From: hassan@cup.portal.com (hassan monu alam)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american
Subject: Discourse on Race in Modern China
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 16:42:30 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

From the Far Eastern Economic Review 8 Oct 1992
--------------------------------------
Colour-blind in Cathay

The Discourse on Race in Modern China
by Frank Dikotter. C. Hurst Co., London,
and Hong Kong University Press. HK$120.

These days people easily accuse one another of 
being racist. Usually what they
mean, however, is ethnocen-
tric, that is, believing in the
superiority of one's own cul-
tural practices. Yet race does somehow lurking in
the background. This is because the idea
of race attempts to locate cultural differ-
ences in nature--genes--and it is this
naturalisation of the idea that makes race
such a compelling and pervasive ideology.

In fact it was modem science that pro-
vided formerly cultural ideas of difference
with a biological and scientific idiom, and
in this way racism was an offshoot of both
the rise of capitalism and science in Eu-
rope. Nineteenth-century colonial expan-
sion around the globe led Europeans to
devise theories of racial superiority such as
Social Darwinism--an inaccurate extrapo-
lation from Darwin's theory of evolution
that claimed whoever had the most pow-
erful and dynamic societies were the "fit-
test" and were a superior breed. Colonial-
ism was followed by an even uglier racism
in the form of fascism and apartheid.

Yet social and biological scientists in
Europe and America have now, by and
large, successfully discredited racialist
theories and practices. And a great deal of
soul-searching has gone on among intel-
lectuals and others concerning European
practices of racism in the past.

This public mea culpa has often obscured
the fact that non-European intellectuals
and elites sometimes enthusiastically em-

braced racialist theories. Frank Dikotter's
book shows how these theories were taken
up in modern China. A similar story can
be written for Vietnam or Japan.

But first, it is worth quoting Dikotter's
position on race because it will no doubt
prompt disbelief among some readers:

"'Race,' of course, is a cultural construct
with no relationship to objective reality.
Phenotypical variations like hair texture or
skin colour are subjectively perceived and
culturally constructed by social groups:
some may focus on skin colour, others on
eye colour. These biological differences do
not of themselves induce cultural differ-
ences, but are used to legitimize role ex-
pectations: physical features are given so-
cial meaning. Classifications based on
physical appearance have no scientific
foundation. Races do not exist, they are
imagined."

Because "races" do not exist scientifi-
cally, he says, the word should always be
signalled by quotation marks. His argu-
ment is accepted by most modern anthro-
pologists who point out that no consistent
clusters of biological/genetic characteristics
can be gathered together to form a coher-
ent concept of race. Anthropologists are not
saying that physical differences do not ex-
ist; they are simply interested in what cul-
tures make of these differences.

Dikotter points out that an embryonic
form of racial consciousness existed in
China from antiquity. Often the names of
non-Chinese groups were written in char-
acters with an animal radical, some being
associated with dogs, others with reptiles.

The designation of Chinese skin colour
as yellow is European, taken on now by
Chinese themselves who historically called
their complexion white. The latter was as-
sociated with elite status while labourers
were called "black-headed people." Thus
when Chinese came in contact with alien
people--Arabs or Khmer, among others
--they tended to assign them to the black,
inferior, end of the spectrum.

The idea of a physically homogenous
and continuous population was bolstered
by notions of clan and lineage in China
which claimed that blood ties between
males could be traced back to antiquity.

Foreign conquest of China also height-
ened racial consciousness. It formed an
important part of anti-Manchu sentiment
in the Qing dynasty, and was further rein-
forced by the Western challenge to China.
Thus the ground was prepared for the ab-
sorption of modern racialist ideas into a
cultural universe already well populated
with foreign "devils and demons" and bi-
zarre ideas concerning "barbarian" physi-
cal make-up and sexual desires.

Once in contact with European concepts
of race the Chinese soon produced their
own loonies who spoke of racial war and
racial hierarchies, and indulged in racial
megalomania. For example: "Our Chinese
race is the most expansive and vigorous
race on earth . . . our race cannot be re-
strained and will spread all over the world."

As elsewhere in the early 20th century,
nationalism in China sometimes took on a
strong racialist slant. Even Sun Yat-sen
held to a principle of racial nationalism and
to the idea of "a single, pure race." Part of
this movement saw Chinese intellectuals
indulge in bouts of Occidentalism--the
creation of stereotypes about "Westerners"
-- that mirrored the excesses of
Orientalism.

At times, one wonders if Dikotter is
only quoting cliches from the lunatic fringe
of Chinese intellectual life, but he assures
us that this discourse was pervasive up
until 1945.

After the communist revolution official
propaganda claimed that only Westerners
engaged in racism. But, Dikotter suggests,
much "anti-imperialist" hysteria under
Mao had strong anti-foreign, racialist over-
tones. And in times of instability racialist
ideas drift towards the centre of Chinese
politics--something he suggests is "al-
ready reappearing in the post-Tiananmen
era."              Grant Evans

Mr Evans teaches anthropology at Hong Kong
University.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american