Martin Jacques - When China Rules the World

The rioting, destruction and burning of Han property, and resulting Han deaths, which were shown repeatedly on Chinese television, led to a wave of anger and indignation across China. The consequence was to stoke up further Han resentment against the Tibetans and potentially lay the basis for more draconian measures, although the government, concerned about the effect the riots might have on international opinion in the build-up to the Olympics, agreed to reopen talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama. It is inconceivable that Tibet will ever be granted independence — which is not a demand of the Dalai Lama in any case — given China ’s attitude towards its unity and the strategic importance of Tibet. In fact, it is not difficult to sketch out the terms of a potential settlement: the Dalai Lama would renounce his vast territorial claims to Greater Tibet, which are spurious in any event, and refrain from continuing his Western-orientated anti-Chinese campaign, while the Chinese would allow the Dalai Lama to return to Lhasa as spiritual leader, grant limited self-rule and genuine religious and cultural autonomy, while restricting Han migration. There is a precedent for such an approach: Hu Yaobang, the former secretary of the Communist Party, visited Tibet in 1980 and apologized for the behaviour of the previous thirty years, promising more autonomy and less direct Chinese rule in Tibet, although nothing materialized. [793] [793] Sun Shuyun, A Year in Tibet , p. 66. In practice, the kind of settlement outlined would mark a huge change not just in the policy of the Communist government but more importantly in age-old Han attitudes towards ethnic minorities.

Claims that racism is common in Chinese societies are invariably greeted with a somewhat indignant denial, as if it was a slur against the Chinese. [794] [794] Many have remarked on what they see as the racism of Chinese societies and communities. Howard Gardner, the American educationalist, writes: ‘As a group, the Chinese tend to be ethnocentric, xenophobic and racist. Most people prefer to be with their own kind… but few have come to feel as strongly about this separatism over the millennia as the Han’ ( To Open Minds (New York: Basic Books, 1989), p. 130). Colin Mackerras suggests: ‘Many Chinese care little for the minorities, let alone their cultures, and tend to look down on them’ (‘What is China?’, p. 221). Lucian Pye writes: ‘The most pervasive underlying Chinese emotion is a profound, unquestioned, generally unshakeable identification with historical greatness… This is all so-evident that they are hardly aware when they are being superior to others’ ( The Spirit of Chinese Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harward University Press, 1992), p. 50). Chen Kuan-Hsing warns: ‘Han Chinese racism will be a regional, if not global, problem’ (‘Notes on Han Chinese Racism’). In a very interesting — and rather unusual — exchange between Chinese-Malaysians on a Malaysian website, which was initiated by a writer who attacked Chinese racism, one participant wrote: ‘[the claim] that racism had been an element in China’s 5,000 years civilization is intellectually ignorant and by selling such unfounded statements to the non-Chinese and to Chinese friends who read no classical Chinese, it is dangerous.’ Another wrote: ‘The Chinese have been persecuted and been victims of racism the world over. We certainly don’t need our own kind to accuse us of racism.’ [795] [795] www.malaysiakini.com/letters/33156 also 33115. Other discussions include: http://shanghai.asiaxpat.com/forums/speakerscorner/threads/65529.asp; http: www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?s=982bfbe08a75508b7a9de 815588c6f12&showtopic=9760&st=15&p=4788117entry4788117

The standard view amongst most Chinese, indeed, is that they are not racist, that racism is essentially what happens to the Chinese in Western societies, and that Chinese societies are more or less unaffected by it. [796] [796] Johnson, Race and Racism in the Chinas , pp. 7, 94. To cite one example of many, in 1988 the then general secretary of the Communist Party, Zhao Ziyang, told a meeting on national unity that racial discrimination is common ‘everywhere in the world except in China ’. [797] [797] Sautman, ‘Myths of Descent’, p. 75.

The pervasiveness of racism applies not only to China but also to Taiwan, [798] [798] Chen, ‘Notes on Han Chinese Racism’. There is little difference between racial attitudes in China and Taiwan; Johnson, Race and Racism in the Chinas , pp. 4, 42-3. Singapore, Hong Kong and even the overseas Chinese communities. Thus it is not simply a function of parochialism, of China ’s limited contact with the outside world. Take Hong Kong, for example, which, in contrast to China, has enjoyed a highly cosmopolitan history as a result of colonialism. Although in 2001 the then chief executive Tung Chee-hwa typically described racism as a minor problem, requiring no more than an extremely low-budget, low-profile educational campaign, in fact, it is endemic amongst the Hong Kong Chinese, who comprise around 96 per cent of the population. [799] [799] For example, Barry Sautman and Ellen Kneehans, ‘The Politics of Racial Discrimination in Hong Kong’, Maryland Series in Contemporary Asian Studies , 2 (2000); and Kelley Loper, ‘Cultivating a Multicultural Society and Combating Racial Discrimination in Hong Kong ’, Civic Exchange , August 2001. In a survey of South-East Asians, South Asians and Africans in Hong Kong conducted by the Society of Community Organizations in 2001, around one-third said they had been turned down for a job on the basis of their ethnicity, a similar proportion had been refused rental of a flat, one-third reported that the police discriminated against them on the streets, while nearly half had experienced racial discrimination in hospital. [800] [800] Sautman and Kneehans, ‘The Politics of Racial Discrimination in Hong Kong ’, p. 17. The most common targets are foreign ‘helpers’, usually known as ‘maids’, mainly Filipinas and Indonesians, who are frequently required by their Chinese domestic employers to work absurdly long hours, are treated abysmally, paid little, granted scant freedom, and, in a significant minority of cases, subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Their conditions not infrequently resemble a latter-day form of indentured labour, as is also true in Singapore and Malaysia. [801] [801] Ibid., pp. 73-6. Thirteen per cent of Hong Kong families with children of twelve or older employ a foreign domestic worker; according to a survey by the Asian Migrant Centre, almost a quarter were abused; South China Morning Post , 15 February 2001. ‘Malaysian Jailed for Maid Attacks’, 27 November 2008, posted on www.bbc.co.uk/news.

It might reasonably be argued that Hong Kong Chinese racism is a legacy of British rule. After they took possession of the colony following the First Opium War, the British practised systemic racism: English was the sole official language until 1974, the Chinese were prohibited from living in the exclusive Peak area from 1902, there was a miscellany of petty apartheid laws — such as the requirement, until 1897, that Chinese carry night passes — and they were excluded from high-level public employment until as late as the 1970s and, in some departments, until the mid 1990s. [802] [802] Sautman and Kneehans, ‘The Politics of Racial Discrimination in Hong Kong ’, pp. 21- 4. With a truly breathtaking disregard for the truth, in 1994 the British had the gall to claim that ‘racial discrimination in Hong Kong is not a problem’. [803] [803] Ibid., p. 12. The fact that racism was the currency of British rule only encouraged the Chinese to behave in a similar way towards those whom they regarded to be their inferiors, namely those of darker skin. It would be naive, however, to think that British behaviour was the main cause of Chinese racism: it was clearly a contributory factor, but the fundamental reason lies in Chinese history and culture. After a major campaign in response to the death, in 2000, of Harinder Veriah, a Malaysian of Indian descent, who complained about serious racial discrimination in a Hong Kong hospital, the government was finally forced to acknowledge that racism was a serious problem and in 2008, mainly as a result of this case, belatedly introduced anti-racist legislation for the first time. [804] [804] www.harinderveriah.com/articles.html. But Hong Kong, cosmopolitan and international as it is, remains an essentially biracial city, with whites enjoying a privileged status, along with the Chinese, and those of darker skin banished to the margins as second-class residents or migrant workers. [805] [805] In fact, Indians have been living in Hong Kong since 1841.