China is very good at playing both the West and the race card, as evidenced by Beijing’s claim that President Trump’s China travel ban is “racist.” But racism is something the Chinese know a lot about. Just ask the black people living in China — if you want to call it living.
In fact, living on the streets is what African residents in Guangzhou, southern China, have found themselves doing after “renters arbitrarily evicted them, hotels banned them, and restaurants refused to serve them food,” reports Breitbart.
This is happening because “many Chinese in Guangzhou are blaming Africans from [sic] the Chinese virus,” the site continues. “Multiple outlets, citing locals in Guangzhou, reported that the government has begun arbitrary Chinese coronavirus testing of black people and ordered restaurants and other service businesses not to serve black people. Many who were tested say they are not giving [sic] any results, so they have no idea if they are coronavirus carriers. Others say they are told they tested negative, but are still forced into what amounts to house arrest — and note that the Chinese of Guangzhou are not facing similar treatment.”
The Chinese claim that a cluster of cases, at least eight, are linked to people who’ve spent time in Guangzhou’s Nigerian community, known as “Little Africa.” Five of these are Nigerian nationals who allegedly broke quarantine, raising the ire of local Chinese.
Moreover, of the 114 “imported” Wuhan virus cases (as of Thursday), 16 are reportedly accounted for by Africans; the rest are Chinese nationals returning home.
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It isn’t clear whether blacks residing in China have a higher infection rate than non-blacks, as is the case in the United States; in fact, nothing about China’s numbers are clear because its government has been lying about the disease from the beginning.
What is clear is that the infection began in China — because of the nation’s culture, governmental incompetence and corruption, or both — and then spread worldwide largely if not entirely because Beijing covered the epidemic up. The regime has blood on its hands.
Now the government has more injustice on its hands, too. “I’ve been sleeping under the bridge for four days with no food to eat…. I cannot buy food anywhere, no shops or restaurants will serve me,” France 24 quotes Ugandan student Tony Mathias, who was forced from his apartment last Monday, as stating.
“‘We’re like beggars on the street,’ the 24-year-old said” (video below, courtesy of Breitbart).
France 24 also relates the plight of a Nigerian businessman evicted from his flat last week. “Everywhere the police see us, they will come and pursue us and tell us to go home,” he said. “But where can we go?”
Then there’s “Thiam, an exchange student from Guinea,” France 24 writes, who “said police ordered him to stay home on Tuesday even after he tested negative for Covid-19 and told officers he had not left China in almost four years.”
Breitbart further relates, summarizing:
“Even if we have a negative test result, police don’t let us stay (in our accommodation) and they don’t give a reason why,” another Nigerian identified as Denny told AFP [France 24].
AFP found evidence that all black people, not only those from Africa, faced similar treatment [in] the city.
“There’s just this crazy fear that anybody who’s African might have been in contact with somebody who was sick,” a black Canadian told AFP.
Kenyan newspapers have also noted that Chinese social media — heavily controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and purged of any content Beijing disagrees with — have become home to “a torrent of abuse online, with many Chinese Internet users posting racist comments and calling for all Africans to be deported.”
Realize that many, if not most, of the blacks in China are present because of predatory deals China made with African nations, nations that are part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); this is the fascist Chinese’s (no, they’re not “communist” anymore) scheme to dominate the world’s shipping and transit routes.
Yet China is taking advantage of the African nations and, furthermore, sometimes treats Africans as second-class citizens in their own lands. There’s also no shortage of articles about Chinese anti-black racism, such as the pieces here, here, here, and here. (Of course, there are many articles about American anti-black racism, too, but in China’s case it’s not entirely imaginary.)
To understand this racialist mentality is to better grasp the true threat China poses globally. It isn’t only that Beijing’s totalitarian regime doesn’t have to worry about an ACLU lawsuit. It’s also not just that its nation has nothing approximating Western political correctness (as the 2016 commercial below, which evoked much anger, evidences). It’s that China’s general mentality still aligns with what has historically been common: considering one’s own culture and race superior.
The Telegraph’s Kevin Myers wrote about this attitude in his 2003 article “The giant who lives at 590 Yongia Road”:
Nothing in human history compares with the spellbinding phenomenon of Chinese genius, Chinese vision and a uniquely Chinese scale being simultaneously harnessed towards the one goal: the restoration of Chinese hegemony over the known world. This is the position which all Chinese leaders, from the Emperor Ch’in to Mao, have felt to be rightfully theirs.
…One would never judge modern Rome’s potential by the precedents set by the Caesars, nor use the conduct of the Aztecs as a useful guide to Peru’s intentions. But China is different, because it has repeatedly been in the forefront of human endeavour; and its multi-millennia-long continuities are deeply embedded within the consciousness of those who govern it. Moreover, the Chinese are more than nationalistic; they are a people for whom the concept of Herrenvolk is not some passing and malign idiosyncrasy, but a defining condition of identity. To their eyes we are barbarians whose historical eminence is due entirely to our infuriating mastery of the savage arts of war.
…Racial superciliousness remains deep within the character of the Chinese people, as their economic take-off occurs.
Yet, ironically, China also celebrates unofficially — though it was an official holiday in Nationalist China between 1927 and 1940 — something called “National Humiliation Day” (on September 18, currently). It marks the nation’s “century of humiliation” at foreigners’ hands.
This not only reflects China’s pagan cultural imperative concerning not “losing face,” but also illustrates why Beijing is so dangerous: It has a huge chip on its shoulder.
In fact, superciliousness combined with humiliation can be a deadly mix. People deriving their self-worth in whole or in part from the idea they’re members of a special, superior group will experience wounded pride and ego-rage when their group is bested by another. They then will want to salve that wound by demonstrating their perceived superiority and dominating those who dared expose it as illusion. Put simply, China is dangerous partially because it’s got too much to prove.
It’s a dark and troubling picture. The only good news is that if the nation’s racism is like everything else made in China, it won’t last.
Image: screenshot from YouTube video
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
