not to like it seems there is
something most Chinese can all at least agree on: they really hate black people.
 |
| One such post on Weibo |
Last week, China, which is one of
the hardest places on earth to
emigrate to (only had less than 1500 naturalized citizens in 2010) suddenly
announced that it was seeking opinions on a draft to make it easier for
foreigners to gain permanent residence in China.
Bad move.
The backlash to the announcement was
instant and sustained, it equals or surpasses the unprecedented backlash that
followed the death of the
whistle-blower doctor from Wuhan. The
only difference was unlike the backlash on the death of Li Wenliang being
censored, the current one is being left alone if not fanned.
Multiple hashtags of the issue
started trending on Weibo a Chinese copy of Twitter, every post by authorities
or state media was quickly bombarded with hundreds of thousands of comments on
the proposed bill. One of the hashtags was read almost
4 billion times in a country of 1.4 billion.
Very few of the comments of posts
provided any intellectual justification for their opposing the bill, some did:
saying the move would foster corruption and take away jobs, but most only stated,
zoomed in and focused on one thing: black people.
People posted about how China
would be taken over by strong black genes, how Chinese women would be raped, how
blacks would bring crime. Some simply stated that they really hated black people.
Citizens posted pictures of
officials in crosshairs
and some depicted an official bent over and a black man in an orange prison
uniform and the N-word plastered on his chest seemingly sodomizing him. Apparently
the official, Yang Yiyong had said some positives words about inter-racial marriage.
Every Chinese person who could
find a video of black people
doing crime did so and plastered it on social media. One of the most widely
circulated shows two black teens shoplifting
in an unidentified country. Another video
from the 120db
movement in Europe which has young white women describing being harassed by
refugees also got widely circulated.
 |
| Somewhere in Africa |
For effect, pictures of black men
with Chinese girls were plastered all over the place and the women were called
whores. The vitriol was reminiscent of the recent controversy over a program by
Shandong University to foster cultural
communication during which netizens also used pictures of Chinese women with
brown and black men to make their points, to bully the girls and to stroke
nationalism.
Even though gory videos are not
allowed on Chinese social media, it seemed Weibo, QQ and Wechat made an exception
if the offender was black.
Fake news was also a big part of
the narrative and it was pushed by accounts some of whom are verified. One
involved a picture of black people had words saying that France is now 80 percent black.
One picture featured a banner in Africa
shouting: ‘Rape Rape Rape: You can do it in China. Refugees can do anything.
Contact the Chinese Embassy Now! You will not be punished.’ This text was
wrapped around a drawing of three black men pinning down and raping an Asian woman.
 |
| Black people now majority in France they claimed |
Ohers circulated a picture of
pure yellow corn next to
another batch with dark purple corn
overshadowing the yellow.
Some shared accounts of how they
fear walking around on campuses where black people also study, some shared pictures
of blacks on Chinese trains. Meme after meme rained.
I have lived in China since 2013,
I know it is one of the most racist countries on earth, but this week’s
eruption on social is one I have not seen before. Even some of my former Chinese students were blatantly
posting about blacks bringing HIV to China and their hatred of black people.
It is fashionable for Chinese
schools to openly advertise
jobs and demand that only white people apply. In some Chinese cities,
schools would rather have Russians who can barely speak English than have black
English professors. This is something every black person who spends enough time
in China knows. The current racist movement is however a new thing.
 |
| Threats were issued |
With the economy in bad shape,
with households in financial trouble could someone be provoking fears among the
population to make them forget their actual problems? It sure seems so because
with all their censorship and their toughness against the topics that criticise
government, authorities seem to be happy letting this one gain steam.
None of the naturalized citizens of
China that I have seen are black, it is already hard for Africans to even apply
for visas to China and some hotels in China blatantly
refuse to let in anyone with an African passport.
It is fashionable being racist in
China. When one rapper was accused of promoting drug use, he apologised and blamed it on ‘black music,’
and he was forgiven. One wonders how people like me who listen to nothing but
black music are seen in China. There is
also a massive movement of Chinese going to Africa and making demeaning
videos of unsuspecting natives in Mandarin for clicks and views in China.
 |
| Chinese greatest fear: use your imagination |
Chinese can be racist all they
want, but to use blackness as a scapegoat in times of economic and social
turmoil is disturbing. It is more
disturbing if one considers that there are a
million Chinese in Africa and the author Howard French found that Chinese
push African governments to lower immigration restrictions against Chinese as
part of trade deals.
Black people are subjected to a
medical before and after they enter China, most of the HIV clusters in China have
no links Africa. They come from the women Chinese men are fast-tracking and traffic
into marriage from Myanmar
to fill the shortage
of women in China, from gay men who are not targeted by HIV outreach
messages and from bad practices in collecting blood from
poor and desperate locals who used to sell blood for survival. Yet the black
man is the bogeyman.
 |
| Doxxed |
When the coronavirus broke out China
constantly complained of being stigmatized, it even expelled reports of the Wall
Street Journal over a headline it
deemed racist. All that now seems very questionable if anyone looks at what
is on Chinese social media now.
The most retweeted tweet in the world was one that promised people they would win money, even then it only got
retweeted about 5
million times. Compare that to the billions of views and hundreds of millions
of comments on the issue, it should show you how hateful just one country is
towards blacks.
 |
| Interracial couples are being doxxed and shamed |
Some would argue that it is simply
Chinese being against foreign influence, but that would be not correct because
even though there are more whites in China and more white-Chinese couples in
China, they are conspicuously missing from the uproar and slander.
There are many African students
studying in China as China desperately tries to appear internationalized, many
Africans also jet into southern China to buy products that keep many businesses
in China alive.
How is it possible to hate the very people one
needs? How long before all the social media vitriol turns into real violence
against black people in China? What is the end game?
No comments:
Post a Comment