Chinese Racism Towards Westerns

There has been a storm of posts in the China blogosphere about racism in China. A China Law Blog post does a good job of analyzing whether Westerns are racist towards China. I would have to agree with him that the majority of Westerns living in China are not racist but they do exude a sense of arrogance.

After playing around on YouTube today I found a great video of Russell Peters, and the use of the word “那个 .“
I cracked up for a few minutes, and then I also thought back to earlier this year around April when some Canadian woman found the color of her couch to be, “n*gger brown.” (http://buzzfeed.com/buzz/Racist_Translations_ ) Apparently it was a mistake made by a Chinese factory but it got me wondering about racist views of Chinese towards foreigners.

I thought back to a few weeks ago when I was hanging out in 1912 and met up with some friends. I pretty much knew everyone in the group except for 1 particular guy named John. Unlike most Chinese I meet, John was not friendly at all upon introduction. At the club we were all hanging out talking to pretty girls walking past our table, but I kept getting the death glare from this dude.

I asked my boy Kenny what his problem was and he said, “John doesn’t like foreigners.” I pressed him further on the issue and he said, “John thinks foreigners just come to China to have a comfortable lifestyle and take all the Chinese girls.” This immediately took me by surprise because all my friends know I am not the guy whose intentions are to steal Chinese women. Granted, within the next 20 years there are estimates of the population with an excess of 20 million men without a partner, but are Chinese guys this protective over their women now?

Kenny told me a story about how John guy got wasted one night and started a confrontation with another white guy who was talking to a Chinese girl. He broke a bottle at the guy’s table and threatened to kill him if he didn’t leave immediately. I’m sure the white dude almost shit his pants, but tonight I was not fearful of any drama because his boys were my boys.

This leads me back to my question about Chinese racism. Is there growing dissent amongst Chinese men towards foreigners? All of my experience would suggest otherwise, but this was my first taste of anti-western sentiment during my stay in China.