As China welcomes Obama, it's forced to confront racism

SHANGHAI - As a mixed-race girl growing up in this most cosmopolitan of mainland Chinese cities, 20-year-old Lou Jing said she never experienced much discrimination -- curiosity and questions, but never hostility.

So nothing prepared Lou Jing, whose father is a black American, for the furor that erupted in August when she beat out thousands of other young women on "Go! Oriental Angel," a televised talent show. Angry Internet posters called her a "black chimpanzee" and worse. One called for all blacks in China to be deported.

As the country gets ready to welcome the first African-American U.S. president, the Chinese are confronting their attitudes toward race, including some deeply held prejudices about black people. Many appeared stunned that Americans had elected a black man, and President Obama's visit has underscored Chinese ambivalence about the increasing numbers of blacks living here.

"It's sad," Lou Jing said, her eyes welling up as she recalled her experience. "If I had a face that was half-Chinese and half-white, I wouldn't have gotten that criticism. ... Before the contest, I didn't realize these kinds of attitudes existed."

Diversity meets hostility

As China has expanded its economic ties to Africa -- trade last year reached $107 billion -- the number of Africans living here has exploded. Tens of thousands have flocked to the south, where they are establishing communities, marrying Chinese women and having children.

In the process, they are making tiny pockets of urban China more racially diverse -- and forcing the Chinese to deal with issues of racial discrimination.

In the southern city of Guangzhou, where residents refer to one downtown neighborhood as Chocolate City, local newspapers have been filled in recent months with stories detailing discrimination and alleging police harassment against the African community.

"In Guangzhou, to be frank, they don't like Africans very much," said Diallo Abdual, 26, who came to China from Guinea a year and a half ago to buy cheap Chinese clothes to ship back to West Africa for sale.

With the recession, his business has dried up, his money is gone, and he has overstayed his visa. Now, like many Africans here, he spends most of his days at Guangzhou's Tangqi shopping mall avoiding the police.

Deep-rooted prejudices

"The kind of prejudice you see now really happened with the economic growth," said Hung Huang, a Beijing-based fashion magazine publisher and host of a nightly current affairs talk show. "The Chinese worshiped the West, and for Chinese people, 'the West' is white people."

Hung, 48, said her generation was "taught world history in a way that black people were oppressed, they were slaves, and we haven't seen any sign of success since. The African countries are still poor, and blacks [in America] still live in inner cities."

The racial animosity here taps into a prejudice dating to China's mainly agrarian past: Darker skin meant you worked the fields; lighter skin put you among the elite. The country is rapidly industrializing and urbanizing, but that historic prejudice remains. High-end skin-whitening products are a $100 million-a-year business in China, according to industry statistics.

Some here say Obama's presidency is causing a major shift in attitudes. Others, however, say many Chinese rationalize his election as a fluke of the U.S. system or suggest that Obama, whose mother was white, isn't "really" black.

"It will be really interesting to see what happens when he comes to visit, because I really think the Chinese have a hard time with it," said Hung Huang. "Nobody has dealt with this question of what this means to our sense of race. It's a kind of self-examination that Chinese -- including myself -- need to go through. Are we racist?"