The 1988 Nanjing incident: Notes on race and politics in contemporary China

Abstract

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.