Is Chinese IR Scholarship White? A Non-Dichotomous Critique of ‘The International as Singular,Enlightened and Sanitised’

Whiteness and IR

Although the global colour line long exists conspicuously in international affairs and Euro-American IR, ¹¹ a norm against noticing race is deeply entrenched in IR. ¹² Existing efforts are fruitful in illuminating that the non-White Other is portrayed under Orientalist, gendered and racialized lights by the White Self, ¹³ the socio-psychological effects constituting the former’s international conduct, ¹⁴ and, most recently, how racism cuts across security and war the ‘hard’ aspects of international politics. ¹⁵ Generally, while these critiques problematize the global racial hierarchy, they mostly adopt a binary definition of the hierarchy that is imagined as between the White and the non-White, working with, rather than challenging, a binary framework. The internal nuances and dynamics among the varied subjects and agents that are non-White have not been explored. Consequently, discussions are less focused on the negotiation or replication of whiteness among non-Western agents. This establishes a false binary of the perpetrating West versus the victimized non-West, silencing the voices of the non-West and depriving the agency of non-Western agents in resisting, re-negotiating or reproducing the global racial hierarchy. The active contributions of non-white institutions and people, as well as early critiques to whiteness in IR knowledge are sidelined in the disciplinary history. ¹⁶

Race is a social construct, and so is whiteness. ¹⁷ Critical Race Studies has inspired critical IR scholarship in exploring a notion of epistemic whiteness in knowledge production. Conceptualized from historical cases of the national segregation in states such as the United States and South Africa, whiteness can either be understood as a daily repository of perceptions of the white majority of their racial identity, or a set of social relations. ¹⁸ Whiteness can be unpacked into ‘lived experiences, a structural and relational positionality, and a racialized subjectivity’. ¹⁹ While whiteness cannot be reduced to class, the class factor co-constitutes the complexity of the notion of white capital. ²⁰ Whiteness is not necessarily reinforced by white people. ²¹ This is especially true, since the IR discipline accounts for global inequality through the meritocracy logic, replacing more essentialist explanations on the ‘innate superiority’ of the white, West with more merit-based explanations, adding to its appeal among Global South practitioners concerned with nation-building. ²² Is there, then, a similar appeal for Global South intellectuals that compromise their resistance against epistemic whiteness?

A case in point is how Chinese intellectuals tangoed with epistemic whiteness at the turn of 20th century. Intellectuals had a range of responses to social Darwinist, racist thinking that originated from European contexts, ranging from contestation to full internalization, while the mainstream reaction was not an unproblematic replication of social Darwinism, but rather, a localization. ²³ The purpose was to negotiate and improve China’s international status. While negotiating the relative position (as well as the boundary) of the Chinese race therein, few truly contested the notion of global racial hierarchy per se. For many Western writers who embraced the racist doctrines underlying social Darwinism to justify imperial interests, Chinese intellectuals adapted social Darwinism for a different purpose. They instrumentally employed the ‘survival of the fittest’ discourse to mobilize the Chinese nation ²⁴ to ‘struggle ahead in the evolutionary time’ ²⁵ as a fit and civilized nation-state – essentially, to shake off the Western imperialist control over Chinese territories. Its nationalist tone and the desire for China’s complete independence sit in tension with the imperialist agenda underlying social Darwinism in Western contexts. Dissenting the Western imperialist agenda, these public intellectuals nonetheless adorned and celebrated the technological and civilizational advancements of the West and considered the latter as the goal for emulation. Logically, this opened up the possibility for epistemic whiteness to be internalized and reproduced.

Before proceeding to my analytical framework, a brief methodological discussion is due. The articles studied here were published after the year of 2000 and reflect the ongoing academic trends within mainland Chinese academia. These articles are peer-reviewed, and either published by top-ranking, core Chinese academic journals (peer-reviewed) on IR or African Studies or authored by prominent scholars at respected Chinese academic institutions. By ‘prominent’ scholars, I mean those who enjoy reputable standing in mainland Chinese academia. Their works appear in top-ranked, core Chinese academic journals, for example, World Economy and Politics (世界经济与政治) and West Asia and Africa (西亚非洲) and are often consulted by international scholars. Additionally, they actively shape and guide research directions in African studies, directing influential research centres and institutes at prestigious institutions. For example, several scholars studied here are directors of African Studies centres at their home institutions, and all of them are tenure-tracked professors at reputable research universities, such as Peking University and Fudan University. Furthermore, some are the recipients of national research grants and funds, furthering attesting to their academic prominence.

This article adopts Foucauldian discourse analysis ²⁶ as its main research method. It considers discourses to be generative of social reality and identity, while uncovering the nexus between power and discourses – in particular, the ways in which power makes certain discourses prominent while marginalizing others. ²⁷ There is, however, one challenge. How do we, as scholars, exercise reflexivity when we make critical investigations of Western-centric IR knowledge production, given that we are already being socialized (at least partially) to its apparatus? ²⁸ A possible solution is proposed, which is to question the common sense of critical IR scholarship in this regard. ²⁹ Inspired by this approach, this article problematizes the commonsensical dichotomy of the epistemically white West versus the epistemically non-White non-West. ³⁰ It analyses the conceptualization by Chinese scholarship of the following topics, that is, the relations among different subjects of world politics in history (the logic of existence), the momentum of global development and the ways in which development unfolds (the logic of development) and racial injustices in development (the logic of resistance).

The Logic of Existence

Across all three epistemological sites, Chinese IR scholarship has produced the least amount of relevant content on the question of existence. Among a limited amount of works, there is a clear objection of dichotomy in their conceptualizations of China-Africa interactions. Some propose innovative conceptions of ontology of China-Africa interactions through relationalism. That said, the strength of critique is compromised by the inadvertent reinforcement of a powerful West versus victimized Africa dichotomy.

Academic discourses similarly foreground the historical commonality between China and Africa, for example, emphasizing that they share ‘glowing [ancient] civilizations(灿烂的文明), . . . history of humiliation [due to colonial subjugation], . . . and the experiences of struggling for national independence’. ⁴⁰ Another article underlines the commensurability (共通性) of traditional Chinese and African cultures, that is, a shared emphasis on the harmony between mankind and nature, a priority of affection and human bonds over rationality and laws (the latter associated with the Western culture), collectivist and family values, as well as a longing for recognition and respect due to the shared history of underdevelopment and foreign invasion. ⁴¹ Admittedly, there exists a questionable treatment of African culture as a unified, homogenous whole. However, the analytical effort in foregrounding China-Africa commonality marks a conscious departure from dichotomy, the first element of epistemic whiteness. Africa and China are imagined not as completely contradictory and antithetical, but rather, comparable and defined by commensurable elements.

There are obvious parallels between China’s discourses on Africa and on itself, as one major component of the latter relates to the national trauma and victimhood due to Western imperialism and colonialism since the 1840s, that is, ‘the century of national humiliation’. ⁴² For example, one article ⁴³ observes that China and Africa were both objectified by the Western colonial system and shared the same subordinate positionality:

In modern time (近代), under the world colonial system established by the Western expansionist powers, . . . China and Africa were no longer the agents of interactions, but objects of Western subjugation, . . . they had little substantial interactions or connections among themselves, and the Sino-African interactions were mostly serving the interests of Western colonial powers through labour and slave trades, . . . ⁴⁴

While critiquing that Africa was underdeveloped by the West through the slave trade, it is seldom mentioned that the slave trade, too, existed in the Chinese empire during Tang dynasty (between the 7th and 10th centuries). ⁴⁵ A large quantity of enslaved labourers from abroad were brought to China, among which were three major groups. The first is the so-termed Kunlun nu (昆仑奴), or ‘Black slaves from afar’, who were either brought to China from Africa by Arabic traders, or from South and Southeast Asia through the slave trade and Tang territorial expansions. ⁴⁶ The other two types are gaoli bi (高丽婢) and hu ji (胡姬), that is, ‘Korean maidservants’ and ‘Caucasian women from various groups of Turks and Iranians’. Coincidentally, their racial origins correspond to the races of Black, Yellow and White in modern contexts. Partially shaped by the genders of these foreign slaves themselves, Whites were imagined as exotic and feminine, Koreans as submissive and feminine, whereas Blacks as valorous, loyal and masculine. ⁴⁷ While perceptions of all three employ binary oppositions which define the foreign Other in opposition to the Han-Chinese Self, there was not a distinct racial hierarchy as constructed later by scientific racism. In other words, the racialization in pre-modern contexts played out differently than in the late 19th and early 20th century, the high time when Chinese intellectuals repurposed social Darwinism to modernize their nation, while formulating a re-negotiated global racial hierarchy with Blacks at its bottom. ⁴⁸ This comparison implies that, due to the historical contingency, a desire for modernity informs hierarchization along racial lines.

Most innovatively, an alternative ontology is proposed to conceptualize IR through relationality. ⁴⁹ It conceptualizes that the past several centuries witnessed hierarchical relations between the West and the non-West, characterized by ‘Western dominance and subjugation, during which the evolution of the world system is what has been described as “unidirectional” and characterized by “the centre dominating the periphery”’ ⁵⁰ ; by contrast, Sino-African relations are marked by spontaneous, mutual civilizational communications on equal terms that are ‘multidirectional’ (多向度), occurring in a ‘egalitarian, reticulated network’ (平等网状型). A trend is thus predicated for IR to depart from hierarchical, unidirectional communication, moving towards ‘egalitarian interactions and communications among diverse world civilizations’ (世界多元文明交往与平等对话). ⁵¹ Essentially, under this alternative ontology, the modern reality is mutually constituted by the indispensable participation of multiple actors in the West and non-West. Positioning China, Africa and the West within a horizontal network rather than a vertical hierarchy, this theorization further rejects dichotomy. African states and China are considered as equally proactive subjects capable of initiating multidirectional spontaneous interactions, actively pursuing their desired visions for IR.

On the other hand, these scholarly writings do not elaborate on the full extent of the diversity and richness of African civilizations further. Neither do they question the notion of ‘distinctness of civilizations’, which inherently presupposes an essentialist understanding of any culture as rigid and fixed and underpins the element of dichotomy in epistemic whiteness.

The Logic of Development

Mainland Chinese Sinophone scholarship partially rejects linearity by historicizing and provincializing the modern development of the West. The strength of their critiques is attenuated by a deep internalization of linear progression towards modernity, as well as by a shared belief that Africa’s modernization is driven by the exogenous inputs from China.

One major intervention is to contrasts Western predatory practices in modern time against the mutually benefiting cultural exchange between China and Africa in premodern – and precolonial – times, which emerged around the seventh century (in the early years of Tang dynasty), peaking under the Arabic-Islamic world system between the 13th and 15th centuries. ⁵² It details material cultural evidence of communications between Chinese civilization and Swahili civilization. Revealing the inter-connectedness among regions, it refutes an ahistorical picture of the West as the perpetual core of the modern world-making. The important historical moments are highlighted in which multi-actors exchanged their achievements and co-contributing to development around other core regions.

The Western-led modernization episodes of the world history are also provincialized, and Western-centric universalist claims contested,

. . . the Eurocentric or Western-centric experiences and discursive formulation of modernity in the past centuries are a mere stage of particularity in the entire mankind’s development of modernity. The progression of world history, naturally, will not terminate at the full establishment of Western civilization; rather, it will continue to progress as Asian and African civilization rejuvenate and rise. ⁵³

Highlight that the Western-centric formulation of modernity is a particular historical stage, and that history is evolving, this argument historicizes the developmental achievements of the West. Underlining the non-West’s progression potential and the context-contingency of modernization approaches, it also implies the non-West’s development is not subject to that of the West.

This view clearly opposes Fukuyama’s ⁵⁴ end of history theory, but still views the world history as following linear progression, driven by agents’ pursuit of modernity. In other words, despite the intentional attempt to provincialize European experiences of modernity, it refuses to engage in critiques of modernity as an unproblematic, attainable objective of pursuit. ⁵⁵ Instead, Sino-African interactions are considered to be driven by the two entities’ shared pursuit of modernity and nation-state rejuvenation, which deeply ingrain ‘the consistent efforts and yearnings of people from the non-Western world in pursuing modern development’. ⁵⁶

As such, this intervention exhibits a simultaneous provincialization of European modern attainments combined with a fascination with linear progression towards modernity, which are somewhat contradictory. This reflects a broader trend among Chinese intellectuals of an internalization of modernity as history’s endpoint, a deeply Eurocentric construct from Enlightenment History by Hegel. ⁵⁷ Intertwined with social Darwinism, it later heavily influenced early modern Chinese intellectuals and reformists’ worldviews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ⁵⁸ In fact, not only modernity has been embraced by China with great enthusiasm as an abstract concept and an ideal (e.g. ‘the four modernizations’ were proposed as the state’s strategic goals as early as in 1954) but also greatly localized as it has been interpreted and operationalized differently in Chinese contexts than in the Western ones.

Linearity implies that if the same, successful modernization path is followed, a certain country or region’s glorious present will be another’s bright future, a presumption of many modernization theories. ⁵⁹ Some scholars question the applicability of the Western modernization approach in African contexts and argue for the Chinese one. One article argues that the Washington Consensus ‘failed to bring development or prosperity to Africa, marked by the political instability and economic stagnations in many countries, while China made remarkable achievements under the Reform and Opening Up and modernization’. ⁶⁰ It observes from African countries’ initiatives of ‘looking East’ (drawing from Chinese experiences to modernize) that China’s developmental model has immense appeal. On the other hand, however, Africa is only considered as the reliable source of China’s energy supply, the market for its production (over)capacity and the field for Chinese enterprises to ‘accumulate knowledge and experiences of globalization, . . . make them attuned to their corporate social responsibilities, and well versed into the international economic norms’. ⁶¹ While acknowledging Africa’s positive inputs to Chinese development in globalization, Africa is objectified as it is effectively considered as a mere field or a site where China gains practical experience or material resources from, with little agency of proactively transferring knowledge, technology or experience to China.

Historical cases of China benefitting from African capital and technology are sidelined in most discussions. In an extensive review of the technology transfer between China to African countries since the 1960s, the analytical focus is on the transfer from China to Africa, only mentioning in passing that it is a two-way traffic, since Zaire and Algeria introduced new technologies and corporate management insights to China. ⁶² Generally downplaying how Chinese modernization was fuelled by African inputs, the unbalanced analysis conveys a message that a more developed China can help modernize the less-developed Africa, implying Sino-centric linearity.

An article, titled ‘Africa can borrow from Chinese governance experiences’ (非洲可以借鉴中国的治理经验), ⁶³ considers the Chinese developmental model as the better alternative to the Western model, questioning democracy/good governance as prerequisites in the Western model and its suitability in African contexts. Noteworthy, while this piece briefly mentions that the dialogues between China and African states on governance models should not be unidirectional, and that China has much to learn from the latter, it does not elaborate on the rationale, concrete aspects or empirical cases beyond this slogan. Chinese contributions to African modernization are demonstrated through a typology of China’s three roles in Africa, as the crisis stabilizer, the post-conflìct builder, and development contributor. ⁶⁴ It argues that energy cooperation mobilizes the natural resources that ‘Africa has no means to extract’ ⁶⁵ (无力开采) and translates them into capital, technology and infrastructure for African states. It reasons that the Chinese approach of exchanging infrastructure construction projects for resources is better than the Western one of simply purchasing natural resources, as the absence of monetary transaction reduces corruption in African regimes. A third piece interprets Sino-African cooperation as China’s unidirectional provision of international public goods to Africa, observing that as China accumulates more national capabilities through modernization, its provision of public goods to Africa has been steadily growing and diversifying since its start in 1955, in contrast to the gradually declining Western provision. ⁶⁶

Most recently, there is an emerging scholarly trend in Chinese academia that quantitively measures and demonstrates China’s contribution to African modernization. A few relevant articles appeared in the most prominent IR journal in Chinese academia, World Economy and Politics, reasoning (in line with afore-reviewed research) that African development is catalyzed through China’s own modernization pursuit. One article argues that in the 21st century, Chinese and African industrial developments have grown increasingly complementary. ⁶⁷ China’s industrial upgrade boosts African states’ industrial manufacturing capabilities, further integrating them into the global value chain. Another article ⁶⁸ examines local perceptions of the effectiveness in fostering economic development of Chinese aid to Tanzania and that of the World Bank. It observes that Chinese aid projects are perceived as more effective since they are more tailored to African society’s demands for tangible economic well-being. These empirically grounded works further consolidate an understanding that African modernization is driven by China.

Writings by varied scholars above reflect a common trend in the academia – yearning for modernity has clearly embossed on Chinese intellectuals’ worldviews, heavily shaping and conditioning their criticality and reflexivity towards ‘the international as enlightened’. They share the consensus that, while the approach to modernization is context-contingent, China, Africa, and the West share the pursuit of modernity as the ultimate developmental goal. This implies that Africa should modernize along China’s path. Furthermore, they reflect a broader, present trend in Chinese academia that the Chinese modernization style is more superior and moral than the Western one, echoing with the consensus among Chinese intellectuals at the turn of the 20th century. ⁶⁹ While this can be seen as an opposition to Western-centric linearity in some way, it also implies that the momentum for Africa’s modernization is exogenous, powered by Chinese industrialization achievements and knowledge dissemination. Rarely, if ever, have these works entertained the possibility of Africa achieving endogenous development, without relying on inputs from China or the West. They are short in elaborating on how exactly African actors have actively co-constituted the modern world order with their active contribution and their agency of searching for their own modernization path in an endogenous manner. While the modernization drive for Africa needs to come from China, the modernization of China is assumed to be self-generated, given the scarcity of discussions on China’s modernization as driven by varied external inputs of foreign capital, technology and experts.

The UCD theory underlines the interactions and inter-relatedness of unevenly developed entities and regions in co-constituting and co-driving global development. ⁷⁰ Understood in relation to UCD, Chinese scholarly discourses most visibly lack appreciation for the non-linear conceptualization of global history. The majority of Chinese IR scholarship also underexplore the inter-relatedness among entities as in co-constituting the modern world. While much has been written on Africa’s developmental prospect, rarely, if ever, these works engage in serious analytical discussions on the possibility of Africa societies achieving non-linear development, for example, directly arriving at a much more advanced developmental phase by drawing from other regions’ development. This is surprising, given how much the People’s Republic of China [PRC] own communist revolution trajectory drew from Russian revolution experiences based on the idea of combined and uneven development, which illustrates it is not always necessary to strictly follow a linear trajectory. ⁷¹ This further underlines a notion of Sino-centric linearity while rejecting the Western-centric epistemic whiteness.

The Logic of Resistance

Chinese IR scholarship unanimously critiques the West’s exploitation and subjugation of Africa both in colonial and post-colonial times, attributing the latter’s underdevelopment to the former. Albeit rare, there are also insightful attempts of theorizing the political agency of African states and Sino-African post-colonial solidarity. However, most works foreground the contrasting positionality between Africa and the West, as the powerless victim versus the mighty perpetrator. On their critiques of the micro-foundation of the global racial hierarchy through everyday racism, the majority of Chinese IR scholarship only problematizes anti-Black racism as racial and cultural ignorance at the individual level. Existing works rarely tackle the underlying ideational dynamics inducive of racism, for example, the curious entanglement of social Darwinism legacies and a post-colonial yearning for modernization. Consequently, academic discussions on resistance against racism are absent.

Many critique that the West’s advanced position in the modern world was enacted through exploitation (a process in which the West also underdeveloped Africa, borrowing Rodney’s ⁷² terms) and later secured by their domineering role at its core. Critiques like this reflect a consensus among Chinese IR scholars, since others similarly emphasize the lineage between predatory colonial exploitation and post-independence subjugation of Africa. For example, it has been rightfully revealed that the making of the modern world is centred around racial injustices and exploitation. ⁷³ In particular, the under-development of Africa is due to the intensity and extent of foreign intervention, characterized by slave trade, chronical colonial rule and post-independence external interference from the West. ⁷⁴ Another article argues that the US post-Cold War foreign aids to Africa are mostly motivated by strategic goals of political interests and energy security, which explains why United States aid concentrates on countries with rich resources, neglecting those with few resources or heavy debts and are in greater need of foreign aid. ⁷⁵ It underlines the hypocrisy of Western states, ⁷⁶

Foreign aid also serves the national and global interests of Western countries, reflecting their foreign policy orientation, strategic intentions and values . . . During the Cold War, the United States competed with the Soviet Union for the Third World countries; it provided economic assistance to even the most corrupt and brutal regimes, such as the Mobutu regime in Zaire. . . ⁷⁷

Likewise, through the cases of Niger and Côte d’Ivoire, scholars argue that the Western dominance in Africa did not cease after African states’ independence through the erosion of the sovereignty of African states. ⁷⁸ One of the examples being that independence-minded African leaders have been assassinated, overthrown after coups and exiled since national independence.

These writings commonly foreground the political positionality between the West and Africa (albeit both homogenously perceived) in contrasting, dichotomous terms. They portray the West as the self-centred donor, the aggressive entrepreneur and the imperial perpetrator, whereas Africa as the wanting aid recipient, the miserably exploited and the post-colonial victim. While this exposes the imperial nature of post-colonial IR realities, it reinforces the racialized dichotomy of a powerfully perpetrating West and an agency-less, victimized Africa, because there lacks meaningful, further elaboration on African agency to resist these injustices in their analysis.

Most insightfully, another publication offers an interpretation of the Angola model (i.e. Angola’s exchange of natural resources for China’s financing of infrastructure projects) through the agency perspective. It considers the model as ‘an agreement achieved under the frameworks of two national governments, which is an opposition and resistance (对抗) against the Western-dominated global liberal capitalist market logic in itself’. ⁷⁹ It underlines the de jure equal status of China and Angola as two fully sovereign countries, and that they have full agency to make political-economic arrangements for themselves. With an optimistic tone, the structural preponderance of international class hierarchies is challenged, by focusing on resistance at the agent level, thereby touching upon the agency and emancipation potentials of non-Western states.

This interpretation of economic cooperation through the agency perspective breaks away from the cliché debate of whether Chinese modernization experiences or Western ones are better suited to African contexts. The said debate not only objectifies Africa as a mere field of Sino-Western ideological competition, revealing a sense of strategic anxiety, ⁸⁰ but, more importantly, conceptually strips African states of their agency in deciding on their developmental plans, paths and partners.

Furthermore, acknowledging that the global racial hierarchy is consolidated by the global capitalist system through a neoliberal logic, ⁸¹ collaborative resistance from the non-West is called for. This interpretation thus eloquently reiterates the possibility of post-colonial solidarity of resistance. Yet, in its current formulation, the positionality of China and Africa differ significantly in the global capitalist system, as ‘Africa has been demoted to the Fourth World in the globalization system, whereas China has grown into the engine of global economy’. ⁸² Africa is seen as the victim of Western exploitation, juxtaposed with China, the agential driving force of greater global integration. A noticeable tension thus exists between the political agency of Angola and China that are on par in negotiating economic agreements and resisting Western dominance, and their differentiated economic agency due to their distinct optionality in the global economic system.

Scholarly critiques of everyday racism as the micro-foundations of IR are another site for critical examination of epistemic whiteness. Some attribute Chinese racism against Africans to cultural ignorance and certain individuals’ national chauvinism,

Due to the impact of modernization and commercialization, the good old [cultural] traditions of Chinese and African nations are being challenged and fading away . . . Take Chinese companies in Africa as an example, some companies are dishonest and do not fulfil legal obligations. . . Some Chinese in Africa have national chauvinism and discriminate against Black people, . . . showing extreme contempt to Africans. . . Moreover, Chinese people are generally unreligious, . . . finding some religious rituals and practices of Africans exaggerated and incredible. Therefore, the most common phenomenon is that many Chinese people in Africa do not have an adequate understanding of local culture and customs, not respecting African traditions and behaviours enough. . . ⁸³

There appears to be little reflection of the global racial hierarchy and its local ramifications among Chinese agents, which were deeply intertwined with China’s revolutionary and reformist agendas in the early 20th century. Furthermore, there is an implied notion that racism is almost a capitalist, developmental sin, as it is ‘the impact of modernization and commercialization’ that leads to the waning of ‘the good old cultural tradition’. ⁸⁴ This idea risks reducing the racial inequality to class factors and is analytically unhelpful. ⁸⁵

The mainstream of Chinese IR discourses on Sino-African relations largely embraces this cultural ignorance thesis, commonly refusing to dive deeper into the underlying ideational structure of racism. One article problematizes a paradox that despite the extensive economic and cultural exchanges among China and African countries, Chinese people do not know much about Africa, even after the first Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing in 2006. ⁸⁶ Illustrating with public polling data, it shows that many Chinese harbour partial (片面) impressions and discriminative stereotypes of Africa, characterized by ‘poor and underdeveloped’, ‘AIDS’ and ‘hunger’, ‘primitiveness’, ‘wars and conflicts-ridden’, followed by more positive labels such as ‘friendly’, ‘enthusiastic’ and ‘energetic’. ⁸⁷ However, instead of exploring the institutional or societal dynamics underlying these stereotypes, its analysis stops short at the individual level and attributes this to some Chinese people’s lack of understanding.

One of the most severe incidents exemplary of everyday racism is probably the anti-Black protests in major Chinese cities of Tianjin and Nanjing targeting African students in the late 1980s. One of the protests occurred after a Chinese campus guard confronted two African students at Hohai University when the latter tried to invite Chinese females to their dormitories on Christmas Eve, evolving into a physical conflict and massive protests among Chinese public afterwards and leading to foreign governments evacuating African students. ⁸⁸

Echoing with the cultural ignorance thesis, Chinese academic discourses deny the racist nature of these protests. ⁸⁹ The trigger of these protests was interpreted as ‘the unfamiliarity or resentment of Chinese people with African male students’ being intimate with Chinese female youths, . . . a natural phenomenon for people with different values’. ⁹⁰ Words like ‘unfamiliarity’ and ‘a natural phenomenon’ downplay the severe extent of the racist hatred shown during the protests, especially given the hateful slogans such as ‘Down with the “Black Devils”’ (打倒黑鬼) used. ⁹¹ This cultural ignorance thesis does not critique the underlying gendered racial anxiety about African masculinities threatening Chinese ones either – after all, it was African male students in romantic relationships with Chinese women that were targeted.

Discussions along this line mirror the ongoing academic debate (both in Chinese and international academia) on whether racism underlies China’s interactions with Africa. Many seem to agree that racialization, rather than racism, better captures Chinese racialized subject-positioning vis-à-vis Africa. It is argued that the lack of racial learning contributes to racism against Black Africans in China; Chinese (problematic ways of) racialization of Africans is attributed to the persistent white supremacy and Western racial ideology in popular media. ⁹² Similarly, a distinction between racism and the ignorance of race is made. ⁹³ Others arrive at the same conclusion by historicizing racism, illustrating that since there was no record of institutional racism in China, critiques of Chinese Afrophobia and anti-black racism ‘runs the risk of equating the experiences of black people in China with the institutionalized violence against people of colour and indigenous people in the American continent and elsewhere’. ⁹⁴ Admittedly, the institutionalized violence and racial injustice that combined slavery and colonialism in Western Europe and North America are categorically different from xenophobia and cultural racism in other contexts, equating the two risks trivializing the former. ⁹⁵ Nonetheless, racism can be present across different cultural, political and historical contexts, and can exist separately from racialized dispossessions, enslavement and extractive exploitation in European-American colonialism. Under-acknowledgement of racism reveals a certain degree of denialism.

Others disagree and argue that ‘anti-African racism reflected the mindset of Chinese educated elites and students who regarded Africans as racially inferior yet were upset by China’s own lack of modernization’. ⁹⁶ For them, the anti-Black protests on Chinese campuses in the 1980s reveal the resentment of Chinese intellectuals (and students alike) against PRC’s foreign aid policies in the high socialist years, which ‘had wasted China’s resources, [made China] all[y] with backward nations and scarified their own people’s – especially intellectuals’ – material benefits’. ⁹⁷ This resentment is then associated with ‘the social Darwinist global racial hierarchy’, formulated first among Chinese late Qing reformers such as Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei at the turn of 20th century, who illustrated that the White and Yellow races are superior to other races, with Blacks as the most inferior one. ⁹⁸

While I agree with the view that China’s valorization and yearning for modernization – shaped and modified by the global racial hierarchy – fuel its domestic racism against African people, ⁹⁹ I question the attribution of racism to a loosely defined, un-refined use of the term ‘social Darwinism’. Admittedly, social Darwinism can be traced in the Chinese society today. ¹⁰⁰ Nevertheless, I disagree with the static view among existing research that social Darwinism has been persistently dominant in China ¹⁰¹ or that what we see is a mere reproduction of white supremacy. ¹⁰² This underexplores how the traction of social Darwinism fluctuates as the political and societal landscape changed across PRC history but also negates the post-colonial agency (which is not necessarily anti-racist) of instrumentally adopting prevalent international socio-political thoughts for the sake of advancing their own development and negotiating their own positionality in the global racial hierarchy. For example, the first two decades of PRC history witnessed systematic, officially mandated efforts to foreground Afro-Sino solidarity through pro-African and pro-Black discourses, both through propaganda campaigns targeting international and domestic audiences ¹⁰³ and in Mao Zedong’s own foreign policy rhetoric. A pertinent example is Mao’s conversation with the Youth Delegation of sub-Saharan Africa,

Western imperialists consider themselves to be civilized and call the oppressed barbarous. However, . . . it is Europe that has occupied Africa. Can this be called civilized? Europe is inferior to Africa; it occupies other people’s territory. . . . [W]e have always been civilized, and so have you. . . . The imperialists are prone to castigate us as being dirty, unclean, and unhygienic. I don’t think this is necessarily correct. We are cleaner. We must have self-confidence and despise European and American imperialism. ¹⁰⁴

Furthermore, Chinese foreign aid policies to Africa underwent a drastic change. Compared to Mao’s early years, aid to Africa since Deng Xiaoping’s leadership were significantly downplayed, remolded by cost-benefit calculations. ¹⁰⁵ In fact, ideas purporting this change might have been already underway in late Mao’s times. Mao’s sudden decision to seek rapprochement with the United States and his ‘the three worlds theory’ of imagining international hierarchies in developmentalist terms already indicated the pivot of the focus of China’s foreign relations from the developing Global South to the more developed world. ¹⁰⁶

While I do not fully agree that anti-Black racism in China is fueled by social Darwinism, this interpretation nonetheless inspired some crucial observations. Chinese intellectuals regularly display a tendency of instrumentally using racist discourses to rally popular support for their political campaigns – as it was for the purpose to launch a reform against the Imperial Qing in the 1890s and for the goal of democratizing China in the 1990s. In both instances, the widely shared desire for modernization fuels Chinese racism against Africans. As long as Chinese worldview is based upon an underlying linear notion of historical progression towards modernity, topped with the internalization of an international hierarchy where states’ positionality is marked by their modernization progress, China’s gendered and racialized imagination of Africa would consistently be governed by the same modernity logic.

In summary, as a general pattern, mainland Chinese scholarly works fail to systematically critique the global racial hierarchy or to reflect upon the desire for modernity in provoking racism. Insomuch as the racism is excused as individual acts and exceptional cases, there logically follows no urgency of resistance.