Racist incidents continue to occur in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and they have become a contentious topic because Chinese state sources either deny or downplay its existence. Scholars have noted that the Chinese state's
propaganda largely portrays
racism as a Western phenomenon, which has contributed to a lack of acknowledgment of the existence of racism in Chinese society. In August 2018, the UN
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported that
PRC law does not properly define "racial discrimination" and it also lacks an anti-racial discrimination law which should be in line with the
Paris Principles. Since the mid-1990s, the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has utilized
Peking Man as an instrument of its
racial nationalist discourse. In November 2012, in contradiction to the Chinese Communist Party's rhetoric about equality among China's
56 recognized ethnic groups,
CCP general secretary Xi Jinping released his model of the
Chinese Dream, which has been criticized as
Han-centric.
China Central Television (CCTV) host Yang Rui said, controversially, that "foreign trash" should be cleaned out of the capital.
Anti-Chinese sentiment Among some Chinese
dissidents and critics of the Chinese government have used of
pejorative slurs (such as
shina or
locust), or displaying hatred towards the
Chinese language,
people, and
culture.
In Hong Kong Although
Hong Kong's
sovereignty was returned to China in 1997, only a small minority of its inhabitants consider themselves to be exclusively Chinese. According to a 2014 survey from the
University of Hong Kong, 42.3% of respondents identified themselves as "Hong Kong citizens", versus only 17.8% who identified themselves as "Chinese citizens", and 39.3% gave themselves a mixed identity (a Hong Kong Chinese or a Hong Konger who was living in China). By 2019, almost no
Hong Kong youth identified as Chinese. The number of mainland Chinese who visit the region has surged since the handover (it reached 28 million in 2011) and many locals believe that it is the cause of their housing and job difficulties. In addition to resentment which is caused by political oppression, negative perceptions have grown through the circulation of online posts which contain descriptions of mainlander misbehaviour, as well as discriminatory discourse in major Hong Kong newspapers. In 2013, polls from the
University of Hong Kong suggested that 32 to 35.6 per cent of locals had "negative" feelings for mainland Chinese people. However, a 2019 survey of Hong Kong residents has suggested that there are also some who attribute positive stereotypes to visitors from the mainland. In 2012, a group of Hong Kong residents published a newspaper advertisement which depicted mainland visitors and immigrants as
locusts, an ethnic slur targeting mainland Chinese people. Strong anti-mainland xenophobia has also been documented amidst the 2019 protests, with reported instances of protesters attacking Mandarin-speakers and mainland-linked businesses. During
protest against mainlanders and
parallel traders, local demonstrators chanted the pejorative term
Cheena. In October 2015, an
HKGolden netizen
remade the South Korean song "
Gangnam Style", with lyrics calling mainland Chinese "locusts" and "
Cheena people", titled "Disgusting
Cheena Style" (). Inside Hong Kong university campuses, mainland Chinese students are often referred to as "
Cheena dogs" and "yellow thugs" by local students. Hong Kong journalist Audrey Li noted the xenophobic undertone of the widespread right-wing nativism movement, in which the immigrant population and tourists are used as scapegoats for social inequality and institutional failure. In a 2015 study, mainland students in Hong Kong who initially had a more positive view of the city than of their own mainland hometowns reported that their attempts at connecting with the locals were difficult due to experiences of hostility. In Hong Kong, some people consider
hate speech and discrimination toward mainland Chinese morally justified by a
superiority complex influenced by Hong Kong's economic and cultural prominence during the
Cold War, and nostalgia toward British rule.
Anti-Japanese sentiment Anti-Japanese sentiment primarily stems from Japanese war crimes which were committed during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
History-textbook revisionism in Japan and the
denial (or the
whitewashing) of events such as the
Nanjing Massacre by the
Uyoku dantai has continued to inflame anti-Japanese feeling in China. Anti-Japanese sentiment has been encouraged through the CCP's
Patriotic Education Campaign. According to a
BBC News report, anti-Japanese demonstrations received tacit approval from Chinese authorities, however, the Chinese ambassador to Japan
Wang Yi said that the Chinese government does not condone such protests.
Anti-Muslim sentiment Recent studies contend that in contemporary China, some Han Chinese have attempted to legitimize and fuel anti-Muslim beliefs and biases by exploiting historical conflicts between the Han Chinese and Muslims, like the
Northwest Hui Rebellion. Scholars and researchers have also argued that Western Islamophobia and the "
war on terror" have contributed to the mainstreaming of anti-Muslim sentiments and practices in China. Recent studies have shown that Chinese news media coverage of Muslims and Islam is generally negative, in which portrayals of Muslims as dangerous and prone to terrorism, or as recipients of disproportionate aid from the government was common. Studies have also revealed that Chinese cyberspace contains much anti-Muslim rhetoric and that non-Muslim Chinese hold negative views towards Muslims and Islam. Discrimination against Muslims and sinicization of mosques have been reported. Middle Eastern youth in China who were interviewed by the
Middle East Institute in 2018 generally did not encounter discrimination. However, a Yemeni national said that he received unfavorable reactions from some Chinese when he stated that he was a Muslim, something which he managed to overcome with time, especially after he made Chinese friends.
Persecution of Uyghurs in China Since 2014, the Chinese Communist Party under the leadership of the
general secretaryship of Xi Jinping has pursued a policy which has led to the imprisonment of more than one million
Muslims (the majority of them are
Uyghurs) in secretive
detention camps without any
legal process. Critics of the policy have described it as the sinicization of
Xinjiang and they have also called it an
ethnocide or a
cultural genocide, and many activists,
NGOs,
human rights organizations, government officials, and the
U.S. government have called it a
genocide. The Chinese government did not acknowledge the existence of these
internment camps until 2018 and when it finally acknowledged their existence, it called them "vocational education and training centers" rather than internment camps. In 2019, the name of these camps was officially changed to "vocational training centers". From 2018 to 2019, despite the Chinese government's claim that most of the detainees had been released, the camps tripled in size. There are widespread reports of
forced abortion, contraception, and
sterilization both inside and outside the re-education camps.
NPR reports that a 37-year-old pregnant woman from the Xinjiang region said that she attempted to give up her Chinese citizenship to live in Kazakhstan but was told by the Chinese government that she needed to come back to China to complete the process. She alleges that officials seized the passports of her and her two children before coercing her into receiving an abortion to prevent her brother from being detained in an internment camp. Zumrat Dwut, a Uyghur woman, claimed that she was
forcibly sterilized by
tubal ligation during her time in a camp before her husband was able to get her out through requests to Pakistani diplomats. The Xinjiang regional government denies that she was forcibly sterilized. and many women have stated that they have been forced to receive
contraceptive implants.
The Heritage Foundation reported that officials forced Uyghur women to take unknown drugs and to drink some kind of white liquid that caused them to lose consciousness and sometimes causes them to cease menstruation altogether. Tahir Hamut, a Uyghur Muslim, worked in a
labor camp during
elementary school when he was a child, and he later worked in a
re-education camp as an adult, performing such tasks as picking cotton, shoveling gravel, and making bricks. "Everyone is forced to do all types of hard labor or face punishment," he said. "Anyone unable to complete their duties will be beaten." Beginning in 2018, over one million Chinese government workers began forcibly living in the homes of Uyghur families to monitor and assess resistance to assimilation, and to watch for frowned-upon religious or cultural practices. In March 2020, the Chinese government was found to be using the Uyghur minority for forced labor, inside
sweat shops. According to a report published then by the
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), no fewer than around 80,000 Uyghurs were forcibly removed from the region of Xinjiang and used for forced labor in at least twenty-seven corporate factories. According to the Business and Human Rights resource center, corporations such as
Abercrombie & Fitch,
Adidas,
Amazon,
Apple,
BMW,
Fila,
Gap,
H&M,
Inditex,
Marks & Spencer,
Nike,
North Face,
Puma,
PVH,
Samsung, and
UNIQLO have each sourced from these factories prior to the publication of the ASPI report.
Discrimination against Tibetans Anti-Tibetan racism has been practiced by ethnic Han Chinese on some occasions. Ever since its inception, the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the
sole legal ruling political party of the PRC (including Tibet), has been distributing historical documents which portray Tibetan culture as barbaric in order to justify Chinese control of the territory of Tibet, and is widely endorsed by Han Chinese nationalists. As such, many members of Chinese society have a negative view of Tibet which can be interpreted as racism. The CCP's view is that
Tibet was historically a feudal society which practiced serfdom/slavery and that this only changed due to the
annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China.
Tibetan-Muslim violence Most
Muslims in Tibet are Hui. Although hostility between Tibetans and Muslims stems from the Muslim warlord
Ma Bufang's rule of
Qinghai (the
Ngolok rebellions (1917–49) and the
Sino-Tibetan War), in 1949, the Communists ended the violence between Tibetans and Muslims. However, acts of Tibetan-Muslim violence have recently occurred. Riots between Muslims and Tibetans broke out over bones in soups and the price of balloons; Tibetans accused Muslims of being
cannibals who cooked humans, attacking Muslim restaurants. Fires which were set by Tibetans burned the apartments and shops of Muslims, and Muslims stopped wearing their traditional headwear and they also began to pray in secret. Chinese-speaking Hui also have problems with the Tibetan Hui (the Tibetan-speaking
Kache Muslim minority). The main
mosque in
Lhasa was burned down by Tibetans, and Hui Muslims were assaulted by rioters in the
2008 Tibetan unrest. Tibetan exiles and foreign scholars overlook sectarian violence between Tibetan Buddhists and Muslims. Most Tibetans viewed the wars which were waged against
Iraq and
Afghanistan after the
September 11 attacks positively, and anti-Muslim attitudes resulted in boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses. Some Tibetan Buddhists believe that Muslims cremate their imams and use the ashes to convert Tibetans to Islam by making Tibetans inhale the ashes, although they frequently oppose proposed Muslim cemeteries. Since the Chinese government supports the Hui Muslims, Tibetans attack the Hui to indicate anti-government sentiment and due to the background of hostility since Ma Bufang's rule; they resent perceived Hui economic domination. In 1936, after
Sheng Shicai expelled 20,000 Kazakhs from Xinjiang and forced them to move to Qinghai, Hui troops who were led by Ma Bufang reduced the number of Kazakhs who lived in Xinjiang to 135. Over 7,000 Kazakhs fled northern Xinjiang to the Tibetan Qinghai plateau region (via Gansu), causing unrest. Ma Bufang relegated the Kazakhs to pastureland in Qinghai, but the Hui, Tibetans and Kazakhs in the region continued to clash.
Discrimination against Mongols The CCP has been accused of sinicizing
Inner Mongolia by gradually replacing
Mongolian languages with Mandarin Chinese. Critics have accused the Chinese government of committing cultural genocide because it is
dismantling people's minority languages and eradicating their minority identities. The
2020 Inner Mongolia protests were caused by a
curriculum reform which was imposed on ethnic schools by
China's Inner Mongolian Department of Education. The two-part reform replaced Mongolian with
Standard Mandarin as the
medium of instruction in three particular subjects and it also replaced three regional textbooks which were printed in the
Mongolian script, with the edited by the
Ministry of Education, written in Standard Mandarin. On a broader scale, the opposition to the curriculum change reflects the decline of . On 20 September 2020, up to 5,000 ethnic Mongolians were arrested in Inner Mongolia for protesting against the enactment of policies that outlawed their
nomadic pastoralist lifestyle. The director of the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC), Enghebatu Togochog, called the CCP's policy a "cultural genocide". Two-thirds of the 6 million ethnic Mongolians who live in Inner Mongolia practice a nomadic lifestyle that they have practiced for millennia.
Genghis Khan and his origins have been increasingly
censored by the authorities within China alongside attempts to
censor them outside of the country. In October 2020, the Chinese government asked the Nantes History Museum in France not to use the words "Genghis Khan" and "
Mongolia" in the exhibition project which it dedicated to the life of Genghis Khan and the history of the
Mongol Empire. The Nantes History Museum conducted the exhibition project in partnership with the Inner Mongolia Museum in Hohhot, China. The Nantes History Museum halted the exhibition project. In response, the director of the Nantes museum, Bertrand Guillet, stated: "Tendentious elements of rewriting aimed at completely eliminating
Mongolian history and
culture in favor of a new national narrative". Reports of racial discrimination against Africans in China have been published by foreign media outlets since the 1970s. Police action against
Africans in Guangzhou has also been reported as discriminatory. In 2009, accusations which were made by Chinese media in which it stated that the number of African undocumented immigrants who were residing in China could be as high as 200,000 people sparked racist attacks against Africans and mixed African-Chinese people on the internet. In 2017, a museum exhibit in
Wuhan was condemned for comparing Africans to wild animals and was pulled soon after amid outrage. In 2018, the
CCTV New Year's Gala sparked controversies because it included
blackface performances in which Africans were portrayed as submissive recipients of the support which they received from China. During the CCTV New Year's Gala in 2021, Chinese actors again put on blackface; the Chinese Foreign minister denied that the performance was racist. According to BBC News, in 2020, many people in China have expressed solidarity with the
Black Lives Matter movement. The
George Floyd protests have reportedly sparked conversations about race that would have not otherwise occurred in the country, including treatment of China's own ethnic minorities. In the late 2010s, videos about Africans holding a written Chinese blackboard and chanting in Chinese went viral on Chinese social media. In February 2020, a video in which African children chanted, "I am a
black devil and my
IQ is low", was spread on Chinese social media. A group of BBC reporters traced the video's origin and created a documentary,
Racism for Sale, on
BBC Africa Eye, after
Wode Maya expressed his fury at it. In the documentary, reporters revealed the video was made by a Chinese videographer located in
Malawi. They also revealed abuses when creating videos and the videographers' racist attitude towards African people. After the documentary was released, pressure from Malawi was piling on the Malawian government. The videographer was later arrested and expelled from Malawi. In August 2023,
Human Rights Watch reported that racist content against Black people is widespread on the
internet in China. According to academic Kun Huang, each time a mixed-race Chinese-African person has gone viral on social media, a nationalist backlash has ensued. In 2025, it was reported that AI-generated videos that contained racist stereotypes about Black people were spreading on Chinese social media platforms.
COVID-19 pandemic The number of reported acts of racism against Africans and against black foreigners of African descent both increased in China during the
COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. Black foreigners not from Africa have also faced racism and discrimination in China. In response to criticism over COVID-19 related racism and discrimination against Africans in China, Chinese authorities set up a hotline for foreign nationals and laid out measures discouraging businesses and rental houses in Guangzhou from refusing people based on race or nationality. Foreign Ministry spokesman
Zhao Lijian claimed that the country has "zero tolerance" for discrimination. During the
2022 Shanghai lockdown, viral locally produced videos of Africans shouting scripted, positive wishes to the Chinese audience have been criticized as stereotypical and even dehumanizing.
Hong Kong Since 2008, it has been reported that many Africans have experienced racism in Hong Kong, such as being subjected to humiliating police searches on the streets, being avoided on public transports, and being barred from bars and clubs.
Discrimination against South and Southeast Asians There have been reports of widespread discrimination in Hong Kong against South Asian minorities regarding housing, employment, public services, and checks by the police. A 2001 survey found that 82% of ethnic minority respondents said they had suffered discrimination from shops, markets, and restaurants in Hong Kong. A 2020 survey found that more than 90% of ethnic minority respondents experienced some form of housing discrimination. Foreign domestic workers, mostly South Asians, have been at risk of
forced labor, subpar accommodation, and verbal, physical, or sexual abuse by employers. A 2016 survey from
Justice Centre Hong Kong suggested that 17% of migrant domestic workers were engaged in forced labor, while 94.6% showed signs of exploitation. Filipina women in Hong Kong are often reportedly stereotyped as promiscuous, disrespectful, and lacking self-control. Reports of racist abuse from Hong Kong fans towards their Filipino counterparts at a 2013 football game came to light, after an increased negative image of the Philippines from the 2010
Manila hostage crisis. In 2014, an insurance ad, as well as a school textbook, drew some controversy for alleged racial stereotyping of Filipina maids. Some Pakistanis in 2013 reported of banks barring them from opening accounts because they came from a 'terrorist country', as well as locals next to them covering their mouths thinking they smell, finding their beard ugly, or stereotyping them as claiming welfare benefits fraudulently. A 2014 survey of Pakistani and Nepalese construction workers in Hong Kong found that discrimination and harassment from local colleagues led to perceived mental stress, physical ill health, and reduced productivity. South Asian minorities in Hong Kong faced increased xenophobia during the COVID-19 pandemic, with media narratives blaming them as more likely to spread the virus. In 2023, a video shared by a
Douyin account of the
Ministry of Public Security of actors in
brownface singing an Indian song received widespread criticism. The video was deleted soon after.
Discrimination against Jews Antisemitism in China is a mostly 21st century phenomenon and is complicated by the fact that there is little ground for antisemitism in China in historical sources. Public consciousness of Jews in China has a variety of historical influences. Jews are praised for valuing education like Chinese, although this is often also framed competitively. Some Chinese people believe in
antisemitic tropes that
Jews secretly rule the world.
Discrimination against and biases in favor of European and European-descended people Discrimination Russians form one of China's
56 officially recognized ethnic groups. Many Chinese citizens of Russian descent were subject to discrimination due to their perceived differences from the majority Han Chinese population and accusations of being "Soviet spies" during the 20th century. In the late 2010s, Dong Desheng, a Chinese citizen of Russian descent who was born in
Heilongjiang province, become a "social media sensation" in China after posting videos of himself and his daily life under the screen name "Uncle Petrov". Some Chinese internet users were "confused" by Desheng's appearance, asking him if he wore "colored contact lenses" as they could not believe that a Chinese citizen could have naturally blue eyes. As he gained more popularity online, Desheng raised discussions about what it means to be "Chinese", as the term is largely synonymous with people of Han Chinese ethnicity and stereotypical appearance.
Biases The
Los Angeles Times and
Vice Media alleged that a hiring preference for white English teachers over members of other groups is common in China. In 2014, a
Media Diversified article by a former English teacher in Ningbo alleged that the English teaching industry was responsible for "painting the image of ‘good English’ as a domain reserved for
white people" and it also highlighted the need for a more diverse staff in the industry.
International responses In terms of international responses to China's policies towards Tibetans, Uyghurs and Mongols in the
Tibet Autonomous Region, Xinjiang, and the
Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region respectively, many people outside Mongolia know about the Chinese government's human rights abuses against the Uyghurs and the Tibetans, but few of them know about the plight of the Mongols. An international petition which is titled "Save Education in Inner Mongolia" has currently received less than 21,000 signatures. Former U.S. President Trump signed the
Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 into law, and the Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2019 has passed the House of Representatives. In January 2021, U.S. Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo declared that China is committing
crimes against humanity and genocide against the Uyghurs, making the U.S. the first country to apply those terms to the Chinese government's human rights abuses. While he was campaigning, U.S. President Joe Biden used the term genocide in reference to the Chinese government's human rights abuses, and his secretary of state, namely Antony Blinken, affirmed Pompeo's declaration. However, in April 2021, during a 90-minute phone conversation with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Japanese Foreign Minister
Toshimitsu Motegi called on his Chinese counterpart to take action to improve human-rights conditions for Uyghurs. ==Ethnic slurs==