Chinese detergent brand Qiaobi (俏比) ad:
The ad spread on social media in China and abroad this week, sparking an online conversation about whether the largely homogenous country — 92% of its population is ethnic Han — does indeed have a racism problem. (China is officially home to 55 ethnic minority groups, but most are visibly indistinguishable from the Han.)
…The commercial is clearly derived from a 9-year-old Italian laundry detergent ad, in which a woman throws a hirsute Caucasian into a washing machine and he emerges as a strapping black man. “Colored is better,” runs that commercial’s slogan. (Even the background music for the two commercials — a bouncy accordion tune — is the same).
Many people in China perceive white skin as a standard of beauty; they equate dark skin with farmers and laborers, a sign of spending too much time in the sun. Stereotypes about black people remain widespread, perhaps the result of crass media portrayals. (Black communities in China are few and far between).
“White Americans face no barriers to claiming their nationality, but blacks are often assumed to hail from Africa, a place thought more backwards and poorer than China, more than likely receiving Chinese government economic aid in the form of loans and infrastructure projects,” wrote Marketus Presswood, a black American who has lived in China, in a 2013 essay for the Atlantic. “This leads to either resentment or denigration on the part of some Chinese.”
Many Weibo users, upon seeing the commercial, wondered what all the fuss was about.
“Actually it’s racist to take skin color into account,” wrote one. “A non-racist person would only take it as a joke, just like black and white T-shirts having the same price.”
“Only white people can be racists, because Asians never enslaved blacks,” wrote another.