The Question of Race in China

Last week's controversy over the Spanish Basketball Team's photograph wherein the team makes hand-eye gestures exaggerating the supposed Chinese slanted-eye barely even caused a mention here in China.

A man in Madrid looks at the Spanish basketball team's controversial advertisement (MIGUEL RIOPA/AFP/Getty Images)

For one thing the ad never appeared in the Chinese media, it seems to have just run in the Spanish sports newspaper Marca. But that aside, it seems doubtful that even it it did appear here in China, the Chinese would be very offended at all.

I showed the picture to some people here in Beijing, who never saw it or heard of the debate. One man said the team was being funny, and that they were just making a joke. He was also very curious that the notion of pulling at the eyelids could be considered racist.

"Doesn't hip-hop culture allow for these types of things?" he added.

Another man said the team was only acting mischievous and that the eye-pulling was just a sign of affection.

"If I did this," he said, as he pulled his eyes wide open with his hands to create a 'round-eye,' "Would that be racist against white people?"

While I laughed at his witty retort, I couldn't help being reminded of childhood jokes/taunts directed at me that began: "My mother's Chinese... My father's Japanese... and I'm... " (Well, no need to really repeat it).

The Chinese word for "race" is 族, pronounced "zu". the term for "racism" is 种族主义 or "zhong zu zhu yi".

While Asian-American groups protested the advertisement, calling the images divisive, it would seem that many Chinese might not have taken offense at all. A spokesman for the Li Ning company, a Chinese sports-apparel firm headed by former Chinese Olympian Li Ning, which sponsors the Spanish team told ESPN that the ad was not insulting, and even noted that because there was a dragon pattern in the ad, it showed respect for the Chinese.

The International Olympic Committee said the ad was inappropriate, accepted the team's apologies, and have let the matter rest. It was a decision that Team USA's basketball guard Jason Kidd called a double standard.

"We would've been already thrown out of the Olympics," Kidd told Yahoo! Sports. "At least we wouldn't have been able to come back to the U.S. There would be suspensions."

Many news reports about this have cited the differing reactions between US/UK reports of the advertisement as offensive, and the Chinese or European views of the ad as a joke or a sign of affection. The prevailing question or commentary seems to be that perhaps the debate is due to differing views of what racism means around the world?

This is interesting when you consider that the notion of "race" was first introduced to China by Chinese intellectuals studying in Japan around the turn of the 20th century. Intellectuals like Liang Qichao were the first to promote the idea of a Chinese "race" differentiated from other races. Much of this was aimed at creating Chinese nationalism in response to growing Western imperialism in China.

And ad from the 1880s for a rat pesticide by a Boston company. The Chinese man is about to eat the rat. (Photo by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images)

But these concepts were also inextricably linked to Social Darwinist theories. The idea that different racial groups had to compete for biological superiority to survive was a prominent belief around the world at the time. For many Western believers, this notion meant that certain groups were racially superior. The Chinese reaction to this was to cultivate a Chinese race that could be equally or even more superior.

Promoting such beliefs was instrumental in reforming the failing Qing Dynasty (the last dynasty of China). The dynasty would ultimately fall in the 1911 Revolution that created the Chinese Republic. These Chinese intellectuals pushed the view that the West saw China as "The Sick Man of Asia" and thus, China needed to heal itself. The Mutant Palm blog has a nice quote from Liang Qichao exemplifying his views on race:

"...History is nothing but the account of the development and strife of human races. What is history? History is nothing but the account of the development and strife of human races. There is no history without race .. ...Today, however, it is no exaggeration to say that the racial problem is the biggest problem in the world.. .. The essence of history is to follow the tracks of the rise and fall of every race over thousands of years..."

While it's a clean notion that there are certain cultures that simply don't view "racism" the same way as perhaps the race-obsessed Americans or Britons, the truth is that the modern concept of race and racism in China has been around for at least 150 years. And while it's true the Spanish advert didn't seem to ruffle any feathers here in China, its unlikely China is any more free of these sensitive notions than any other country.