Xu Qining

“I’m a racist, I discriminate against Blacks, that’s it.” 

It was a comment sent under a Bilibili video titled “The Little Mermaid was not Popular in China, Because Chinese are Racists?” which seeks to oppose the classification of Chinese as racists. Unfortunately, the comment is not a lone sample.

Having analyzed 90,000+ comments on Bilibili about anti-Black bias, I found it to be often expressed through extreme terms. The rise of anti-Black discrimination on the Chinese internet has been reported by the Human Rights Watch in August, 2023, arguing that racist content has gained momentum on multiple Chinese social media platforms. However, there has been a general lack of regulation for such content.

What has prompted me to carry out this research project in Kenya?

Through detailed review of the sampled comments, five “justifications” for stereotypes have been identified: laziness, stupidity, dirtiness, tendency towards violence, and womanizing. Nevertheless, due to political and social limitations, it is highly difficult to carry out field research on this topic in China.

Notably, however, Kenya is a nation with a large Chinese diaspora community. Therefore, I decided to conduct the field research in Kenya, with the purpose of answering two questions: what common stereotypes do Chinese have against Kenyans, and how to address them.

What are some traits of stereotypes that Chinese living in Kenya have about the local Africans?

After extensive interviews of Chinese diasporas, especially shop and restaurant owners who hire local workers and have interactions with both the Kenyan grassroots and the government, it can be seen these employers also carry certain stereotypes towards the locals. However, there are also notable differences between the stereotypes carried by Chinese diasporas and by netizens.

Chinese netizens often argue that Black people are violent and dirty. One Bilibili floating comment claims “it’s a fact: wherever there are lots of Blacks, that place becomes dirty, chaotic, and terrible.” Nonetheless, Chinese business owners barely share these opinions. Most Chinese business owners in Kenya found local people to be polite, friendly, and amiable. They would warmly greet others and offer help whenever needed. 

Neither did most of them believe Blacks are dirty. A Chinese manager narrated about her once visiting the home of a local motorcycle driver, and she was shocked by the fact that the home of the driver was so clean that she described it as “dustless.” However, there are also stereotypes that both Chinese diasporas and those in China would partially agree upon, although the former usually hold these beliefs to a lesser extent. Specifically, these stereotypes are laziness and unintelligence. 

The sampled floating comments described foolishness and laziness as going hand-in-hand for Africans. One comment describes Black people as “lazy, stupid, low IQ, instability in society.” Another common idiom says Blacks “love eating but are lazy in working.” 

The more radical one, a Shandong breakfast restaurant owner, states that his workers’ “nature” prevails after three months of employment: “they begin to get lazy.” He furthers that many Black people he met would rather eat one meal every two days than go out and find a job. 

Some Chinese business owners in Kenya have their reasons for why Black people are stupid. The mother of the noodle restaurant owner states that Black people have inferior genes that make them silly. She claimed that Black people could only do addition and subtraction, but not multiplication and division.

What are the avenues for addressing and changing these stereotypes?

Despite experiencing many quarrels with the local government (corruption, blackmails, fining), it is important to point out that Chinese business owners generally possess a less negative view of Africans compared with netizens. In fact, some owners even have very positive views of local society and culture. 

Many business owners also opposed racist identification of Africans as possessing several negative traits. The manager of the printing store and the owner of a supermarket also claimed: “it depends on the individuals, not the race.” 

There are also business owners who completely dismiss the belief that Kenyan employees are lazy and foolish. The owner of a souvenir store, who has lived in Africa for dozens of years, claimed that there are many Chinese bosses who require their workers to work extra hours without extra pay. Under such circumstances, any employee would lose the incentive to work. 

The owner of a Zibo Barbecue restaurant once said, before coming to Africa, he saw a lot of negative comments about Black people on the Internet, marking them as stupid and lazy. After coming to Kenya, however, he found his staff to be very smart. They managed to rapidly learn how to make dumplings after watching him doing so. Currently, his employees can already help him roll out the dough and wrap the dumplings.

Zibo Barbecue restaurant owner treated his employees friendly, even if the staff made a mistake, such as being slightly late. He said nothing is more important than treating the employees with respect and equality. “Communication is the key in breaking barriers,” he claims, “and without respect towards them, employees will naturally have resentments and unwillingness in work.”

The idea that mistreatment worsens workers’ spirits and deepens stereotypes about laziness and foolishness has been confirmed by our interview with Kenyan workers. The Kenyan manager of a hotpot restaurant, Stephen, has managed to learn the Chinese profanity that his boss always yells at them in store: “psychopath, dumbass, damn it.” As can be expected, the store owner also reported that his workers are dumb and difficult to deal with. 

An employee at the Shandong breakfast restaurant also spoke about her and her colleague’s experiences. She claimed that her boss set unreasonable policies: can only use the bathroom three times a day, no lunch break, no eating at restaurants, etc. Whenever she and the other workers fail to meet any standards, they would be cursed at by the owners, and often fired. As she said at the end of the interview: “the family of the boss treated us like slaves.”

Conversely, the owner called them “lazy, foolish, sneaky, not grateful, and unwilling to work.” When asked to give one single positive attribute of the locals, he said “they have good English,” but quickly qualified the claim by saying that they are terrible at math and can’t do basic counting.

Such examples highlight the need for effective communications in breaking barriers. The business owners who have frequent quarrels with their workers are similar in some respects to the netizens: lack of contact with the Black community, lack of willingness to understand local culture. Such attributes solidify bias. On the other hand, with proactive engagement and mutual respect, stereotypes and social barriers can be gradually broken.

How to more positively and genuinely present Africans to the Chinese community?

In summary, it can be concluded that by showing the Chinese netizens the information that addressed the stereotypes which Chinese diasporas previously held against Africans, we can similarly influence the perception of the former group. Therefore, I decided to record and publish the stories and images of Africans in Kenya that have changed the perception of many Chinese people. 

I created a vlog for my visit to my Kenyan friend Hilda’s home. Outside of Hilda’s home, the roads of the neighborhood were bumpy and littered. But the home was completely undusted. Moreover, the family would make sure their hands, the plates, and the utensils are always clean. The video has been published on various Chinese social media platforms. I’m in the process of producing other depictions with similar purposes.

As the souvenir shop owner puts it: “Respect is the most important virtue in interpersonal connections, especially between people from different cultural backgrounds; if you know how to think in their shoes, mutual understanding becomes very easy.”