DENIALISM IS NOT CHINA’S POLICY EITHER
MANY people will find it very difficult to continue being friends with someone who has hurt them and who has also refused to acknowledge the hurt they caused.
No question, hurt is part of any friendship but the response of the one who did the hurting will determine whether the friendship deepens or whether the friendship ends. It is not the hurt itself that will end the friendship but rather the denial of the wrongdoing.
We must therefore welcome the article by Dr Zhu Ming, “Racism is never China’s official policy” (Cape Times, June 4).
Yet while racism, or even for that matter denialism, has never been official Chinese policy, the tone-deaf responses and even defences that we have seen coming, especially from Chinese diplomats, have been deeply concerning.
Chinese officials have taken out so many advertisements and have gone to great lengths to deny the tragedy of Guangzhou. Quite frankly, these efforts are not convincing.
Africans, like Chinese people, are very forgiving. Maybe too forgiving. We realise that no one is perfect. We know too that China has never declared itself to be great, like some global powers do.
We will therefore be quick to forgive China and work with her to resolve the issues in Guangzhou. Yet what has made it very difficult is not so much what happened in Guangzhou but the subsequent denials from Chinese officials.
Chinese foreign policy is guided by a few principles. Two of the principles are very similar to what we find in Africa. The first, hé ér bù tóng, means more or less “harmony with diversity”. This is very similar to the South African national motto !ke e:/xarra//ke, which could be translated as “diverse people unite” or “people who are different joining together”.
The second principle that guides Chinese foreign policy is ti’ n xià qíng huái, which could be roughly translated as “to love mankind or benefit humanity”. Again, this could be very closely associated with the African concept of ubuntu, which means “I am because we are”.
In other words, not only does Chinese thinking reject racism or prejudice but there are philosophies and schools of thought that are very similar between China and Africa.
These must be explored and much more focus should be given to human interaction to overcome the interpersonal challenges faced between our two peoples.
We must defeat ignorance on both sides.
Zhu Ming points this out and this is important. But as a Chinese person he should not be convincing Africans that Chinese people are not racist. Zhu should be educating and informing fellow Chinese about Africans. In the same way, it is incumbent on me, as an African, to be educating fellow Africans that not all Chinese discriminate against Africans.
If we do not do this, defeat ignorance among our own, then the Chinese will be following the same path that the Westerners did in Africa.
The paid adverts and articles by Chinese people in African newspapers wish to teach African people about China instead of Africans teaching themselves and Chinese teaching Chinese. Africans do not need the Chinese to teach or convince them; especially about questions of racism.
There are some issues such as territorial integrity and sovereignty that the Chinese are very sensitive about and rightly so. China, and some Chinese officials especially, therefore need to learn that there are some issues such as racism and exploitation that Africans too are very sensitive about. These issues, like the territorial ones, must be handled with extra care.
To deny incidents of racism is to do far more damage to the friendship than the racist incidents themselves, even though these racist incidents remain absolutely abhorrent.