[marcus_holmes]

I spent years travelling around SE Asia, and met plenty of Chinese, enough to decide I did not want to go there. All of them were openly racist (mind you, all of SE Asia is openly racist, so this is nothing unusual). I accept that there are minority ethnic identities within China, but I have been told over and again (by Chinese people) that China is Han.

I have Chinese friends here in Berlin who still won't talk about Chinese politics within hearing range of their phones. If this isn't a totalitarian regime, what is?

My direct experience contradicts your statements. What are you basing them on?

[infinity0]

My direct experience contradicts your direct experience. I'm Chinese, grew up in China until I was 5, and visit it every now and again.

> I have been told over and again (by Chinese people) that China is Han.

You are either selectively reporting, or selectively misremembering things based on your own existing prejudices. I have certainly talked to more Chinese people than you, and nobody has ever said this.

I lived in Berlin for 3.5 years, I found plenty of racism there as well; also in the UK and US where it's more subtle.

I'd assume your Chinese friends are a non-representative sample of Chinese people - likely, you are friends with them because they ran into issues with the government, and hence had similar interests and were attracted to the same events and locations. China has 1.4 billion people, this is bound to happen.

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Reply to the comments below:

> little point in discussing anything China-related in Western internet forums.

Thanks for the advice, I am indeed trying to take it in moderation. I think it's important to try to maintain some level of healthy discourse though, the anti-China propaganda is taking the world down a dark path.

> Curious on what you think of what China is doing to the Uyghur people. Do you believe that this is fabricated by all these media outlets?

Yes, they are all citing the same fake reports written by a few people working non-independently, driven ultimately by geopolitical strategy and taking advantage of liberal media's existing prejudices to portray China as "evil". See https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/education/xinjiang - a collection of a large number of sources from many different people, working independently.

[marcus_holmes]

I'm sorry you experienced racism. As an Australian and Brit, I apologise for our countries not living up to our ideals on these things. I can't speak for Germany - I'm a guest here too - but I know that most Germans are working towards eliminating racism from their culture.

That's not my experience of the Chinese, however. China is not working to eliminate racism. It doesn't have these ideals. As a white person I will never be accepted as a Chinese person by the Chinese, because in Chinese people's eyes, Chinese == Han (from my experience). This isn't unusual in Asia - Cambodians only recognise Khmer people, Japan only recognises ethnic Japanese people, and so on. I have white friends who have lived in Cambodia for decades, speak the language perfectly, have Cambodian families, but who can never become citizens and will never be accepted as "Cambodian" because of their race.

This isn't true of Australians (for example). Australia doesn't equate Australian = caucasian [0]. You can emigrate to Australia, and become a citizen, and the vast majority of Australians will accept you as an Australian because of that. Being Australian is not about race, but more about culture and commitment. Australia's sense of identity is not linked to its ethnic identity in the same way that SE Asian countries are.

[0] There are always some racist dickheads who will disagree with this. Sorry for that.

[em500]

These days, I find that there is little point in discussing anything China-related in Western internet forums. There's an overwhelming amount of ignorance, misinformation, prejudice and propaganda about China from tons of different parties. People largely post to get their standpoints confirmed, and nothing you post will change anything.

As a fellow Chinese raised in the West, I know it's hard to resist getting drawn into such thread. I try to avoid posting/reacting as much as I can, and sincerely advise the same to you. You're probably not going to change anybody's mind and just wasting your own time.

[GordonS]

As a Brit (though I have travelled and worked a bit in China), I'm constantly dismayed by the thinly-veiled (and sometimes overt) racism, biases, prejudice and ignorance that are on display in just about any HN thread about China - the comments for this article are particularly shocking.

Yes, the Chinese government has done some bad things in it's time, but plainly not everything they do has bad intentions. And bejesus, people in glass houses and all that.

It seems very much like the USA's anti-China propaganda machine is working well - particularly telling since I would have assumed that the average US HN reader was educated.

[oreally]

A culture of ostracizing what's perceived as 'the dumb and uninformed' is what got the US Trump. Putting up a wall against them didn't get the US to a better place. Like it or not, there's a substantial amount of misinformed and misguided people and if you do not at least interact/counter-argue there's a real chance that more people get misinformed to the point something goes horribly wrong, they're in support of it and you can't do anything against them.

As chinese there's a sense that we should keep our head down in favor of the harmony. But I've come to realize this isn't enough we should let the truth speak louder. Keep fighting the good fight.

[jackling]

I think this is equivalent to someone not arguing back because theres no real evidence to support their bias. Saying that all these media outlets are spreading misinformation for some reason is really not supported by fact. Is there fake news, sure. But that's different from saying that everything critical of a country is propaganda.

What are people ignorant about here? There's been several countries/states that deny China and confirms what everyone believes (Taiwan, Hong Kong).

[jackling]

Curious on what you think of what China is doing to the Uyghur people.

Do you believe that this is fabricated by all these media outlets? I would think that genocide of a particular ethnicity would count as totalitarian and racist.