Racial Identities in China: Context and Meaning

Abstract

This yellow river, it so happens, bred a nation identified by its yellow skin pigment. Moreover, this nation also refers to its earliest ancestor as the Yellow Emperor. Today, on the face of the earth, of every five human beings there is one that is a descendant of the Yellow Emperor.

China's recruitment of African university students: policy efficacy and unintended outcomes

“…In one of the few surveys that have been done on the topic, Sandra Gillespie asserts that African students in China are generally dissatisfied with their university studies, with less than half of the respondents rating their overall academic experience as 'good' or 'excellent' (Gillespie 2001, 124). Several studies have attended specifically to how racial identities in China affect the relations between African and Chinese students and generate recurring conflicts on Chinese university campuses (Dikötter 1994;Sautman 1994). By contrast, research by Dong and Chapman (2008) asserts that African scholarship holders are largely satisfied with their experiences in China and promotes a positive view of the potential for strengthening friendships with African countries through educational programmes.…”

Social Theory after the Internet

“…Nationalist populism is not new in China (Dikötter 1994). The 1988 multi-part television documentary 'River Elegy' attracted hitherto unprecedented audience levels and generated much debate.…”

Placing Race, Culture, and the State in Chinese National Identity: Han, Hua, or Zhongguo?

“…Ho () described an intellectual movement of racial nationalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to build “a myth of a uniform ‘Han race’, with a common descent and culture, in order to create a sense of national feeling among the diverse people of the Chinese empire” using the concept of the family ( jia 家) to underline China's national unity. Dikötter (, p. 406) examined attempts to naturalize cultural differences between groups of people and offered a variety of racially tinged and biologically specific nationalist terms used in the 19th century by intellectuals like Kang Youwei: lineage or clan ( zu 族), seed, breed, type, or race ( zhong 种), type of lineage ( zulei 族类), nationality or race ( minzu 民族), breed or race ( zhongzu 种族), and human breed or human race ( renzhong 人种).…”

“…National strengthening through racial affinity degenerated into a discourse on biology and particularly imagined skin color, following the Western emphasis on primary racial groups with innate characteristics capable of scientific calculations. Although Europeans first referred to Chinese as white, with some brown in the south, they would later be associated with the color yellow, which had profound cultural resonance (Dikötter, , p. 408). Yellow was one of the five “pure” colors in China, represented the Emperor of the Middle Kingdom and the ancestral home of the “descendants of the Yellow Emperor” who were thought to have originated in the valley of the Yellow River, and symbolized fame and progress (Dikötter, , p. 407).…”