Self-Hating Chinese - Causes and Effects

Ever heard of the term 'Self-hating Chinese?' A similar term 'Self hating Jew,' first coined by Theodor Lessing  is commonly applied to the overseas Jews support of the anti-Zionist movement, but can such a term be applied to the Chinese?

Politically, taking China as an analogous example to Israel, there are Chinese who vociferously oppose the Communist Party's policies.  E.g, human rights violatee’s, anti-Communists, Taiwanese, Pro-Democracy movement, Fa Lun Gong, Hmong, Uighurs, Free Tibet movement, dissidents, animal rights etc etc. These often side with non-Chinese in anti-Chinese protests, these are palpable examples with an agenda...but there are many social examples of self-hating Chinese devoid of political motivation.

I first came across this phenomenon in an White area, a group of whites and a Chinese (assume was BBC) who was pestilentially  white washed, openly anti-Chinese lambasted racial slurs in front of his White friends to impress them, encouraging the whites to incite Sinophobic hatred against another Chinese (probably a FOB). I made sense of this some years later in an interview with Tony Underwood, the half Chinese English Rugby international, he admitted he behaved similarly growing up in a White environment, he tried to be as white as possible, removing all traces of his Chineseness, when his ethnicity was questioned at school, he denied he was half Chinese, denied  his mother was Chinese and distanced himself from other Chinese students, he was that ashamed to even recognise or mention the word Chinese. This psychological behaviour is attributed to 'internalised oppression,' it  is not uncommon amongst self-hating Chinese living in the West especially mixed race Eurasians.

Enculturation and Western Hegemony

In a recent TV education broadcast in Hong Kong, a student posed a question to a leading Chinese female educationalist regarding methods to improve HK education, her reply was "improve your English and use English more often." It's a repetitive theme over recent times in the Far East, an obsession with spoken English as a yardstick to measure how modern or developed a society is or how high class an individual is, an enculturated Chinese version of the Jones's - 'keeping up with the Tsang's,' of which graduation from a English speaking western independent school or British university is of paramount importance. Chinese students form the second largest international student community at Oxford. It’s well documented in Hong Kong the poor English speakers tend to be lower-middle class and hire Cantonese speaking Indonesian maids, whereas the more fluent English speakers are middle-upper class hiring English speaking maids from the Philippines.

The dominant West cannot be underestimated, English is the number one international language for business, almost every country globally teaches English, reads western literature, watches western movies, listens to western music, wears western clothes, aspires to have western living standards and western values of individualism etc. What is a person under pressure from this onslaught suppose to do? The corollary to non-resistance is panderence to the West, an acceptance or justification for inferiority, 'if you can't beat them join them.' They are victims with no sense of pride in being Chinese, their collective identity, pride, self-worth is lost amidst western propaganda, diatribe and abuse, the only way is the western way.

To illustrate a modern example involving mainland Chinese, I draw your attention to twin website's Chinasmack and ChinaHush.

These websites selectively choose sensationalist  articles from China's press and translates them into English in the process distorting China as a backward uncivilized nation full of aggressive megalomaniacs, corruption, selfishness, and chaos with nothing positive going for it. But who are their target audience? Who are its main readers? ChinaHush has 2,259 fans on Facebook, 243 fans on google (as of Aug 29, 2010), yet, only a minority are Chinese, they are predominantly non-Chinese foreigners. Why would a China website have non-Chinese fans? After all, unlike Korea or Japan with their weeaboo's, China does not attract non-Chinese fangirls or fanboys. It's quite simple, they are following the site because they abhor  China and Chinese people, scan the comments posted at the bottom of the articles, they’re chocker blocked full of standard Western anti-Chinese racial slurs and derogatory terms. These two websites have become a focal point for a community of anti-Chinese to justify their abhorrence of Chinese people. The more pessimistic articles the website churns out about China, the greater the hatred against Chinese people and the Chinese government. The question has to be asked...why would the founder's of the site submissively tolerate such abuse of their own country and their own race and make no attempt to resist or defend their own race or country? One possible answer lies in the website Founder's statement below...

http://www.chinahush.com/about/

...Founder/Author: Key

"I am a Chinese American. I always tell my friends that I am exactly half Chinese and half American, because I have literally spent half my life in the US and half my life in China. So why did I start ChinaHush? There are several selfish reasons. When I first came to the U.S., my mother forbade me from reading Chinese literature, watching Chinese TV shows, and listening to Chinese music so that I could focus on learning English. I don’t blame her, after all I know her intention is for me to quickly adapt to the American culture and learn the language to survive."

Classic pandering to Westerners and accepting Western superiority. He fulfils the kind of upbringing from a self-hating Chinese involving denial or removal of all things Chinese from his life. His self-hating Chinese values derive from his Chinese mother, like mother like son. Without question, his mother’s decision to quit China for the USA was acrimonious, no normal mother would actively ban their child from speaking their ethnic language of origin, except a self-hater. On a positive note, the CCP finally acquired common sense and blocked these sites...or perhaps not, party officials have denied their citizens the opportunity to see the extent of Sinophobia in the West.

An example closer to home, the 'British Born Chinese' group on Facebook, the 'officers' who run the "BBC Meet Up" groups, two of them openly self-deprecate with the use of the terms 'Ch*nky' and 'Chinaman.' Many social network profiles of BBC's openly use these kinds of words to degrade themselves in an attempt to make themselves amusing, but amusing to who? Who are their target audience?  Their 'friends list' are predominately White people not Chinese. The group description explains why BBC's have no radical backbone and are decades behind America for Asian diaspora issues.

" Join this group! The Banana ~~~> "Yellow on the outside, White on the inside!"

Banana is a derogatory term created by first generation immigrants (FOBs) and those living in the Far East to segregate and exclude BBCs from its 'FOB' Chinese networked communities, it is precisely why the secular group was created in the first place - its a result of exclusion, yet rather criticising exclusion, challenging exclusion, questioning exclusion or speaking out against exclusion, BBC's do the worse thing possible...self-deprecate, laughing at their own racial exclusion by FOBs literally labelling themselves 'banana rejects.' Of course in being pushed to the white community, BBC's who lack a definitive creative or productive BBC culture of their own, merely assimilate into the local 'white culture,' their only concept of a BBC culture is that which revolves around racial discrimination and abuse of Chinese by Whites, hence their over-use of the slurs such as chinaman and chinky in their everyday vocabulary.

Chinese in the UK, especially BBC's, have completely failed to make significant cultural or political gains and have no western British Chinese role models to identify with, Chinese food is not perceived as an positive cultural advancement, White people constantly refer to it in the negative pejorative sense - "lets go for a Ch*nky." If it is argued that British Chinese are a minority within a minority, i.e one insignificant segment of multi-ethnic or multicultural Britain, then BBC's are undoubtedly a minority within a minority within a minority, BBC's are arguably the most excluded, most invisible, most under represented.

Chinese intelligentsia in the UK are also at fault, typically politically illiterate, avoiding controversy, bypassing social science, history, politics in favour of depoliticised science or 'money related' subjects such as maths, engineering, accountancy, business etc. If money is a driving force, perhaps there is not enough money to be made in politics. In the UK 2006, it was stated that 30% of the British Chinese were not on the electoral register, their apolitical attitudes is a reflection of their homeland politics, Hong Kong is equally full of disaffection and apathy, electoral turn out is as low as 20%, it is incomparable with India, assassinations, people burning themselves alive etc, that will never happen in Hong Kong. It took the deaths of 8 HKC tourists in the Philippines for HKC people to finally become impassioned about a non-pecuniary issue. Think about it politically, a huge rally took place recently in Paris by the Parisian Chinese, turning out in huge numbers, but what were they demonstrating about? Crime committed against Chinese who were deliberately being targeted for theft and robbery, 'a pecuniary loss' protest.

The only other huge rally that springs to mind was the 'Foot and Mouth' crisis in 2001, large numbers of Chinese marched in protest and forced Nick brown the Labour Party government Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (at the time) to issue a public statement clearly Chinese restaurants of any connection with the spread of Foot n mouth disease. The restaurants were accused by the mainstream press of 'spreading' it around, leading to a fall in turnover in London's Chinatown restaurants, again 'a pecuniary loss'  protest. Still, at least they turned out and showed passion, I remember reading article at the time in which this single action by the British Chinese was proclaimed as a sign that "the Chinese have come of age."

Over the last few years, a number of unlikely Chinese have dabbled in British politics. Spectrum Radio DJ Steven Cheung who has a pluralistic approach rather like Nick Clegg, Mee Ling Ng OBE who was local councillor for Lewisham, Anna Lo the first British Chinese politician who was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for South Belfast in 2007, Lord Nat Wei the first British Born Chinese to receive a peerage and there’s George Lee. Both Nat Wei and George Lee claim to have endured racial abuse, (George worked in a takeaway) before entering Oxbridge, rather like John Major claiming he's from Brixton. Both support the Conservative Party, the anti-immigration party that upholds the status quo and represents the views of the White Middle England, which is ironic since George is not a BBC himself but an immigrant.

It is puzzling why so many Chinese who endure racism still support an unrepresentative anti-immigration political Party. It is understandable if they grew up adversely under a Labour Party ward, but George Lee grew up in Portsmouth, hardly the Labour heartlands, if he endured racial abuse in a Conservative Party ward, why would he end up supporting  them? Perhaps there is no room on the Left for Chinese politicians as the ethnic quota's are all filled by Blacks, Muslims and Indians, whereas the Tory party is openly fast tracking and begging any ethnic minority to join them, or perhaps its the old adage - class, or perhaps he is a Chinese  'Uncle Tam' if he behaves obsequiously  towards Whites, he will be honoured with acceptance. This victim's pattern is not uncommon...

1) Racial abuse ---> Self-hate
2) Reject Chinese ---> wannabe White, how? Through the class system...
3) Go to a top western university such as Oxbridge
4) Marry a Caucasian
5) Support the Conservative Party

Well done George, you made it through the glass ceiling. Bravo, you're a white guy now.

By BBCZeitgeist