What surprises me about this report from the New York Times on anti-black racism by the Chinese who come to Africa:
RUIRU, Kenya — Before last year, Richard Ochieng’, 26, could not recall experiencing racism firsthand.
Not while growing up as an orphan in his village near Lake Victoria where everybody was, like him, black. Not while studying at a university in another part of Kenya. Not until his job search led him to Ruiru, a fast-growing settlement at the edge of the capital, Nairobi, where Mr. Ochieng’ found work at a Chinese motorcycle company that had just expanded to Kenya.
But then his new boss, a Chinese man his own age, started calling him a monkey.
It happened when the two were on a sales trip and spotted a troop of baboons on the roadside, he said.
“‘Your brothers,’†he said his boss exclaimed, urging Mr. Ochieng’ to share some bananas with the primates.
is that anyone is surprised by it. Chinese racism is well known.
Clearly, all of that Chinese overseas investment has strings attached to it. The Kenyans and Sri Lankans have both learned that to their sorrow.
There is Heaven, there is the Middle Kingdom (Han China), and there is everybody else. One must remember that when dealing with the Han. Always. The Han consider anyone who isn’t Han inferior, and even within the Han those who are native Mandarin speakers and can trace their ancestry to provinces north of the Yellow (i.e. originally millet eaters, not rice eaters) are the top of the heap.