Two things I saw this week made me think about prevailing race relations in China. First, the music video for American-made Chinese pop star Chloe Wang’s debut single “Uh Oh”. And secondly this headline article on CNN’s homepage about an aspiring mixed-race singer from Shanghai named Lou Jing.

Chloe Wang, China's next big thing?

Chloe Wang is an American in every sense of the word. She hails from Chicago, her father is Chinese, and her mother is white. She didn’t speak a lick of Mandarin and knew little of China until the Beijing Olympics. This did not stop U.S. manager Peter Coquillard from packaging the seventeen year old’s first single for the Asian market. Chloe shares the producers of her first album with Madonna, Britney Spears, and Miley Cyrus, and launched her first single in both English and Chinese.

(Sidenote: I wrote an article a few months ago about exploiting Asian-American talent for global audiences. Looks like this boat is taking off!)

Chloe Wang, despite her abysmal Chinese, has had a positive reception in China. And why wouldn’t she? She’s beautiful, sexually charged, and half-white. She has a dedicated, growing fan base and is quickly being idolized in true pop fashion.

Lou Jing, the mixed-race singer creating a stir in China.

Take now the case of Lou Jing, a struggling singer who was featured on an American Idol-esque show in Shanghai. Lou Jing was born in Shanghai to a Chinese mother and African-American father, whom she has never met. She is a Chinese citizen and speaks perfect Chinese. But unlike Chloe Wang her reception on the show has been anything but glamorous. Angry netizens have gone so far as to say she should “get out of China” and that she “never should have been born.” Those who watch the show surely do so not for her talent, but because of the color of her skin. She has been dubbed “chocolate girl” and “black pearl” by the hosts. I find it difficult to believe that a show in America could get away with similar behavior without being universally crucified.

I am not one to sound off against trolling netizens of any country. But these two cases clearly display, if not overt racism in China, undertones of what racial identity means and the implications of skin color in a country whose population is 90% Han Chinese.

One implicit difference between these two girls is the race of their fathers. Chloe Wang has a Chinese father. Does this mean something to Chinese citizens in comparison to Lou Jing’s African-American father? In my opinion it does, at least on a subconscious level. Chloe Wang is a product of a Chinese man hooking up with a white woman. That’s pretty cool if you’re Chinese. But to Asians, Lou Jing is a product of an African-American man having an illicit affair with a Chinese woman. The father is nowhere to be found. In this scenario Lou Jing becomes a symbol of Western imperialism, the loss and “rape” of Chinese culture—something unnatural, and shameful.

Another difference is the way white and black people are perceived in Asian culture. Pop culture, media, politics, history and a host of other things cultivate these perceptions. The bottom line in the minds of many Chinese; it is at least commendable (if not a step up) if you have a relationship with a white person, it is a step down if you go black. There is a very real mindset in China and many colonized nations of the idea of emasculation, of a colonial power not only raping the country of resources but also of women. To many the fact that a Chinese man and white woman marry is a sign of modernism. For some Chloe Wang serves as a representation of an upwardly mobile, confident, new, and modern China. Lou Jing perhaps is viewed in a backwards, illicit, shameful light. A step forward, a step backward.

Lu Xun, China’s foremost modern author, perhaps best captured Chinese attitudes towards foreigners:

Throughout the ages the Chinese have had only two ways of looking at foreigners. We either look up to them as superior beings or down at them as wild animals. We have never been able to treat them as friends or to consider them as people like ourselves.

'No Offend Chinese Women' a slogan used during anti-African race protests in Beijing which alleged rape of Chinese women by African students.

I am ashamed that these perceptions exist in the minds of neo-con Chinese. Not everyone in China is guilty of feeling this way and very rarely do people take it to the extremes that I have earlier elucidated. But these are cultural perceptions and stereotypes that exist below the surface, en masse. Stereotypes which are rarely vocalized to outsiders yet subconsciously influence many parts of cultural exchange and interaction.

To date, China’s treatment of ethnic minorities has been appalling. Especially entrenched are racist attitudes towards those of African descent. In 1988 a Christmas party in Hehai University in Nanjing spurred an all out race riot against Africans studying in the city. The incident was sparked after two African men escorting two Chinese women were involved in an altercation with security over correct identification. The resulting fight left 11 Chinese students and university employees injured. A false rumor was spread thereafter that an African had murdered a Chinese student. That’s when the Chinese took to the streets.

Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times recounts on December 31, 1988:

…on Thursday, more than 130 of those African students remained confined to a Government guest house in Yangzhou, 80 kilometres north-east of Nanjing, to protect them from angry crowds that earlier in the week screamed for the “black devils” to face punishment.

With them were a handful of dark-complexioned Nepalese and Pakistani students, who also were threatened by Chinese who, in some cases, had only a hazy idea of what an African looked like.

“Firmly support American Blacks in their righteous struggle!”

This past summer’s Urumqi riots in which the government and many Han Chinese violently quelled unrest and protests by the ethnic Muslim Uighur minority is indicative of the racial tensions still prevalent throughout China.

I find it difficult to imagine that China will make sweeping reforms in the way race and culture are perceived unless their society becomes less homogeneous. The question I ponder is if one day China, as a premier global superpower, will embrace a cultural and racial definition of itself as amorphous and diverse as America’s.

Lastly I return to Chloe and Lou Jing to proffer a possible explanation for the difference in reception between the two that has nothing to do with race and everything to do with media. An explanation that may confirm that the Chinese are quickly becoming more like America than we give them credit for. Chloe Wang enters China as prepackaged, glamorous, and ready for consumption by the prevailing Chinese pop machine. She has the support of an American record label and one of China’s most successful producers on her team. Lou Jing does not. She is just another reality TV contestant, no publicist or multimillion-dollar record label backing her. Could this have made the difference for Lou Jing? Picture for a moment Lou Jing, marketed as China’s Beyonce, her video and single released with all the pomp and circumstance that such a title entails. I can definitely see her being loved, accepted, even mobbed by Chinese. Maybe it was never her race that was at issue, maybe it was just a question of “packaging.”