Epistemic injustice and neo-racism: how Zhihu users portray ‘Chinese doctoral supervisors’ working in Western academia

Abstract

The image of Chinese doctoral supervisors working in Western academia is riddled with stereotypes in urban myths but little research to date has been conducted on these portrayals of Chinese supervisors. Drawing on postcolonial theories, including notions of epistemic injustice and neo-racism, this research conducts a thematic analysis on around 450 Zhihu comments. It proposes that the Zhihu community has portrayed three images of the Chinese supervisors as (1) ambitious and supportive, (2) sneaky and exploitative, and (3) colonised. While the second and third images are more negative, the first image is overwhelmingly positive. In portraying these images of the Chinese supervisors, the community confronted two main underlying structural forces. These include (1) a steep ethnic/racial hierarchy where White middle-class, native speakers of English dominate and (2) an unequal classed sphere within Western academia. This paper argues that this Zhihu community displayed profound yet only partial recognition of the steep ethnic/racial hierarchy due to their internalisation of their own linguistic inferiority. Moreover, this Zhihu community perpetuates neo-racism and epistemic injustice over Chinese supervisors and postgraduate research students from working-class and rural backgrounds. Among the first to examine how Chinese doctoral supervisors are portrayed in online communities, this article provides informative insights for prospective postgraduate research applicants as well as admission professionals in Western academia. The neo-racism and epistemic injustice identified can also feed into future work on Diversity and Equality as well as decolonising efforts. Conceptually, this article innovates by combining neo-racism and epistemic injustice to form a framework that furnishes a comprehensive examination of unjust practices and portrayals in the realms of racial and knowledge inequalities in doctoral supervision. This article thus makes empirical and conceptual contributions to critical studies in international and doctoral education.