Scholars have suggested that the
People's Republic of China largely portrays racism as a Western phenomenon which has led to a lack of acknowledgement of racism in its own society. For example, the UN
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported in 2018 that Chinese law does not define "
racial discrimination" and lacks an anti-racial discrimination law in line with the
Paris Principles. Discrimination against African students has occurred since the arrival of Africans to Chinese universities in the 1960s. A known
incident in 1988 featured Chinese students rioting against African students studying in Nanjing. In 2007, police anti-drug crackdowns in Beijing's
Sanlitun district were reported to target people from Africa as suspected criminals, though police officials denied targeting any specific racial or ethnic group. According to
Foreign Policy, African students have reportedly been subjected to more frequent drug testing than students from other regions. Accordingly, some Chinese vloggers have attempted to change the negative stereotypes in their country regarding Africa, while black expats residing in China have reported a mixture of positive and negative experiences. Reports of racism against Africans in China grew during the
COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. In August 2023,
Human Rights Watch reported that racist content against Black people is widespread on the
internet in China.
Hong Kong With a population of 7.3 million
Hong Kong has gained a reputation as an international city, while remaining predominantly Chinese. This multi-culturalism has raised issues of racial and gender discrimination, particularly among the 350,000
ethnic minorities such as Africans, Nepalese, Indians, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Mexicans and Filipinos, who have long established minority communities since the founding days of the former colony or have come to Hong Kong recently to work as domestic workers. For example, Filipino females are sometimes addressed by the derogatory term "Bun Mui" and Filipino males "Bun Jai" (literally Filipino sister and Filipino son, respectively). In 2003, the number of complaints filed with the body handling discrimination issues, the Equal Opportunities Commission increased by 31 percent. Since the transfer of sovereignty in 1997, there has been greater tension and more conflicts have risen between residents of the PRC (People's Republic of China or the "Mainland") and Hong Kong over a variety of political and
socio-economical issues concerning the governance and constitutional autonomy of the territory. The issues partly involve the intrusive policies of the central government and also partly the behaviors of Mainland residents when they travel to Hong Kong. Mainland residents suffered considerable set-backs in the 1960s and 1970s due to catastrophes such as the
Great Chinese Famine that resulted from the poor governance of the PRC. However, since the 1990s, the Mainland has had considerable economic growth, and a large number of mainland tourists have visited Hong Kong in recent years. Similarly, with the introduction of China's
Individual Visit Scheme in 2003, which effectively grants Mainland residents an unlimited entry travel visa to Hong Kong, and following the
2008 Chinese milk scandal and other
food safety incidents in China an influx of Mainland residents travel regularly to Hong Kong to buy baby formula and other daily necessities. In the process, this influx caused shortages of supply for Hong Kong parents and escalated rents; it also greatly harmed the commercial diversity of Hong Kong business. Due to the great demand from mainland residents, smugglers organizations have grown rapidly. This deleterious effect on the economy has caused some Hong Kong residents to refer to Mainland residents as "locusts"; they are seen as invaders who swarm into the city and drain its resources. On the other hand, a race discrimination bill has been demanded by human rights groups for the last 10 years, and the government has been accused of putting the issue on the back burner. Last 3 December 2006 was the first time a drafted bill was proposed at the Legislative Council, and was expected to be passed before the end of 2008. However, the bill was criticized for being "too conservative".
Tibet Critics of Chinese rule of Tibet use the phrase
Sinicization of
Tibet in reference to programs and laws which impose "cultural unity" in Tibetan areas of
China, including the
Tibet Autonomous Region and the surrounding
Tibetan-designated autonomous areas. These efforts are undertaken by China in order to forcefully assimilate
Tibetan culture into mainstream
Chinese culture. Another term for
sinicization is
cultural cleansing or
genocide, a term which has been used in reference to the results of China's sinicization programs and laws in Tibet by the
14th Dalai Lama and the
Central Tibetan Administration.
Persecution of Uyghurs in China The
Chinese government has persecuted
Uyghur people and other ethnic and religious minorities in and around the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of the
People's Republic of China. Since 2014, the
Chinese government, under the direction of the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the
administration of
CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, has pursued policies leading to more than one million
Muslims (the majority of them
Uyghurs) being held in secretive
internment camps without any
legal process in what has become the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since
the Holocaust. Critics of the policy have described it as the
Sinicization of
Xinjiang and have called it an
ethnocide or
cultural genocide, while some governments, activists, independent
NGOs,
human rights experts, academics, government officials, and the
East Turkistan Government-in-Exile have called it a
genocide. Uyghur individuals are being relocated to factories within mainland China, where they are exploited as contemporary forms of forced labor. In particular, critics have highlighted the concentration of Uyghurs in state-sponsored internment camps, suppression of Uyghur
religious practices, political
indoctrination, severe ill-treatment, and testimonials of alleged human rights abuses including
forced sterilization,
contraception, and
abortion. Chinese government statistics show that from 2015 to 2018,
birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of
Hotan and
Kashgar fell by more than 60%. In the same period, the birth rate of the whole country decreased by 9.69%, from 12.07 to 10.9 per 1,000 people. Chinese authorities acknowledged that birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018 in Xinjiang, but denied reports of forced sterilization and genocide. Birth rates have continued to plummet in Xinjiang, falling nearly 24% in 2019 alone when compared to just 4.2% nationwide. == India ==