Racism in Asia
Racism in Asia is multi-faceted and has roots in events that have happened from centuries ago to the present. Racism in Asia may occur from nation against nation, or within each nation's ethnic groups, or from region against region. The article is organised by countries in alphabetical order.
Bangladesh
In 2015, the ruling Awami League Member of Parliament, Elias Mollah, commented on his trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo: "Our army has gone there to civilise those black people. I am sure they will accomplish the task." He constantly referred to the Congolese as "uncivilized black people" and added "People there are yet to become civilised. They take bath every 15 days. After applying soaps before bath, they do not even use water in a bid to retain the aroma."Bhutan
In 1991–92, Bhutan is said to have deported between 10,000 and 100,000 ethnic Nepalis. The exact number of refugees initially displaced remains contested, with differing accounts from various parties. Tensions arose in part because many residents of the region declined an offer of Bhutanese citizenship from the king and resisted relocation, and there were reports of unrest, including isolated incidents of armed resistance. In response, actions by the state and segments of the population led to the departure of a significant number of people from the area. Beginning in March 2008, this population entered a multiyear resettlement process to third countries, including the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Australia.. At present, the United States is working towards resettling more than 60,000 of these refugees in the US as a condition of its third country settlement programme.Brunei
law provides affirmative action to Bumiputera.Cambodia
has disproportionately targeted ethnic minority groups. These included ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, and foreigners who live in Cambodia. Part of this conflict stems from Chinese involvement in Cambodia before the Vietnam War. In the late 1960s, an estimated 425,000 ethnic Chinese lived in Cambodia, but by 1984, as a result of the Khmer Rouge's genocide and emigration, only about 61,400 Chinese remained in the country. The Cham, a Muslim minority group whose members are the descendants of migrants from the old state of Champa, were forced to adopt the Khmer people's language and customs. A Khmer Rouge order stated that henceforth "The Cham nation no longer exists on Kampuchean soil belonging to the Khmers". Only about half of the Cham survived.China
Scholars have suggested that the People's Republic of China largely portrays racism as a Western phenomenon which has led to a lack of acknowledgement of racism in its own society. For example, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reported in 2018 that Chinese law does not define "racial discrimination" and lacks an anti-racial discrimination law in line with the Paris Principles.Discrimination against African students has occurred since the arrival of Africans to Chinese universities in the 1960s. A known incident in 1988 featured Chinese students rioting against African students studying in Nanjing. In 2007, police anti-drug crackdowns in Beijing's Sanlitun district were reported to target people from Africa as suspected criminals, though police officials denied targeting any specific racial or ethnic group. According to Foreign Policy, African students have reportedly been subjected to more frequent drug testing than students from other regions. Accordingly, some Chinese vloggers have attempted to change the negative stereotypes in their country regarding Africa, while black expats residing in China have reported a mixture of positive and negative experiences. Reports of racism against Africans in China grew during the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China. In August 2023, Human Rights Watch reported that racist content against Black people is widespread on the internet in China.
Hong Kong
With a population of 7.3 million Hong Kong has gained a reputation as an international city, while remaining predominantly Chinese. This multi-culturalism has raised issues of racial and gender discrimination, particularly among the 350,000 ethnic minorities such as Africans, Nepalese, Indians, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Mexicans and Filipinos, who have long established minority communities since the founding days of the former colony or have come to Hong Kong recently to work as domestic workers. For example, Filipino females are sometimes addressed by the derogatory term "Bun Mui" and Filipino males "Bun Jai". In 2003, the number of complaints filed with the body handling discrimination issues, the Equal Opportunities Commission increased by 31 percent.Since the transfer of sovereignty in 1997, there has been greater tension and more conflicts have risen between residents of the PRC and Hong Kong over a variety of political and socio-economical issues concerning the governance and constitutional autonomy of the territory. The issues partly involve the intrusive policies of the central government and also partly the behaviors of Mainland residents when they travel to Hong Kong. Mainland residents suffered considerable set-backs in the 1960s and 1970s due to catastrophes such as the Great Chinese Famine that resulted from the poor governance of the PRC. However, since the 1990s, the Mainland has had considerable economic growth, and a large number of mainland tourists have visited Hong Kong in recent years. There also have been many reports that visiting Mainland parents let their child defecate or urinate openly in the street in busy shopping districts or in public transports.
Similarly, with the introduction of China's Individual Visit Scheme in 2003, which effectively grants Mainland residents an unlimited entry travel visa to Hong Kong, and following the 2008 Chinese milk scandal and other food safety incidents in China an influx of Mainland residents travel regularly to Hong Kong to buy baby formula and other daily necessities. In the process, this influx caused shortages of supply for Hong Kong parents and escalated rents; it also greatly harmed the commercial diversity of Hong Kong business. Due to the great demand from mainland residents, smugglers organizations have grown rapidly. This deleterious effect on the economy has caused some Hong Kong residents to refer to Mainland residents as "locusts"; they are seen as invaders who swarm into the city and drain its resources.
On the other hand, a race discrimination bill has been demanded by human rights groups for the last 10 years, and the government has been accused of putting the issue on the back burner. Last 3 December 2006 was the first time a drafted bill was proposed at the Legislative Council, and was expected to be passed before the end of 2008. However, the bill was criticized for being "too conservative".
Tibet
Critics of Chinese rule of Tibet use the phrase Sinicization of Tibet in reference to programs and laws which impose "cultural unity" in Tibetan areas of China, including the Tibet Autonomous Region and the surrounding Tibetan-designated autonomous areas. These efforts are undertaken by China in order to forcefully assimilate Tibetan culture into mainstream Chinese culture. Another term for sinicization is cultural cleansing or genocide, a term which has been used in reference to the results of China's sinicization programs and laws in Tibet by the 14th Dalai Lama and the Central Tibetan Administration.Persecution of Uyghurs in China
The Chinese government has persecuted Uyghur people and other ethnic and religious minorities in and around the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Since 2014, the Chinese government, under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party during the administration of CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, has pursued policies leading to more than one million Muslims being held in secretive internment camps without any legal process in what has become the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since the Holocaust. Critics of the policy have described it as the Sinicization of Xinjiang and have called it an ethnocide or cultural genocide, while some governments, activists, independent NGOs, human rights experts, academics, government officials, and the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile have called it a genocide. Uyghur individuals are being relocated to factories within mainland China, where they are exploited as contemporary forms of forced labor.In particular, critics have highlighted the concentration of Uyghurs in state-sponsored internment camps, suppression of Uyghur religious practices, political indoctrination, severe ill-treatment, and testimonials of alleged human rights abuses including forced sterilization, contraception, and abortion. Chinese government statistics show that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar fell by more than 60%. In the same period, the birth rate of the whole country decreased by 9.69%, from 12.07 to 10.9 per 1,000 people. Chinese authorities acknowledged that birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018 in Xinjiang, but denied reports of forced sterilization and genocide. Birth rates have continued to plummet in Xinjiang, falling nearly 24% in 2019 alone when compared to just 4.2% nationwide.