Why Did China Remain Silent When a ‘Racist’ Advertisement Came Out?

Late May, 2016, a laundry-detergent advertisement from a Chinese company, Qiaobi, triggered great backlash on English-language social media. The post on YouTube has gotten around 9.6 million views so far.

It is not difficult to see why.

In the ad, a paint-spattered black man leans on the door, carrying a paint brush and bucket, then winks and whistles to a Chinese woman who is doing her laundry. She beckons him over with her fingers; however, as he comes close enough, instead of a kiss, the woman pops a pocket of Qiaobi detergent into his mouth, and shoves him entirely into the washing machine.

She then sits on the cover while waiting for the laundry to be done. Her face is filled with an expecting smile. Then, a 4-second close-up focuses on two boxes of Qiaobi detergent. Later, the machine opens, and a pale Asian man with a brilliant white shirt comes out. She appreciates the man, who is apparently more attractive to her. The man winks back at her, handing back a pocket of detergent. “Change starts with Qiaobi”–it ends with the slogan.

A US expat, Christopher Powell, a musician in the Guiyang Symphony Orchestra, posted it on Facebook (FB) with a short comment—I’m appalled. Afterwards, an English news blog site about China, Shanghaiist, shared it on its FB account with the title of “WATCH: This completely racist ad for washing detergent just aired on Chinese TV.” Soon, BuzzFeed picked it up from Shanghaiist and then it gathered more than 1.6 million views in fewer than 16 hours.

However, this advertisement was already released in China earlier in March without any media coverage or protest on social media. How has that happened? Why did China remain silent when such a “racist” advertisement came out?

The Limited Spread inside China

The most obvious answer to the question is that the advertisement did not spread enough to reach many of the Chinese audience before it triggered international attention.

At the very beginning, this advertisement’s full version was only posted on Qiaobi’s public account on WeChat (a popular social media and messaging app with 5.5 hundred million active users), which attracted around 25,300 clicks and 1,000 likes. This is a comparatively small number by Chinese internet standards. Normally, if a video reached the home page on popular video websites, the clicks would go up to approximately 1.4 million views or more.

Wang, the spokesman from Qiaobi told the Global Times newspaper that instead of the 49-second the commercial version, “We actually aired a five-second version which does not have the black character.” Basically, it was the five-second version that went to some local television stations and cinemas. Thus, the actual spread rate of this advertisement, especially the full version, is hard to be measured.

After the ad went to an international discussion, it also brought the debate back into the Chinese social media. Within a few comments on Weibo, a twitter-liked social media in China, a user (@YY_CodingBear), said "My lord. Do those marketing people not have any racial education?" User @Xu-Bugouzishu said “If you can not figure out why it is racist, then congratulations, you are racist indeed.” Among all comments, “awkward” is a frequently word used to describable the users’ feelings after they saw the ad. Some users said they only saw a bad advertisement with an awkward idea; it would be too sensitive or an over-reaction to see racism everywhere.

Three days after the storm of racism accusations, Qiaobi released an own official statement to respond: “We had no intention to discriminate against people of color. We do not make judgments based on skin color. We are strongly opposed to and condemn racism”.

This apology looks a bit familiar because this is not the only advertisement that seems to be racist in China.

The Cultural Bias and Discrimination of Race in China

The Worship of the Paler Skin

In 2014 in Hong Kong, an insurance advertisement for domestic helpers, starring a Chinese man with blackface as a Filipino maid, has angered the domestic helpers’ rights groups and was withdrawn after being considered to be racist. “At no time did Hong Leong (the insurance company) … intend to offend any person or be to any extent discriminatory on grounds of race, sex or otherwise” –the apology, one similar to Qiaobi’s, was announced by spokeswoman Norlina Yunus.

Additional, Darlie toothpaste, a popular brand founded in 1933 in Shanghai, was originally marketed as “Darkie” toothpaste until it rebranded in 1990 because of the racist connotations of the brand name.

It seems that all these racist advertisements are somehow related to the white skin tone. In the Chinese beauty scene or across East Asia in general, people prefer white skin which leads to a well-established bias and discrimination towards the dark skin tone. This discrimination even exists to some Chinese who have darker complexion. Unfortunately, this white-preference affects Chinese people’s perception of those of African descent as well.

Elena Young, a mix-raced American English teacher in Zhejiang Province experienced this kind of discrimination on her first day at the school. “My first day in China, my school assistant ran from shaded spot to shaded spot when we walked to lunch together because she told me she didn’t want to ‘turn black’.”

Then where did this sort of mindset actually come from?

“After the reform and opening in 1978, gradually there was a common understanding in some intellectuals’ minds that the first world or the modernized world belongs to the white while Africa is some place left behind”, said Chen Yinghong, an associate professor in the History Department at Delaware State University.

Additionally, China Daily columnist Raymond Zhou said the bias against dark skin was in part an offshoot of class discrimination: field laborers were tanned while the rich were pale. “It’s outright racism, but on closer examination it’s not totally race based. Many of us even look down on fellow Chinese who have darker skin, especially women”, he wrote in his column.

Those two mindsets from an inward-looking and agrarian culture both have something to do with the Chinese admiring paler skin while being biased against the darker-skinned.

The Discrimination of Black People

Apart from the cultural bias towards dark skin, the discrimination of black people somehow exists in Chinese society, which dates back in history.

Back in the late 1970s, there were some significant anti-black movements happening on Chinese campuses, especially concentrated in Shanghai, Tianjin, Nanjing and Beijing. A lot of slogans with heigui, which means black ghost or black devil, appeared together with slogans calling for human rights and political reform. In the later 1980s and 1990s, oversea human rights activists from China ignored the human rights for Africans, said professor Chen. “This kind of discrimination and hate somehow stayed as a stereotype in Chinese society, and move from campus to the cyber space.” The bias somehow remained as well as some racial slurs.

The racist words remained in Chinese and hurt some black people’s feelings when they have daily conversations. Right after the Qiaobi affair, a New Yorker who stayed in China for three years made a video in Chinese swore and talked about three major things with which he was fed up relating to his skin color: “The first time when I come to many places here, people will say ‘hey black devil’… Don’t call me black devil! It is very disrespectful. I hate it!”

However, it seems that those discriminations and biases stayed in some people’s minds without awareness. Controversially, based on some relevant surveys, people in China believe in racial equality deeply. World Public Opinion did a survey about the altitude in racial equality among 16 countries in 2008, and it turned out that China ranked number two among those that have the greatest support equal treatment of different races and ethnicities. Additionally, China shows the largest majority that favors its government making efforts to prevent racial and ethnic discrimination.

“Chinese people do have the anti-racist consciousness, however, they are insensitive on race”, said Barry Sautman, a political scientist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He believes that it is unfair to generalize that the Chinese tend to be racist just based on one bad advertisement, but it also suggests a particular problem—the portrayals of races—should be dealt with in China.

Low Sensitivity towards Race

“The sensitive scale of ‘black people’ is absolutely different in the U.S, Europe and China”, said Yan Yan, an associate professor, who did her PhD in Alabama State University, studied this issue in the Communication Department at Wuhan University. She recognized this issue as an interesting stereotype in the communications field.

“The U.S has such a long in history of violent racist victimizations. As for Europe, it is a place where African and African-descent people are subject to such violence as well. However, due to the different history, China has totally different context compare to westerners when it comes to ‘black people’”. Besides those context’s differences, the communication between contexts is hard to reach due to the high level of censorship and information blocking inside mainland China. “Inside of an ethic group, it is hard to urgent them to understand the context outside of the group. It does not obey the logic of communications. Normally, stereotypes exist from both sides”, she added.

“I think the Qiaobi affair is a matter where our ignorance triggered others’ sensitive nerves. Different groups in different contexts would feel entirely different towards the same issue”, said Yan.

It is true that the vast majority of the 1.4-billion Chinese citizens might not have any communication experience with black people, which means that many Chinese might have never talked with a “black people” in their entire lives. According to a census, among the 600,000 foreigners living China, a small number of them are black people, mainly gathered in the southern part of China such as Guangzhou province. The other few are mainly living in Beijing and Shanghai.

Qing, who teaches English in Tongji Primary school in Hubei province in central China, said: “In late 2015, we introduced a foreign teacher Anna from Ghana, I think it was the first time ever that I had a real conversation with black people. She is a great person and we became friend. I don’t have any discrimination towards her color, but when I knew the advertisement issue, I started to think if I ever said anything unintentionally and hurt her feelings”.

A student from Uganda shared her experience in China. She studies at the top university—Tsinghua University in Beijing. “I would say the cases where people have been racist are visible for me, but maybe not for them. For example, when schools recruit English teachers, some of them even said directly that they want a white person, or they question your English ability because you are black.”

It Is Time to Prepare for Globalization

The social discrimination obviously exists in the Chinese society, although caused by complex reasons. According to the statistics reported, there are at least 300,000 Africans in China and the number is still increasing. They came here to study or do business in China. Apart from that, they also mingle with the local community.

“It is time for us to introduce some sensitivity training on races and ethnicities if we are going to latch on the orbit of globalization”, Raymond Zhou wrote this sentence in his column at China Daily.

The Chinese government apparently noticed that and has made some efforts to guide people’s attitudes towards Africans.

State media has covered some positive stories about Africans, about those who have successfully learned Chinese and about friendships between Chinese and Africans. However, it is understandable that changing a stereotype has a long way to go. Or like Yan, the associate professor in Wuhan University, suggested that introducing the global debates and topics are critical for both the westerners and the Chinese—that is how communication may help dismiss the misunderstanding and bias emerged from different contexts.

At the regular news briefing on May 30th, right after Qiaobi’s affair, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying was asked about the incident, and she stated that China has been working to eliminate racial discrimination and described the ad as “an isolated and inappropriate act by a commercial company”.

“We need to keep in mind that many ad campaigns are created just to create controversy, and also that advertising relies on stereotypes everywhere in the world”, said Solange Chatelard, a research associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology who studies China-Africa relations and migration. However, no matter what Qiaobi originally intended in this case, it apparently was not a wise idea.

“We express regret for the controversy triggered by the advertisement and are definitely not trying to avoid responsibility,” Qiaobi made an official apology on its social media account, and said: “Qiaobi Laundry Gell Balls is a local Chinese household chemicals brand. We hope that Chinese brands can grow larger and stronger, and expand around the world.”

It is a lesson for Qiaobi and many other Chinese companies which are ambitious to do the global business—it is time to have some basic ideas about race in globalization.

As for the black community in China, they start to realize that it is time for them to initiatively give voice and eliminate the discrimination by themselves.

Nicole Bonnah is a documentary producer in Beijing, China, and she founded a blog “Black Lives in China” to record the lives of black people who live in Beijing. “We (People of Color) have an obligation to overrule the deliberate intentions of others to frame, box, manipulate or degrade who we are; to not become powerless in the face of those who wish to usurp us from our rightful place of access to freedom and quality and our right to be the voice of our own narratives”, she wrote in the blog. She hopes that this recent pandemonium over the advertisement would educate both the Chinese and “black lives in china”.