Sunday 29 August 2010

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

26 comments:

  1. http://www.islamicinsights.com/news/opinion/a-nobel-peace-prize-for-cultural-self-hatred.html

    A brilliant article here written by Channa Li on the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo in which she argues its a nobel peace prize for cultural self hatred.

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  2. The problem is that the chinese don't really have large families, and thus small, disconnected communities. If you look at black and asians the groups are larger and they tend to stick together - whilst this creates ghettoisation, it also promotes identity and therefore pride in one's identity. Have you ever met a black man not proud to be black, even in an all white country? No. Ditto with asians - they have faced facts - they are a racial minority in a country, while they want to integrate with the majority they aren't aren't going to disrespect their own race in order to do so. The white majority population have quickly wised up to this, and as a result you do not see many white men with black or asian women - because the women do not want to be (literally) whitewashed.

    Contrast this with the chinese population. Where even the Chinese men are not proud of their racial heritage. Thus, the women will no doubt be ashamed, and then look to others - whites and blacks - in order to get rid of their chinese heritage. Conversely chinese women, unlike black and asian women, will not be able to have children with white women - because why would the women want her children to be of a race that is not proud of their own?

    It doesn't help that white countries have an inherently aggressive patriotic streak regarding their race. Whilst the young Chinese (I have come across) are open minded and willing to talk about things from the other side of the grass - whites, young and old - have a simple primitive "we are best, no matter what" attitude. In classrooms and workplaces this translates to a superiority complex that makes any non-white feel inferior, simply because they are not white. For blacks and asians they have countered this by sticking together - showing that their own race is something to be proud of - whilst the singular chinese on their own have no option but to accept this whitewashing, or else have no friends. As a result they are more inclined towards this self hatred you talk about - killing their very being just so they can fit in.

    This can go two ways - either they go the whole way (usually chinese women) and marry off a white man, essentially sacrificing her bloodline to whatever the white man she married demands. I know of a few who have married white men who turned out to be gay - he just wanted babies - and no way could those white men find a straight white woman to sacrifice her own life with, so hey - do it with a chinese woman, because they are so full of self hatred they are willing to do that to themselves, all for the elimination of their own race.

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  3. Lastly, it is no coincidence where - especially in China, where there is a huge female shortage (even before foreign men are factored in), leaving MILLIONS of chinese men without families and a future bloodline - we have the most foreign men going to marry off a chinese woman - most likely "taking her back" to his country, and thus depriving another chinese man of a family. You could say this is even laughable when you notice that white countries have a surplus of white females i.e. more white women than men. The Chinese government, and indeed other far eastern governments, seem to be PROMOTING this - I was reading something about foreign students going to British universities report - in African and Asian countries, all of them had a roughly 65:35 split of men-women going to the west. Guess which was the only country to export more women than men? Yup China.The Chinese government must surely know that these women are quite likely never to return to China after having married a white man in the west?


    The only way of stopping this is to first reverse this self hatred that the chinese, especially the women, have. It is good to be chinese. There should be pride, and not just of nationality. It almost sounds like the chinese have taken notice of the white pride in white countries, and instead of fighting it off as wrong, have accepted it like slaves... are the chinese slaves to the whites? So far, it seems that way.

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  4. nice article. just wanted to address your comment above

    'I dont accept chinese diaspora are 'slaves' to whites at all, but passive or neutral to western cultural influence'

    if you arent influential, and just passive or neutral it means you are losing in this dog eat dog world.

    rather than neutral or passive we need to be assertive, if not aggressive

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  5. If you're so concerned about the predominance of the English language in Chinese culture, why on earth are all your posts in English?

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  6. the above hasn't quite grasp the concept of 'BBC'

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  7. I just reread this article. Few interesting facts which ive noticed myself, that Chinese in general are apolitical unless it comes to as you say 'monetary loss' ie foot and mouth affecting chinese restaurants, money stolen from french chinese. If i were to answer my own question 'why do chinese choose money over politics' when its politics that will give them a more strong moral standing. i think too many chinese confuse culture with perservation of calligraphy and buddhism and that which as important as it is, in respecting our past, without politics we will have no foundation for a cultural future. its the dirty area that noone wants to touch because so far everyone seems to have sailed on by without it quite nicely. but politics and culture play a strong part and work hand in hand. culture without political or social relevence / commentary is just graphic or style fetish that is meaningless.

    the problem is a vicious circle, chinese have no media rolemodels as you say except fantasy films where they live out stuff that is not real, and the news is just garbage about who slept with who not real important stuff and then they grow up to be selfhating and on it goes.

    what is it about the chinese that cannot rally together? are we too financially independently competent to support each other?

    principles, morals, leadership. infrastructure - and not new motorways or high speed railway but a new chinese consciousness infrastructure. one where we are politically minded and care about others and by helping others we help ourselves as well. this may contrast with business interest but if we are business orientated we can practice this. if we are naturally altruistic we can practice business more. we need to be less inward looking and more critical of what is around us, and openminded to learn from each other and define a common mindset. right now in the west, the mindset is too imbalanced with so many sellouts and comfortable whitelovers to create anything political or cultural.

    and to the person who criticises me harping on about zionism, the difference between criticising anti-zionist and being a selfhating jew and being a selfhating chinese are two different things. the first is against a political and cultural perversion to preserve peace and culture so is a good thing. the second - a self-hating chinese is purely one that hates his own culture, regardless of politics - is as author of article has stated is not good.

    we only get what we give, so if we want more rolemodels we need to create the infrastructure to allow for that - media, tv, film that are pro chinese and a spokesman, like african americans have/had. without it, we will have no cultural OR poltical voice/structure and continue to meander in the darkness making money enjoying life 'letting our children take care of it'

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  8. @above, yes, I have a part 2 in the offing and you highlighted many problem areas and the vicious circle that I wanted to write about, the vicious circle will come to an end, its unfortunate but I'm afraid the concept of 'a BBC' will become obsolete.

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  9. Tip to Chinese men: don't have daughter/s unless you don't mind her becoming essentially a white man's sex toy. Abortion sounds a bit drastic tho. However artificial insemination cud work. btw it's the sperm that determines the baby's gender.

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  10. To the author of this article. Whilst it's true that too many sit back and take it on the chin, but a lot of the blame can be attributed to the previous generation who bring up their children to embrace all things western, and is still happening today 'inside' China. Let alone living in places like America and Britain. Black culture has formed so strongly because parents have drummed in at early age, to be proud and assertive, to challenge and question. The whole submissive culture has been happening inside China for a long time, sadly that part has continued abroad.

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  11. Its not my blog.

    And how brave of you to say all that without revealing your own ethnic identity. I'll just assume you are a typical sinophobic white person ( canadian?). 'Ooh my white privilege isnt working as well as it ought to any more' boohoo.

    So glad we Chinese offend you. The falsehood of globalised warmongering white privilege should have been stamped out dead ages ago.

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  12. ^ As a very intelligent successful academically achieving Black African immigrant, it must hurt not to feel mentioned on a British Born Chinese blog.

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  13. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  14. Did you read the comment above my one? You have a white canadian saying he punched a Chinese in the face, and notifying the police to deport a Chinese woman and you call us racist?

    Youre deluded, buddy. Stay out of Japan, too many hello kitties and blue eyed white anime characters made you soft.

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  15. haha, its Luka Magnotta commenting from his prison cell!

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  16. If you grew up in China and Japan, your views most certainly will not represent the core of native Mainland Chinese, most of whom have never had the opportunity to exit China's borders. Why on earth would a mainland Chinese grow up in Japan? Absolutely bizarre, even more bizarre than your final paragraph, which I have to suspect you're either some weird harizu wannabe, a troll or mixed race.

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  17. Even with my article criticism, Chinese disapora still has a long way to go before it can challenge Jewish diaspora which is undoubtedly the most self-hating of all races. This is a funny article. Hungarian Far Right MEP Csanád Szegedi resigned from the Hungarian fascist party after he acknowledged he has a Jewish grandmother who survived Auschwitz!

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/14/hungarian-far-right-jewish-roots

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  18. asian women are like jews... both materilistic and sinister "people" and will be treated as such.

    English man here

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    Replies
    1. 'Natural born' privilege not working out for you today, eh?

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  19. As a Chinese American I only see too many white trash lurking on this forum. Guess what crackers, when a crises hits me here in the U.S, guess who I am gonna steal rape and pillage from?

    My advice to you all is to be proactive and join the Muslims, Whites only know fear, they will give their daughters to the black rapists that break into their houses.

    Deprogram from Confucious and program into Modern Communist China before you become a self hating chinese like Hong Konger trash

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  20. Horrible comment by Anonymous12 May 2013 03:15, but a food stamp? What is a white American doing on a board to do with British Born Chinese???

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  21. But why do these Chinese loyal to China even live in the West? Do you know how many of them have been arrested for spying or leaking technology to the PRC? Should all Chinese people do likewise and copy them?

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  22. But they still choose to live amongst whites, don't they? Why do they even use a language created solely by Caucasians, and attend white schools, and pay taxes to white governments? Isn't that pure hypocrisy?

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  23. No, as an Asian myself, he has a valid point. The UK is predominantly white, that is not going to change for a long time. It sickens me that Chinese people use the excuse of race to hate their adopted country. The moment England collapses, they'll go rushing back to China.

    Happy British Chinese, you sound like a 50-center who has a serious identity issue, maybe you should seek counselling or something.

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  24. The beautifully inward and conservative views of BBCZeitgeist/HappyBritishChinese is vindictive of this "passive/submissive" behaviour that many believe has developed in Chinese culture. You appear to shun other cultures and encourage the stagnation since within sectors of the Chinese community in the mainland and around the world. You look down upon miscegenation, refusing to see mixed races as having any Chinese identity- but yet I've met non-Chinese halves of these couples at weddings, who have a strong interest in Chinese culture and willing to teach their children about it. You are bitter and lack progressive views.

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