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The 1988 Nanjing incident: Notes on race and politics in contemporary China
Open accessAbstract
On the evening of 24 December 1988 Chinese and African students scuffled at the gates of a Nanjing university. The next night thousands of angry Chinese university students poured down Nanjing's main street toward the heart of the city. Although they would later chant slogans demanding democracy and calling for human rights, on this night they shouted only dadao heigui (down with niggers) and heigui gunhuiqu (niggers get the hell out) as well as other epithets. This “extraordinary combination” of democratic and racist slogans in late 1988 puzzled outside observers of China. This article argues that neither the existence of racism among educated Chinese nor the struggle for democracy alone are enough to explain the intensity of the original clash and its aftermath. Arguments that the incident simply signified an ugly outburst of racism or that students merely used the initial incident as a pretext for pushing for democracy lack sufficient explanatory power. In fact, it is precisely this “extraordinary” pairing of slogans that may reveal something about society, politics, and the educated elite in contemporary China.
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“Since the majority of foreigners in China in the 1980s and 1990s were white-skinned Westerners, many Chinese intellectuals understood the world according to an international racial hierarchy, with industrial nations at the top, Third World countries at the bottom, and China somewhere in between (Lufrano 1994).”
From The Shifting Meanings of Race in China: A Case Study of the African Diaspora Communities in Guangzhou (2016) · cites this paper as Lufrano 1994
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Pusey, J. R. (1983) · Harvard University Asia Center eBooks · doi:10.1163/9781684172344 · Cited by 48
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Berlin Isaiah, 1992, New York Review of Books, 39
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Metadata
- Authors
- Lufrano, R.
- Corresponding author
- Lufrano, Richard
- Venue
- Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1994-06
- Volume
- 26
- Issue
- 1-2
- Pages
- 83-92
- ISSN
- 0007-4810 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2955142405
- Cited by
- 20
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2021: 3 · 2019: 2 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 1.72
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics
- Keywords
- racism, Chinese university students, student protest, democratic movement, educated elites, race and politics, Nanjing
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