Kevin Carrico is senior lecturer in Chinese studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and a sociocultural anthropologist researching nationalism, ethnic relations, and political culture in China, Tibet, and Hong Kong.
Kevin is also the author of The Great Han: Race, Nationalism, and Tradition in China Today, an ethnographic study of the racial nationalist Han Clothing movement that has emerged in China since 2001, in which Chinese revive a sense of “Great Han” or “real China” using pseudo-traditional ethnic dress, reinvented Confucian ritual, and anti-foreign sentiment. In other words, using fashion to Make China Great Again.
Kevin is also the author of Two Systems, Two Countries: A Nationalist Guide to Hong Kong, which details Hong Kong’s integration into mainland China at a time when fewer Hong Kongers than ever identify as Chinese. This book traces the origins of Hong Kong nationalism, illustrating how Hong Kong independence is about much more than opposition to CCP rule.
Kevin also has two decades of translation experience and was a columnist for Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper, one of the best-selling Chinese language newspapers in Hong Kong, which took a strong editorial stance in support of the democracy movement. Police then raided its headquarters in 2020, local authorities froze the assets of the paper and owner Jimmy Lai in 2021, and the paper subsequently shut down.
In this conversation, we discuss the Chinese conceptualization of race, the refusal in the West to criticize or even acknowledge Chinese racism, the Han Clothing movement, and how this ties into Chinese perspectives on race and nationalism. Enjoy.
The word for 'race' in Mandarin is minzu but how accurate is this translation? If not literally accurate, does it carry the same societal connotations?
In order to answer this question, we need to take a close look at what terms are used in China, and what meanings they express, or imply.
Technically speaking, the term for ‘race’ in Chinese would be zhongzu 种族. This is translated directly as ‘race.’ But this term is not commonly used in discussions of identity within China. It is not an officially recognized category of identity. Does this mean that China is devoid of racial thought? Spoiler alert: I gotta say, that’s a hard ‘no.’
Rather, minzu is the term through which conceptualizations of identity are articulated. The question then is what exactly minzu means.
Some people shrug and say, well, it is impossible for us Westerners to fully understand, so I will just render it in pinyin as minzu. I disagree with this. I strongly dislike analyses that mystify languages and claim that there are words that are unable to be translated. No culture is so unique as to be incomprehensible to outsiders. Humans can understand one another.
Yet at the same time, there is no denying that there are plenty of words the world over that are quite difficult to translate, or that have multiple connotations, some of which may even be contradictory. Minzu is definitely one of those words.
If we look at how minzu is imagined in China, its contradictory nature comes to the fore. There is a Han minzu (the Han) as well as 55 other minzu, known as “minorities” (shaoshu minzu is a loaded term). Yet all of these minzu are in turn part of a meta-minzu known as the Zhonghua minzu (Chinese). So, just thinking about the Han, how does one translate a minzu that is on a different level from all the other minzu, while at the same time being part of an even bigger minzu, with which it is assumed to be essentially synonymous (i.e. setting the standard)?
The confusion inherent in miznu use can be traced back to the moment of its introduction into Chinese, establishing a Chinese nation-state on the geo-body of the Qing empire, a sovereign state established on empire and an ostensibly anti-colonial act of colonization, claiming the expansive lands of the diverse people once ruled by Qing conquest, while at the same time building a nation founded on the inclusive exclusion of these same peoples in an unambiguously Han-centric state. “We are all the same minzu, but we are also different minzu, and at the end of the day your minzu needs to evolve toward the standards set by our minzu.”
As you can see, it’s quite messy and confusing. Rendering minzu as simply minzu is, in my opinion, typical of a particular approach to academia: doing the easiest, least controversial thing possible, abdicating one’s responsibility for any further thought, and pretending that it is somehow profound.
Rather, minzu can be used in many different contexts in many different ways and it is necessary to analyze and articulate these uses. One of the more controversial elements of my work on Han-ness in The Great Han is my assertion that many people perceive Han-ness in racial terms, and that in these contexts, Han minzu can be translated as Han race. This is based on extensive discussions with people across China who imagined the Han to be biologically unique, phylogenetically distinct not only from “foreigners” but also from other minzu in China, who are imagined as backwards and in need of learning from the Han.
People may be uncomfortable with the idea that racial thought exists in China, but trust me, your discomfort does not make it any less real. When someone is telling me that the Han have unique DNA passed down from the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, what is this other than a racialized conceptualization of Han-ness? There is a widespread belief in the distinct biology of the Han, as a race, in China, along with Marxist-cum-Social Darwinist framings of ethnic relations (i.e. historical stage theory, modernity/ primitivity, vanguardism), wherein it is assumed that the so-called minorities as living fossils of earlier eras will inevitably evolve toward the vanguard of Han-ness.
Do you see examples of a lack of willingness in the West to critique Chinese racism and, if so, does this strike you as its own form of racism? Namely, the racism of low standards or Orientalism?
As mentioned above, there is not only a lack of willingness to criticize Chinese racism. There is a marked lack of willingness to even acknowledge the existence of Chinese racism and Han racism. This is a disservice to research on China, as well as a disservice to the many victims of such racism.
By comparison (and indeed perhaps only by comparison), there is relatively little discomfort discussing racism in “Western” contexts. Certainly, there are people who get anxious or offended by these discussions, or who want to change the topic and point elsewhere. But generally speaking, if we are talking about (for example) the United States, most researchers are going to acknowledge that there is a long history of racism which continues to structurally shape people’s experiences to this day and can be deeply impressive. We’re not going to say “but what about China?” And yet when discussing racial issues in China, there is this ideology, present in both China and in broader academic discussions outside of China, that runs along the lines of, “who, after all, are we to criticize?”
Yet whereas there has been progress (not enough, but at least some) in moving beyond the horrid state of racial relations in the United States over the past 60 years, there has really not been such progress in China. Everything is getting worse, in my reading. Racialized thought and structural inequality are not just legacies of the past: they are part and parcel of contemporary realities, often accepted without critical reflection, laying the foundation for oppressive state policies and broader practices of discrimination and hatred.
We can see this most clearly in the ongoing oppression and genocide in Chinese occupied East Turkestan, known as Xinjiang. Here we have a situation in which a Han dominated colonial state is attempting to eliminate an indigenous people based on racist ideologies. The world should be outraged and taking action. Yet global multilateral institutions do basically nothing. Academics continue to choose their words carefully to avoid offense (“let’s not offend the state doing the genocide, please”), while others participate in state organized tours that border between outright denying and normalizing genocide.
I have had colleagues try to confirm with me that I won’t discuss “sensitive” topics in my university-level classes. Of course, “sensitive” refers to anything that the Chinese state might disagree with, which is pretty much any honest discussion of contemporary reality. Can anyone tell me of any other field in which there would be an assumed need to avoid discussing “sensitive” topics? If I teach on Russia, or Italy, or Myanmar, or Australia, am I supposed to avoid “sensitive” topics? Of course not. We work in a university, not a kindergarten. We are supposed to engage with and think through difficult issues. And that means moving beyond a discussion of China based in simplistic formulas like big population = big economy = great business opportunity for you. If we don’t move beyond that, we are just as much part of the problem.
It's quite easy to say “never again” when there isn’t actually a genocide happening, so you can just pretend that you would somehow act with dignity and courage, unlike others. But anyone who is puzzled about how people could have gone along with and accepted state genocidal policies need look no further than our present realities to understand how that happened.
This is, indeed, the racism of low standards. If what is happening in Xinjiang were happening in Europe today, the world would not just stand by and watch. It’s a disservice to honest discussion of China today, as well as a deep disservice to the victims of Han Chinese racism.
This turning away also has implications for thinking about global responses to CCP expansionism moving forward. If we did basically nothing when the CCP committed blatant genocide, does anyone believe the world is going to do anything when the CCP makes the next horrible decision of invading Taiwan, expanding through the South China Sea, or attacking Japan? Will we all be too busy being sensitive and careful with our words to actually do anything?
In your book, The Great Han: Race, Nationalism, and Tradition in China Today, you discuss how Manchu clothing and Han clothing are differently perceived. Can you describe this, and how it relates to Han supremacy or Han racism?
During my research in China, I was surprised to find that there was, among Han Clothing Movement supporters, an elaborate conspiracy theory in which the Manchu nationality secretly controlled the government and dedicated all of its energies to oppressing the Han. There was of course no basis in reality for such claims, but I tried to understand why people believed this. It was a fascinating journey of discovery.
One motivation for this Manchu control narrative was that this theory turned the Han into victims, and such imagined victimhood provides moral privilege. If you look at today’s China, it would take quite a fair amount of imagination to say that the Han nationality are victims. In China’s ethnic hierarchy (which certainly exists as a result of evolutionary thinking), the Han is certainly imagined to be at the top of the hierarchy. Despite already constituting 92% of the population, the Han is in fact over-represented at the top of the CCP hierarchy, which is not exactly known for its ethnic or gender diversity. This Manchu narrative reimagines the Han as victim, and thus as in need of defence and support.
Another foundation for this conspiracy theory was that it was able to explain (albeit illusorily) the cruelty of the CCP state. This theory not only turns Han into victims in need of defense, but also helps to make sense of many of the more oppressive policies that the CCP state has forced upon its people in recent decades. Take, for example, the one-child policy: in Manchu conspiracy theory narratives, this utterly senseless and destructive state intervention in the most intimate elements of people’s private lives was reimagined as the work of another outsider ethnicity dedicated to eliminating the Han. Although I said above that if you look at today’s China, it would take quite a fair amount of imagination to say that the Han nationality are victims, it also goes without saying that there are plenty of people among the Han nationality who are victimized by a quite distasteful and oppressive state apparatus. Why would the state do this to me, many may ask. As I argued in the book at the time, one of the most appealing functions of conspiracy theory is that it takes a world that doesn’t make sense and makes it make sense. Considering many repressive state policies, it would actually make more sense if the CCP state was an external colonizer rather than a state composed of people of one’s own background. This theory thus makes sense of the world and redeems the illusory ideal of a pure, kind, and caring Han state to come.
Finally, something that I have been thinking about quite a bit in the years since The Great Han was published is the place of the Qing empire at the foundation of the modern Chinese geo-body, which attempts to exercise direct sovereignty and control over the many diverse peoples and nations once incorporated into the Qing empire. In a sense, I feel that the Manchu foundations of the modern Chinese nation-state in a sense haunt contemporary Chinese sovereignty. Following some of the work of Derrida, we may need to pursue a “hauntology” of the Chinese nation-state. I tried to begin work on that in a recent article in Nations and Nationalism, “National identity deconstruction,” and am developing this into a longer theoretically driven reconsideration of Chinese nationalism.