The Han saviour behind the blackface: racialised and gendered media representations in Africa–China popular geopolitics

The cultural politics of race in Chinese cinema: Nationalism and the changing representation of whiteness in Big Shot’s Funeral and Crazy Alien

“…In Castillo’s analysis of black representations in China, he describes “the replacement of whiteness” as “a discursive effort to replace white bodies with Asian/Chinese bodies in a geopolitical scheme.” (Castillo, 2021, p. 436). In the case of blackness, Chinese media is increasingly adopting tropes and rhetorics such as “Chinese men saving African women”, to articulate a hegemonic Chineseness superior to other racial identities.…”

“…However, globally, whiteness still holds incomparably more privilege than emerging hegemonic Chineseness. Thus, such a “replacement of whiteness” is understood by him as an “emerging pattern” (Castillo, 2021, p. 436). From Big Shot’s Funeral and Crazy Alien , we can also clearly see the attempt to replace whiteness with Chineseness.…”

“…As China emerged as a global economic power and an immigrant nation, more and more scholarly attention has been paid to the issue of race and racism in China. In examining the social constructions of different non-Chinese racial categories, such scholarship has primarily focused on blackness, by examining pre-modern Chinese perceptions of blackness (Wilensky, 2002), Sino-Africa relations (Castillo, 2021), the Chinese state's migration policy (Lan, 2015), popular media (Castillo, 2021;Cheng, 2011;Pfafman et al, 2015;Zhou, 2023), African migrants' experiences in China (Castillo, 2014(Castillo, , 2016Lan, 2019;Mathews et al, 2017;Wilczek, 2018), and interracial romance and marriage (Zhou, 2023).…”

“…Meanwhile, the cultural representations of Africans in China and Sino-African relations increasingly position China as the source of modernity for Africans. Here, China and the Chinese seem to replace whiteness and Western civilization (Castillo, 2021). Recently, China's nationalist sentiments have risen to a new high due to the US-China trade war and the global outbreak of COVID-19.…”

“…The desirability of Chinese masculinity for non-Chinese women is a frequently used trope to articulate racial dynamics in Chinese media 1 . In Castillo’s analysis of racialized and gendered representations of Africans in China, he points out that African women are often staged as wanting to marry Chinese men to “escape the traditions” at home and “enter modernity” (Castillo, 2021, p. 429). This image boosts the nationalist imagination of China and the Chinese as being advanced, open, and therefore implicitly superior to African countries and people.…”