The West’s resentment of China’s economic rise to world power status and its massive efforts to cooperate with Africa to spread prosperity into the continent is largely rooted in racism. For example, it’s common under the current political situation in the U.S. to encounter strong antipathy for China among many ordinary Americans who are completely ignorant of all things Chinese except for one: They know that they hate China, its government, and all of those slanty-eyed people stealing their jobs. Dress it up however we choose to, it's still really rooted in a long history of racism.
We forget (or some may be unaware) that the Chinese share a history of slavery and abuse in North America with our African brothers and sisters.
The dehumanizing treatment, including being packed onto boats like cattle & shipped, which the Chinese people received from Westerners for centuries is described in the book “China Is Communist, Damn It!”:
“…untold numbers in the 19th century… were pressganged and kidnapped, to be sent to the New World to work as coolie slaves.
The racism conducted on these Chinese coolies was instructive. On the ocean voyage from China to Vancouver, Canada, they were tightly packed and kept in dark, poorly ventilated holds for the three-week trip, so they would not have any contact with the Whites traveling aboveboard. No sunlight, no fresh air. The crew on the ships routinely talked about these Chinese allies in terms of “livestock” and they were handled and treated as such. Actually, they were treated worse than cattle, pigs, sheep and horses, as there are laws that require animals get so much open air and exercise per day, while in transit…This kind of inhumane treatment of Chinese citizens is dispassionately captured in the diaries of a British officer, charged with overseeing them:
‘As children, we were taught that Cain and Coolies were murderers from the beginning; no Coolie was to be trusted; he was a yellow dog… The task of stowing away Coolies is a tiresome one. In orders, it is alluded to as “embarkation”. By those experienced in the job, it is known more as “packing”. The Coolies are not passengers capable of finding each his cabin. The Coolies are so much cargo, livestock, which has to be packed away. While experiences are ceaselessly pressing upon him, his attitude towards existence is the attitude of a domesticated animal.’
--- British 2nd Lieutenant Daryl Klein, from his memoir, “With the Chinks”, spoken like a true Western imperial racist. Of course, chinks is the worst slur word to be used against the Chinese. It’s the equivalent of yellow nigger. The term Coolie is not any better. It’s like calling someone from Latin America a wetback. At least Lt. Klein was honest in his total dehumanization of the Dreaded Other.”
There are countless examples of discrimination against, and humiliation of the Chinese people by the Western colonialists, on the territory of China. The Chinese were literally butchered and enslaved in their own territory, by the Westerners and the Japanese. However, there were also despicable crimes committed against Chinese people on the territory of the U.S., including lynching, and other types of killing.
Many hard working Chinese men were brought as slave laborers to the U.S. and to Europe, where they were often treated worse than animals. For no other reason but for just being Chinese. No apologies or compensation were ever offered for such acts of barbarity; not even decades and centuries later.
The Chinese share an experience with Africans: They both been the victims of Western colonial exploitation rooted in racism. The need to argue who has suffered greater atrocities and humiliation at the hands of an oppressor may be an academic debate for historians, but seldom for the people who experienced such treatment – they commiserate without competition.
Fast forward to the end of the 20th century-- while China was enriching Wall Street and corporate America through latter day “cheap labor” exploitation which screwed workers on both sides of the Pacific, China was seizing an historic opportunity and developing its way out of poverty. Resentment now runs deep in America the Babylon against a people who white America still views as racially inferior and unworthy of improved living standards and a voice in world affairs. It laughably claims to be the “victim” of China while completely expunging all memory of history. But China has not forgotten about its historic suffering at the hands of Western colonialism nor that of its African brothers and sisters.
China is definitely willing and capable of putting much of the world devastated by Western colonialism and imperialism, back onto its feet. It is big enough to do it, it is strong enough, it is determined and full of optimism.
Those who hate China are the nations which are not ready to let go of their de facto colonies. These are the Western nations whose populations are used to a good-- too good and too easy -- life at the expense of others. To them, historically egalitarian -- and now for many decades socialist/Communist (with Chinese characteristics)-- China poses a truly great threat. A threat, not to their survival or peaceful existence, but to their capricious looting and raping with impunity of the underdeveloped world, and Africa in particular.
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