The Economics of Color:

Inside Chinas Racialized ESL market

by

Marina Ionela Pslaru

Student ID: 15202528

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN
INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND SOCIAL COHESION

University College Dublin

May, 2016

Supervisors:

University College Dublin Alice Feldman (alice.feldman@ucd.ie)

University of Amsterdam Shanshan Lan (s.lan@uva.nl)

University of Deusto Aitor Ibarrola (aitor.ibarrola@deusto.es)

Dublin, 2016
 Statutory Declaration

I hereby declare that I have developed and written the enclosed Master Thesis completely

by myself, and have not used sources or means without declaration in the text. Any thoughts from

others or literal quotations are clearly marked. The Master Thesis was not used in the same or in a

similar version to achieve an academic grading or is being published elsewhere.

I also declare that I have been informed of the completion and assessment rules of the

MISOCO program.

May 3, 2016

Marina Ionela Pslaru

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION2

1. LITERATURE REVIEW8

Conceptual Framework ...8

Race in China ...15

Africans in China ....20

Conclusion ..22

2. METHODOLOGY .23

A case study of racialization in China ........23

Data collection ....24

Sampling .26

Coding and Analysis ...31

Conclusion ..33

3. ESL INDUSTRY IN CHINA. BUSINESS AS USUAL 35

Agent chains and recruitment processes .36

Expectations vs. reality ...38

Illegalities and control ....41

Conclusion ..45

4. THE IDEALIZED ENGLISH TEACHER .47

Racialization of hiring practices in China .47

Stereotypes at work: white face jobs vs black and poor ...52

Stereotypes and white face jobs 52

 Stereotypes and encounters with local Chinese ...55

Stereotypes and encounters with local police ...58

Performing nativeness ......61

Conclusion...66

CONCLUSION..69

BIBLIOGRAPHY .73

ANNEXES 80

Profiles of the interviewees80

Respondents opinions on Chinese society and prejudice in China .....................82

 Preface

I would like to express my deep gratitude to all the foreign teachers who agreed to share

their knowledge and experiences for the purpose of this research, knowing it was not easy for most

of them to recall certain painful memories. Their contribution is acknowledged and greatly

appreciated.

I also thank my supervisors, especially Prof. Shanshan Lan and Prof. Alice Feldman for

their guidance throughout the process of conducting and writing this research. Your support, input

and feedback have helped me achieve greater insight into the topic and higher overall quality of

the study.
 The economics of color:

Inside Chinas racialized ESL market

Abstract

Determined by increased globalization and economic development, Chinas ESL market is

booming. The internet is abundant in ads calling for foreign native English teachers while some

recruiters openly state their preference for white teachers. Using a Western theoretical framework

on race, my research seeks to analyze the racialization of whiteness and blackness inside

Chinas ESL market, taking into account contextual specificities. Drawing on eight in-depth, semi-

structured interviews with foreign teachers in China, I begin my study by showing how the general

climate of recruitment agencies and other intermediary agents in China is defined by exploitation,

control and manipulation, which all teachers, regardless of their race or nationality, fall victim

to. I then continue by showing how the social construction of whiteness and blackness is shaped

by deeply ingrained stereotypes of various groups of foreigners in China. These stereotypes find

their roots in Chinas historical encounter with the powerful West, which allowed Darwinist ideas

on race and global racial hierarchies to penetrate the Chinese society, as well as in

contemporary westernizing projects in China and the influence of Western social media. Finally,

I show how nationality and nativeness complicate the white-black binary of race in the ESL

industry and how Chinese stakeholders use whiteness and blackness and the meanings these

categories encompass as benchmarks in the production of the Self.

Keywords: race, racialization, English language, racialization of nonnative speaker, whiteness, blackness,

migration, China;

1
 Introduction

In the past decades, Chinas rapid economic development has transformed the realities of

migration both from and to the country. In addition to large flows of emigrants leaving in search

of opportunities elsewhere for which China is known, we are witnessing now a new trend of

immigration to the fast-developing country (Skeldon, 2011). Traditionally an emigration country,

China is now facing the struggles of an immigration country, and has recently passed a new

immigration law, very similar in many aspects to that of Western countries. The most striking

similarity is the underlying distinction between desirable and undesirable immigrants, which is

seen in China as a tool for modernization (Haugen, 2015). The important thing for China is to set

standards for foreigners in terms of educational attainment, occupation, salary and other aspects,

just as developed countries do, a legislator stated upon passing the law, which came into force in

July 2013 (Haugen, 2015). This new immigration law privileges foreign professionals in sectors

facing skills scarcity, such as the ESL sector.

Chinas accession to WTO, on December 11, 2001 came as a natural result of the countrys

efforts to undergo political reforms which would open its economy to the rest of the world. Since

the economic opening, China continued having a booming, highly competitive economy.

According to the 2015 World Investment Report published by the United Nations Conference on

Trade and Development, China had become the largest Foreign Direct Investment recipient,

surpassing the United States. The recent rise of Chinas economy has also paved the way for

Chinas ambition to compete with the West for global hegemony. Ever since the current president

Xi Jinping came to power, the headlines of Western newspapers have flooded with ideas of a

2
Chinese ideological campaign against the West and Western cultural ideas. But it seems that this

ideological campaign, however, is not aimed to be an anti-Western effort but a defensive measure

to help the Communist Party maintain political stability (Su, 2015). In a speech that president

Jinping gave on a trip to Southern China, he associated the collapse of the USSR with the collapse

of its ideals and beliefs (Su, 2015). So, from an ideological stand, the Chinese president uses

nationalism and cultural identity as a strategy to counter the influence of foreign ideology. The

idea of a Chinese dream that refers to prosperity and improvement in peoples lives puts greater

emphasis on national rejuvenation (Su, 2015). So China is striving to further develop and improve

using elements from the West, while maintaining its national specificity as well, in its attempt to

become a real global power.

In spite of the presidents effort to build ethnocentrism and counter Western cultural

influences, the number of Chinese young people who are influenced by Western cultural ideas and

who want to get a Western education is rising. In 2015, Chinese students were officially ranking

number 1 in the USA alone, accounting for 31.2% of all foreign students enrolled in an American

university.1 The fast paced economic advancement of Chinese middle and upper class made it

possible for the parents to provide for their children the best possible education, at any cost.

As a result of the economic boom and of a widespread Western influence in China,

acquiring English as a second language is a must for every Chinese who wants to take advantage

of the growing educational and professional opportunities. This is the reason why the ESL industry

has taken so much ground in the past few years. English Language Centers appear to be a great

1
http://www.iie.org/Services/Project-Atlas/United-States/International-Students-In-US

3
business in China nowadays and the number of recruiting agencies is growing as well, in an attempt

to cater the need for foreign teachers.

This is why we find the internet abundant with ads looking for foreign English teachers.

Although being a native from one of the English speaking countries (USA, UK, Australia, Ireland,

New Zealand) seems to be a must in almost all of them, at a quick glance one would stumble

against some ads that openly state the preference for Caucasian looking teachers. A deeper look

into the subject reveals that this practice is not uncommon at all among Chinese employers who

often give preference to white, Caucasian looking teachers, a practice detrimental to prospective

teachers, such as Blacks or Asians. My research is thus aimed at analyzing how the ESL market in

China is characterized by racialized hiring practices used to sort potential teachers into groups with

unequal access to job benefits and rewards. I find this approach particularly interesting since China

has long denied the existence of any forms of racism within its borders (Diktter, 1997), on the

basis that the English word race does not have an equivalent in Mandarin, and thus race is not

a Chinese concept. It is true that academic studies on race and racialization have pertained

almost exclusively to Western scholarship, so the specific research question of this study will be

how does blackness and whiteness become racialized in Chinas ESL market and will be used

against the interesting problematique of how to study race/ racialization in the Chinese context.

My research also aims to problematize the racial white-black binary, by analyzing and examining

how teachers nationality and nativity in English alters the neat division between black and

white in the process of constructing whiteness and blackness. Moreover, it will bring an

additional understanding of how the edification of White Westerner teachers links to the wider

ethnocentric ideology proposed by Jinping. I therefor examine the cross-cultural application of

Western social science framework on race using a migration lens.

4
 Since this particular topic has been understudied, there is no full-fledged theory to address

it properly. This is the reason why I construct my theoretical foundation by picking and choosing

concepts from the Western theoretical framework on race. The main concept used will be

racialization, defined as the processes by which ideas about race are constructed, come to be

regarded as meaningful, and are acted upon (Murji & Solomos, 2005). Thus, racialization produces

and legitimates difference among social groups based on perceived biological or ancestral

characteristics, resulting in a hierarchy where some groups are considered superior to other. The

second concept used is that of whiteness, which came to be understood as a global signifier of

privilege (Leonardo, 2002), but its invisible nature found in everyday practices and discourses

makes it difficult to detect at times. The third and probably the most interesting one is nativeness,

a concept found at the intersection of race and language. Drawing on Shucks (2006) theory on

the racialization of the non-native speaker and Romneys (2010) theory of the idealized native

speaker, I will assess how Chinese employers and other stakeholders place potential teachers on a

language-race-nationality matrix, rendering whiteness, nativeness in English and coming from

a native English speaking country (e.g. USA, UK, Australia and others) as the norm, the taken for

granted way to be. Those teachers who do not fit this matrix entirely are automatically othered,

and thus rendered inferior and undeserving, suffering various negative material and everyday life

consequences as a result.

The methodology used consisted of qualitative research methods, building a case study of

seven English teachers and one French professional of African descent. I conducted a total of eight

in-depth, semi-structured interviews, where every respondent shared her/his understanding of

her/his own experience as an English teacher in China. This allowed me to explore the different

ways in which race is experienced and takes up meaning inside Chinas ESL market, and also

5
allowed my interviewees to speak back to the Communist Partys official discourse on race not

finding its place in China. I will expand more on the reasons why I chose this particular

methodology and its specificities in the Methodology section.

The findings of this research reveal that the blatant racialized attitudes of Chinese agents

and employers determine non-white teachers to experience deep inequalities within the ESL

industry. At the same time, these specific practices are enabled by a prominent prejudice against

non-white groups found in the Chinese society, prejudice that allows White, Caucasian looking

teachers to have a full set of advantages over other racial groups. I think the findings of this

research are of particular importance and relevance both as an added value to the scholarship on

race and social sciences in general, as well as from a societal point of view. The present study

aims to fill the gap identified in social fields such as migration and race studies, since little

literature has been provided on social and racial relations between foreign migrants in China and

their host society.

The thesis is divided into four main chapters. The first chapter deals with current literature

on the topic and will expand on the conceptual framework used to sustain my research

theoretically. Here I overview Western and Chinese literature on race in China and the main

opinions on the topic, as well as studies done on immigrants in China, especially on the African

community found predominantly in Southern China. The second chapter focuses on the

methodological aspect of the research. Here, I will explain in depth the methods used to collect

primary and secondary data, as well as sampling methods and analysis and the reasons behind

these particular choices of methods. The third chapter gives an overview of how recruiting

agencies in agents in China take advantage of the lack of regulation of the ESL market and turn

the industry into a highly exploitative one for all teachers involved, regardless of their race. The

6
fourth chapter presents the core findings of this research and aims to answer the research question.

Here, I show how deeply ingrained stereotypes of certain groups of foreigners in China materialize

themselves into racialized hiring practices, and how nationality and nativeness complicate the

issue of race in China. I end this study with a Conclusion, summing up the results of the analysis,

and a discussion and limitation section where I will assess the theoretical and methodological

limitations of this research, as well as encouraging to further academic exploration of the topic.

7
 Chapter 1

Literature Review & Conceptual framework

This chapter will cover the conceptual framework used as a theoretical basis for my

research as well as literature review on topics such as race in China or previous body of

knowledge developed around immigrant communities in China. The chapter will be divided in

three main sections. The first one will consist of the main theoretical concepts used to tackle the

research question, concepts picked and chose from the Western theoretical framework on race. I

will also explain the reasons why they will prove themselves useful in making sense of the

particular phenomenon I am studying. The second section will cover literature on race in China,

which provide different accounts, opinions and empirical examples over how this particular

concept unfolds itself in different contexts in China. The last section will overview some of the

main body of literature developed around African immigrants in China and the ways the authors

tackled this topic. The last two sections will constitute a clear example of how the body of

knowledge around the topic of racial dynamics inside Chinas ESL market is defined by a gap in

the literature which I aim to address through this research.

1. Conceptual Framework

Since the formation of social categories along racial lines is the main theoretical

underpinning of my research, the main concept I will use to analyze the data gathered from my

fieldwork will be racialization. Many sociologists agree that when we talk about race, we should

8
think of the process of race making instead (Knowles, 2004), as race is not a natural category,

but a socially constructed one, which changes its meaning throughout time, in different places

(Omi & Winant, 1994; Wacquant, 1997; Brubaker et al., 2004; Desmond, 2009; Garner, 2010).

The process of race making turns on the dynamic of relationality, which is a central conceptual

tool used to analyze the formation of race and racial categories. Both Wacquant (1994) and

Brubaker et al. (2004) have stressed the importance of shifting the analytical attention in race

studies from things to perspectives, from groups to group making and group activities, which are

all outcomes of intra- and intergroup interaction. So for a better understanding of the phenomenon,

we need to focus more on the process dynamics, rather than taking things and concepts for granted.

Racialization as a concept is based on the idea that the object of study should not be race

itself, but the process by which it becomes meaningful in a particular context (Garner, 2010).

Racialization is something detrimental that is done to others as part of a power relationship, so it

involves actions guided by meanings given to a certain group of people. Underlying the

categorization is the discourse supported by a specific power dynamic that excludes certain

racialized groups as the inferior Other, while maintaining the status quo of the Self.

Racialization can be defined as racial categorization, a dialectical process by which meaning is

attributed to particular biological features of human beings, as a result of which individuals may

be assigned to a general category of persons that reproduces itself biologically (Miles & Brown,

2003, in Kubota and Lin, 2006). It is a core concept in the analysis of racial phenomena,

particularly to signal the processes by which ideas about race are constructed, come to be regarded

as meaningful, and are acted upon (Murji & Solomos, 2005, in Kubota & Lin, 2006). Thus,

racialization produces and legitimates difference among social groups based on perceived

9
biological or ancestral characteristics, yet it is a dynamic and historically situated process in which

racial significations are always shifting.

To better understand how this concept operates in the particular social context chosen for

my research I will complement this general theory of racialization with studies of racial identities

and racial categorization in China (Dikotter, 1992; Dikotter, 1994; Sautman 1997; Cheng, 2011).

Literature on this particular social context will also provide insight into the process of racialization

in general. Since any form of racial categorization and classification was banned by the Chinese

communist party, race is a highly contested concept by its members. They claim that notions of

racial superiority are at the root of the push by foreigners to impose their human rights values on

China (Sautman, 1997). So the studies on Chinese racial identities and racial formation will give

me a sociohistorical overview of how, despite this discourse that race as a concept, and

consequently racism does not exist in China, myths of origins, ideologies of blood, conceptions

of racial hierarchy and narratives of biological descent played a central part in the cultural

construction of identity in China, and were used to divide the Chinese society into racial groups.

Moreover, it is going to help shed light over how racial categorization and classification takes

place nowadays in the context tackled through my research, that of foreign English teachers. I will

expand more on this topic in the second section of this chapter, talking about limitations and things

we should consider while analyzing this particular concept in China.

Another important concept which I will use in my research is nativeness. Studies on the

meaning and signification of the term native speaker often invoke nationality, ethnicity, accent,

or other characteristics apart from expertise and fluency (Aneja, 2014). Depending on context a

native speaker of English may refer to someone who has spoken English and only English since

infancy, who has a North American or British accent (Liu, 1999), who is phenotypically Caucasian

10
(Amin, 1999), who began learning English before six years of age and communicates primarily in

English, or any combination of these factors. However, Pierre Bourdieu (1991) concluded that

social acceptance rather than grammatical competence contextually defines a native speaker.

Bonfiglio (2010) ties the construct of native speaker to the discourses of nationalist language

ideologies and formation of a national identity. He demonstrates that the existence of a native

language is the product of the rise of the nation state in Europe, and at this point in time, the

conceptualization of language as local and rooted in the homeland emerged (Bonfiglio, 2013).

Thus, native language and nationality were seen in close connection with the physical environment

and because national identity rather than citizenship signifies a folkloric notion of its biological

nationality (Bonfiglio, 2013), it is often realized as a racialized construction that grants a

legitimate national and linguistic ownership to those who have particular phenotypic

characteristics (Bonfiglio, 2013).

Native speaker as an ideological construct is to be found in Shucks (2006) study as well.

This concept is created at the intersection of language and race, and it relies on the notion of place

as a dimension along which native and nonnative English speakers may be imagined (Shuck,

2006). Underlying the intersection of language and race is a language ideology, which Shuck calls

ideology of nativeness. At the core of this ideological model is a view of the worlds speech

communities as naturally monolingual and mono-cultural, whereby one language is symbolically

associated with one nation. In his study, Shuck (2006) shows how the racialization of the

nonnative English speakers is done through discursive processes by which White, middle-class,

native-English-speaking, US-born college students draw on a monolingualist ideology and

position themselves and others within a language-race-nationality matrix. These processes

construct Whiteness and nativeness in English as normal, taken for granted, while nonnative

11
speakers of English are marked as non-white and foreign. US-born citizens, which are native

English speakers and Caucasians maintain privilege widely perceived to be a natural outcome of

certain characteristics thought to be intrinsic to American-ness, nativeness, or Whiteness (Shuck,

2006).

An empirical example that draws on the language-race-nationality matrix is Sungs article

on Race and native speakers in ELT: parents perspectives in Hong Kong (2011). He shows how

native English speakers are still widely preferred as teachers by employers in China, as evidence

by their online advertisements, where they clearly state the preference for a native English

speaker. What is more striking though is that not only are native English speakers required, but

native speakers of a particular race, are considered preferable. So in the eyes of employers and

the larger population, race, particularly white, Caucasian is associated with the perception of

native speaker. Although race is not considered to be a criterion of a native speaker in the

literature, both race and nativeness are part of the idealized native speaker (Romney, 2010 in

Sung, 2011) , who fits the language-race-nationality matrix. Accounting of his personal experience

working for an English language institute in Hong Kong, Sung recalls how parents had a strong

preference for white, foreign teachers (even though some were nonnative and not proficient in

English), while at the same time they were showing distrust of native English speaker teachers

(US-born, UK-born) of Asian, Indian or African descent. Shortly, they were considered less

desirable than white, foreign teachers, although for most of them English was the only language

they knew, but they did not seem to be able to tick the race box in the matrix, which marked them

as the inferior Other.

The language-race-nationality matrix illuminates two problems in my broader theory of

racialization. One problem lies in the tendency of Chinese employers and parents to equate the

12
native English speaker with White, Caucasian teacher coming from the USA, UK or other native

English speaking countries. This can serve as an indicator of the marginalization and

discrimination experienced by teachers who do not fit the above mentioned matrix in terms of

race, for example Asian or Black native English speakers from those countries, or even from

British ex-colonies in Africa. This situation reveals that nativeness acts as a signifier of ones

abilities to teach his/her native language in Chinese parents imaginary. But if a prospective teacher

is a native English speaker but of Asian or Black descent, his/her phenotype and skin color will

cast a shadow of doubt over his/her nativeness and thus over his/her teaching skills, making the

person less desirable for a teaching job. Another issue stems from Sungs empirical example of

the parents preference for White, foreign teachers, even though they are not-native English

speakers. This example clearly shows how fitting the desirable race category in the matrix

(Caucasian) can silence the need to fit for nativeness as well, since Whiteness is associated with

nativeness in most of the parents understandings. In other words, although being a native is the

main quality required by all employers, in real life non-native White people can pass as native due

the association Chinese parents make between being White and being a native English speaker. If

I were to stretch out this idea conceptually, I would say nativeness can be performed by non-

native English speakers, if they have the privilege of embodying whiteness.

The third and last concept I will be using in my theoretical framework is whiteness, as it

stems from my previous paragraph. Whiteness studies investigate the social construction of

Whiteness (e.g., how Irish, Jewish, Italian, Greek people came to be labeled as white), White

privilege (McIntosh, 1997) and the normative yet invisible nature of Whiteness observed in

everyday practices and discourses. According to McIntosh (1997) social, political and cultural

advantages are given to whites in the global society. The globalization of white privilege has also

13
been discussed by Leonardo (2002) in his article The Souls of White Folk: Critical Pedagogy,

Whiteness studies, and globalization discourse, where he also argues in favor of Whiteness as a

socially constructed concept and as a privilege signifier that has become global (Leonardo, 2002).

Whiteness in the globalization discourse is particularly significant for my study, since it collides

with the global spread of English and English language teaching. Also in relation with the concept

of nativeness mentioned above, we could see from Sungs accounts that fitting only the race

category, being White (Caucasian) bears more weight on peoples perceptions of ones abilities of

speaking and teaching English. The globalization of white privilege which operates in invisible

ways around and across societies can influence significantly employers hiring habits in China, as

well as students and/or parents preference for white, foreign teachers. In addition to this, the

white teachers I interviewed come from developing countries which occupy lower ranks in the

global hierarchy, countries with an official language other than English. Given this diversity, it is

interesting to see how whiteness is perceived and acted upon in the Chinese context. Goldberg

(2001) shows in his book, The Racial State, how in all colonies, all Europeans were considered

more or less white. The identification of European-ness and whiteness was considered a state of

being, desirable habits and customs, projected patterns of thinking and living (Goldberg, 2001).

Built into whiteness was and still is a set of elevated moral dispositions, social customs and

norms. Goldberg (2001) further shows how colonies elevated the European proletariat to the

property of whiteness by making the semblance of privileges and power, customs and behaviors

available to them. This is an interesting parallel I can draw in my analysis between Western

colonies and the Chinese context, in which white privilege can help elevate the status of people

whose nationality ranks lower in the global hierarchy.

14
 The conceptual framework I have created for this research will constitute a helpful

analytical tool which I can use to investigate how Chinas ESL market become racialized. The

concept of racialization will be used to make sense of the dynamics between Chinese

stakeholders in the ESL market and foreign teachers, by analyzing the processes by which ideas

about race are constructed in this particular context, become meaningful and are acted upon, thus

influencing hiring practices. Using the concept of nativeness retrieved from the idealized native

speaker theory (Romney, 2010) and the racialized non-native speaker theory (Shuck, 2006) will

add up to the understanding of how non-white, non-native teachers become racialized, while the

concept of whiteness which embodies global privilege helps blur the line of racialization for

those white teachers who are non-native English speakers, coming from countries other than USA,

UK, Australia, Ireland or New Zealand. These mechanisms can be used to give a plausible

explanation for how English teachers of different social, ethnic, national background are sorted

out into different positions, with unequal access to rewards, resources and opportunities in the

Chinese context. It seems so far by overlapping Sungs (2011) account over Shucks study, that

the process of recruiting and placing English teachers recreates those racialized Western patterns,

influenced by Western ideas of race. Teachers become in this sense both victims of racialization,

as well as agents in the process of it, that further reproduce this reality in a different context.

2. Race in China

Literature on racism in China is not abundant. The use of racial discourse was officially

banned by the Communist regime, while in the early 1990s, delegates of the Chinese communist

Party at meetings of the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva

uphold precisely the same argument, a rhetorical strategy used to delay the introduction of clear

15
definitions of racial discrimination and racial prejudice into the countrys legal system (Diktter,

1997).

The most renowned work on race in China pertains to Frank Diktter, a Dutch historian

who wrote extensively on modern China. In the following I am going to present Diktters ideas

on the history and evolution of racial notions in China, being aware of the fact that his work on

China has often been criticized for assuming that Chinese culture is inherently racist and that

translations from Mandarin to English might have been flawed, because of the lacking equivalents

between the two languages regarding race terminology. Being aware of these limitation, I think

his work can help shed light over the penetration of Darwinist ideas inside the Chinese society and

their pervasiveness inside the collective mentality.

Diktter argues that in China, racial categories of analysis started to supersede ethnocentric

senses of identity during the last decade of the 19th century. Reformers like Liang Qichao and Kang

Youwei, following social Darwinist ideas, ordered mankind into a racial hierarchy of biological

groups where yellows competed with whites over degenerate breeds of browns, blacks and

reds. Writer Tang Caichang (1867-1900) couched it in evenly balanced clauses: Yellow and

white are wise, red and black are stupid; yellow and white are rulers, red and black are slaves;

yellow and white are united, red and black are scattered.

Race gradually emerged as the most common symbol of cultural identity. The great

Dictionary of Zoology (1923), the first reference work of its kind, contended that the black race

have a shameful and inferior way of thinking and have no capacity to shine in history. Racialized

senses of identity also filtered down to lower levels of education after the foundation of Republic

in 1911 (Diktter, 1997). The opening sentence of a chapter in human races in a 1920 textbook

for middle schools declared that among the worlds races there are strong and weak constitutions,

16
there are black and white skins, there is hard and soft hair, there are superior and inferior cultures.

A rapid overview shows that they are not on the same level. Even in primary schools, readings on

racial politics became part of the curriculum: Mankind is divided into five races. The yellow and

white races are relatively strong and intelligent. Because the other races are feeble and stupid, they

are being exterminated by the white race. Only the yellow race competes with the white race. This

is so called evolution Among the contemporary races that could be called superior, there are

only yellow and white races. China is the yellow race. (Ibid.)

Anti-black bias can in turn be seen in the context of a reinforcement of elitist values that

link and denigrate those who are dark and those who are poor. Traditional Chinese culture

idealized fair skin and associated it with intellectual endeavor. Fair skin continues to be a standard

of female beauty while black is associated with negative qualities. Urban Chinese have long

associated the dark complexions of manual laborers or peasants with low economic and cultural

status (Sautman, 1994). A survey among primarily Chinese students and intellectuals conducted

in 1992 found a similarity between attitudes towards Blacks and towards peasants, as both were

regarded as less intelligent, less attractive, less cultured and less civilized in comparison with

Americans or British for example. Blacks were considered to be at the bottom end of

modernization and development (Ibid.).

The findings of the 1992 study seem to reflect the tendency of many Chinese to regard

Africa and the Third World as symbols of China's backward past which they wish to escape in

their process to align with the progressive West rather than backwards Africa (Cheng, 2011).

Furthermore, Chengs analysis of Liu Zhirongs2 essays on China (Why are the Chinese

discriminated against in Africa and The Chinese in the eyes of African people) revealed that

2
French-educated businessman with ten years work experience in Africa.

17
Chinese workers, unlike white Europeans/Americans, are often abused and not respected by local

authorities. The author of the essays concludes that the whites colonized Africans, and that is why

today Africans still treat whites like a servant treats his master. The face of a white man is his

passport, Liu asserted. Lius answer to Why are the Chinese discriminated against in Africa? is

because we did not colonize them. Echoing social Darwinism and might is right rhetoric, he

maintained that all nations in the world seem to be the same. They admire the strong and despise

the weak. It is just like taming a horse: only when you remain tough will it be submissive to you

(Cheng, 2011).

Zhirong accounts on his experiences in Africa and his opinions on the dynamics between

Chinese and African people are strongly influenced by the dynamics between nations within the

global racial hierarchy. Global racial hierarchy was rooted in Chinese ethnocentrism and

constructed with social Darwinism, but has survived since 1949. Contemporary Chinese

intellectuals are sensitive to the Western orientalist attitude towards China, but the Chinese

perception of Africa or Blacks is also essentialized and racialized to perpetuate the negative image

of Africa as the primitive and inferior Other (Cheng, 2011).

After reviewing some of studies from an already scarce body of literature of race in China,

we can see that the social formation of race in this particular context is different from that of the

West. Specific historical, social and cultural contexts in China complicate the issue of race. First

of all, the encounter of China with Western powers, particularly with the British Empire which

forcefully opened China to foreign trade has made China aware of the global racial hierarchy. After

the defeat of Qing troops in the first Opium War (1839-1842), the British government forced China

to agree to an unequal trade agreement, according to which Hong Kong would be ceded to the

Crown, while other ports, among which Shanghai would be opened to unlimited trade. During this

18
great opening to foreigners under the strong fist of the British, ideas of social Darwinism have

penetrated the society as well and became internalized references for the production of the Self

and the Other in Chinese culture. Those were also the times when, part of the imperialistic

expansions in the East, Western missionaries started coming in greater number and make God

known to the locals, preaching in English, thus civilizing them and bring them on the right path.

So this particular historical context defined by early encounters with the West rendered Chinese

as a second class population, at the hands of Western powers interests. I believe that ideas of

race which have penetrated the openings created under the British influence have later on

changed to become an ideology of race used as an argument to boost national rejuvenation, thus

in strong relation with ethnocentrism, rather than becoming a conscious, deliberate systematic

repression of certain races, as it was the case with Western powers and their colonies. As

Wacquant (1997) concludes:

Mixing homegrown Confucian categories rooted in the dualism between a civilized center

and a barbarian periphery, with Western concepts of physical type, this tradition portrayed the

Han Chinese as a distinct biological grouping descended from the mythical Yellow Emperor. It

anchored a rigid vision of a planetary racial hierarchy featuring yellow and white at the top and

black, brown and red at the bottom and it made eugenics into a preeminent instrument of national

revival from the overthrown of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 until racial discourse was officially

banned by the new communist regime.

I agree with some of the ideas Cheng (2011) put forward, which highlight the fact that

China seems to be using race as an ideology meant to add up and actually support Chinas

ethnocentrism and its attempt to align itself with the progressive West. This idea relates very well

with the recent political developments which I have presented in the Introduction part of this

19
research, where in its quest for the position of global hegemon, China competes with the West,

while using Western elements at the same time to help boost its economy and create more

opportunities for development.

3. Africans in China

The ever growing African community in Guangzhou, made the city be known as the

Chocolate City. The presence of numerous African migrants in southern China has led to the

emergence of a significant body of knowledge on the topic (Bertoncello & Bredeloup, 2007; Li et

al, 2008; Zhang, 2008; Rennie, 2009; Le Bail, 2009; Li et al, 2009; Bodomo, 2010; Bodomo et al,

2010; Haugen, 2011; Mathews & Yang, 2012; Li et al, 2012; Haugen, 2012; Bodomo, 2012; Lyons

et al, 2012; Han, 2013; Haugen, 2013; Lan, 2014; Castillo, 2014, 2015)3. All these studies tackle

various aspects of the African diaspora in Guangzhou, such as emplacement and belonging,

migration behaviors, healthcare experiences, religious activities, racial profiling or the state

implication in the regulation of undocumented migrants, among others.

In his article Homing Guangzhou: Emplacement, belonging and precarity among

Africans in China, Castillo (2015) interviews one African businessman in Guangzhou who states,

in relation to local police who persecute, harass and detain African migrants that he does not see

his actions as proof of racism or discrimination. Instead, They have built an economy out of this.

For them, its not discrimination. Its business. (Castillo, 2015). He relates police harassment and

persecutions to loopholes in Chinese laws that create spaces for individuals to abuse their authority.

3
For a more complete list of studies on the African population in China, visit http://africansinchina.net/academic-
resources/

20
Castillos findings are of importance to my research in the way he shows that although surveillance

in the Chocolate City has increased, together with other measures of state control aimed to hamper

the growth of the immigrant population (Lan, 2014), African people themselves do not directly

associate these measures with racism.

On the other hand, Frazier & Zhangs (2014) Ethnic identity and racial contestation in

cyberspace: Deconstructing the Chineseness of Lou Jing brings to light Chinese racialized public

opinion on blackness. The authors analyze the cyber reaction of Chinese citizens to the growing

popularity of a mixed-race, Chinese African-American contestant of 2009 Dragon TVs Lets go!

Oriental Angel!, Shanghais equivalent to the Western television show American Idol. The

popularity of the college student and aspiring singer Lou Jing seems to have stemmed not from the

quality of her singing, but from her skin color which distinguished her from the rest of the

contestants. Although the show hosts referred to her as to Our chocolate girl, or Chinas black

pearl and Halle Berry of the East, the Chinese public seemed to have had another opinion. A

hot debate emerged surrounding Chinese national identity and Chinese perspectives on

blackness. For numerous people, Lous skin color marked her as black, a racial classification

that overrode her claims to Chinese nationality being argued that her black parentage prevented

her from being a real Chinese national, while some of her worst critics referring to her as black

chimpanzee, black devil and as polluting the larger Chinese national body (Frazier & Zhang,

2014). Although the accounts for biased and racialized opinions are evident, the article also

highlights the complexities that surround the issue of blackness in China. To add up to the

understanding of this multifaceted issue of race and how it operates in China, the authors mention

the growing presence of African American, Afro-European, and African professional basketball

21
players who obtain contracts to play for different teams within the Chinese Basketball Association,

as well as African musicians and producers who have becomes successful in China (Ibid.).

Conclusion

The first section of the first chapter gives a detailed account of the theoretical approach of

my research. I think using a Western conceptual framework on race will constitute a solid base

for my study, while at the same time will provide an interesting insight into the application of this

particular framework in the Chinese context. The last two sections, Race in China and

Africans in China have informed the reader of the latest developments and findings regarding

the topic of race in China, while overviewing the latest body of knowledge developed around the

topic of the growing African community in China. The last two sections have also clearly shown

the gap in the existing literature on migrants in China and race, which I aim to address through

my research: the racialization of Chinas ESL market. The following chapter is developed around

methodology, where I will give a clear description of the methods deployed to gather and analyze

data from the fieldwork. I will also explain the reasons that supported my choices as well as the

limitations of the methods.

22
 Chapter II

Methodology Qualitative Research

In this second chapter I will expand on my methodological design and the methods used to

gather and analyze data. I will first begin by explaining why I chose to approach my research

through a case study method. I will move on by stating my ontological and epistemological stance

as a researcher, followed by a detailed account of the main methods of data collection, i.e. semi-

structured interviews and content analysis of various written or video resources. Lastly, I will

present the method of analysis chosen and how this particular method is going to prove itself

helpful in deconstructing and making sense of data gathered from the interviews.

A case study of racialization in China

As stated above, my research will be designed as a study case. The advantages of using a

study case for my research is that it offers in-depth understanding of the phenomenon I am

studying, of the context and process, and allows for comparison between actors inside a single case

(Denzin & Lincoln, 2011). The focus is the process of racialization, related to a particular social

context and on the multitude of perspectives in that context. Since the Chinese context is such a

controversial one in what the concept of race in concerned, I think it is safe to adopt relativism

as ontological stance, bearing in mind that we can only know a reality through socially

constructed meanings and that there is no single shared reality, only a series of alternative

constructions (Mason, 2002). In order to understand how the process of racialization operates in

23
China, I analyze people as social actors who influence the organization of a society in racialized

terms through their perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, behavior and interactions. By investigating their

experiences, accounts and narratives, I will be able to understand the nature of social relations

between different social and ethnic groups in a particular social and local context and approaching

this research as a case study will not only allow for comparison between individual accounts, but

will also offer insight into different dimensions of the social phenomenon I am studying. Another

reason why I chose to build a case study in order to analyze how Chinas ESL market becomes

racialized is based on the lack of an organized, coherent body of knowledge developed around this

topic. The lack of a full-fledged theory and already formulated hypotheses which can be tested has

rendered my study into an explorative research, in an attempt to capture the different nuances and

different dimensions of the social phenomenon under investigation, thus producing new

knowledge which can prove itself valuable for future research. I am also aware that most of the

knowledge this study produces is done through my interpretation of the data available, so I am

concerned to explore and understand this social phenomenon using both participants and my

understanding of it, as well as my understanding of what the participants are saying about it.

Data collection

A. Primary data: Semi-structured, in-depth interviews

Individual interviews will seek to investigate the experiences of foreign teachers in China.

The interview structure will provide an opportunity for detailed investigation of teachers personal

context and perspectives, explore issues in depth in order to understand complex processes,

including motivations, decisions, impacts and outcomes. They are also particularly well suited to

24
research that requires an understanding of deeply rooted or delicate phenomena such as race and

racial formation (Mason, 2002). Since the respondents were geographically dispersed, all

interviews but one were done via Skype, since some of the teachers remained in China after their

contracts ended, while others went home, or moved out to other places. The only teacher I managed

to interview face-to-face was the Romanian teacher.

The interview structure was developed around five stages, as follows:

1. Recruitment process assess motivations to go teach in China, teachers situation at home,

the presence/absence of labor brokers, the length of acquiring a visa and the type of visa

etc.;

2. Training week(s) in the company - compulsory training week for all new employees;

assessment of Chinese employer's attitudes and behaviors towards her employees in

regards to respecting the clauses in the contract and analyze if the behavior was

differentiated towards different groups and if so, what were the lines along which

differential treatment was applied.

3. Initial placements assess the interviews between local schools and teachers, trying to find

out what seemed to be more important for the school representative (e.g. credentials,

experience, gender, skin color etc.); I will also try to assess if there seemed to be a racial

hierarchy among foreign teachers and if some racial group was preferred over others; also,

if that was the case, in which way was this situation rendered visible to the teachers.

4. Life outside the company what happens to the teachers after they were assigned a job,

assessment of attitudes towards them and their experiences inside the schools; this part will

also assess teachers' living and working conditions and the obstacles or privileges teachers

encountered in their attempts to get extra jobs on their own;

25
 5. Final outcomes in this final part of the interview, I try to find out what was the life of the

interviewees after their contract with the company reached an end. For those who stayed

in China: why and what turn did their lives take? Did the privileged ones choose to stay?

Assessment of racial dynamics outside the company, when the interviewees went on

seeking jobs on their own;

As part of my methodology, I will use the counter-storytelling technique from Critical Race

Theory. Delgado and Stefancic (2001) defined counter-storytelling as a method of telling a story

that aims to cast doubt on the validity of accepted premises or myths, especially ones held by the

majority. For my research, engaging in counter-storytelling with foreign teachers in China and

show how phenotypes influenced their placement and overall experience in the country will speak

against the mainstream discourse of Chinese officials who deny racism in China. Also, since this

method of data gathering allows for in-depth accounts, the interviewees will also have the chance

to speak against the other mainstream opinion when it comes to China and race, that according

to which China is inherently a racist society, uphold by many Westerners. By listening to the

teachers stories, I am seeking to capture the specificities of such a delicate social issue in the

Chinese context, particularly inside the local ESL market.

Sampling

My research sample consists of 8 respondents, extremely variegated in terms of phenotype

and nationality. The sample of white teachers consisted of four respondents, three males and one

female, their ages ranging from 22 to 40 years old. Three of them were non-native English speakers

from Georgia, Brazil and Romania and a native English speaker from South Africa, of Dutch and

26
British descent. Two of the respondent chose the option of staying anonymous during the research,

due to fears of repercussions. Out of the four respondents, one was back home, in his country of

origin, while the rest were still working and living in China, Shenzhen. All respondents, except

one, had higher education, consisting of a BA.

For my sample of black interviewees, I chose four people. Three females and one male.

Two of them were recruited for the same agency as the white teachers, based in Changchun. They

are of Ghanaian and Kenyan nationality. Another respondent was a French student in Shenzhen,

originally born in Ivory Coast, who was teaching in China as well. The last one was a French

professional of Cameroonian descent, working in Guangzhou. Although she has no tangential

connection with the ESL market, I chose to use her testimony, as it reveals important information

regarding general attitudes and behaviors of Chinese locals and authorities in day to day

interactions. This information is useful in getting a clearer picture of the social and cultural

background of the research. All of the black teachers had a BA diploma and two of them decided

to stay anonymous during the research. For easier reference during my research, I have created a

brief profile for each respondent which can be found in the Annexes.

In addition to that, for an easier reading and understanding of the findings presented in the

following chapters, below is a table with the racial, ethnic and citizenship profile of each

participant. The racial label is confirmed as self-identified by respondents themselves and it was

not inflicted upon them by the researcher. The self-identification of the respondents with one of

the two racial groups became clear during interviews and it matched the labelling done by local

Chinese. In addition, it is important for me to mention that I do not personally impute these

categories any meanings, nor do I intend to ground them the perceived or attributed meanings that

27
transpired from the data. These categories are theoretical instruments used with the sole purpose

of conducting the analytical process of the research.

NAME/Nickname RACE ETHNICITY CITIZENSHIP

SAMUEL Black Kenya Kenya

TRACEY Black Ghana Ghana

ADRIENNE (n.) Black Ivory Coast France

LASHINDA (n.) Black Cameroon France

HELENA (n.) White Brazilian/Portuguese Brazil

GEORGE White Romania Romania

LEO White Georgia Georgia

JAMES (n.) White Dutch-British South Africa

Note: (n.) stands for nickname.

28
 Sampling criteria consisted mainly on the respondents nationality, phenotype and then

gender, and was aimed to be as variegated as possible. The sampling criteria was also strongly

influenced by the available human resources at hand, since due to various reasons the research was

carried out in my home country, Romania, and access to foreign teachers was possible due to my

previous experience as English teacher in China. So the interpretation of the data will based itself

on my previous observation of the phenomenon as well, although with the clear intent to remain

as unbiased as I possibly can.

Six interviewees come from the company I used to work with, while the other two

respondents came from using snowballing or chain sampling technique, having the teachers who

had already taken part in the research recommending me respondents willing to participate in the

research and who fit the criteria more or less.

I consider the variety of nationalities involved in the research to be a strong point, since

respondents presented various phenotypes, correlated to a multitude of countries of origin. Their

accounts brought numerous interesting nuances to be analyzed. An important limitation that needs

to be addressed is the lack of White Americans and African Americans or British into the research,

which would have constituted a great advantage and value in terms of producing and comparing

data.

B. Secondary data

Since my interviews will present only the voices and experiences of foreign teachers in

China, I will try to fill the gap created by the lack of Chinese counterparts with few previous studies

on the topic, although literature is rather scarce in this field.

29
 One of the studies I will be using is actually a survey conducted in several cities in China

in 1992 regarding racial views of students and intellectuals, retrieved from Sautmans article

(1994) Anti-Black Racism in Post-Mao China. The survey was carried out among 461 people in

14 diverse sampling populations and its results offer a theory of anti-black prejudice based on an

analogous elite disdain for Chinas peasants. The first questionnaire asked that seven groups of

foreigners (Western Europeans, Africans, Japanese, Americans, South-East Asians, Arabs and

Indians) be rated for ten attributes: cultural level, intelligence, industriousness, behavior, role

models, attractiveness, interest in education, honesty, capacity to manage their own political affairs

and interest in economic development. A second questionnaire asked that Chinese peasants,

private entrepreneurs and intellectuals be rated for the same attributes. The survey results show

how Africans and Chinese peasants are rated in relation to other foreign people and social groups

and allow for comparison of the scoring of Africans and Chinese peasants. Africans were rated

worst for nine and peasants worst for eight of the ten attributes. That means that Africans and

peasants were considered the least intelligent, attractive, or industrious, compared to their Western

European, American and Chinese intellectuals counterparts, who scored the highest for many of

the attributes. The interesting fact is that Africans and Chinese peasants scored really well at

honesty compared to other groups.

I will further complement data retrieved from the previous survey with information found

in Al Jazeeras Chinese Dreamland documentary, which presents the practice of a Chinese

provincial leader hiring out foreign actors to perform fantasies of development, feeding the real

estate bubble. This particular video footage clearly shows how Chinese perceptions of foreigners

create a racial hierarchy, with white people placed at the top and asked to perform roles of

investors, businessmen and top models, while black foreigners are usually hired to perform tribal

30
shows or music entertainment. This situation clearly reflects the results of the survey, where

Africans were seen as backwards and lacking culture, while Westerners were seen as progressive,

attractive and rich in capital. The agent also clearly affirms that it is cheaper to hire black foreigner,

than it is to hire whites. This documentary will be useful in understanding how local perceptions

and attitudes collide with the globalization of whiteness and white privilege and how this

situation materialized itself in the Chinese context.

The last two resources I will use as reference tie themselves more to Chinas ESL market.

The accounts found in Sungs (2011) study on parents perceptions of the ideal English teach in

Hong Kong, where the ideal teacher has to be not only native, but preferably white as well give

me a preview of the ESL context and a point of reference for my own findings. On top of that, I

will analyze certain ESL websites, trying to retrieve online advertisements of institutions or

employers seeking foreign teachers. I will look out for those advertisements were explicit

preference is given to native English speaking, Caucasian looking foreigners.

These studies reveal some of the attitudes and beliefs of Chinese people/employers/parents

on different ethnic and racial groups. These attitudes are important in understanding how the

process of racialization operates in China, which might lead in certain cases to the marginalization

and discrimination of certain teachers based on their physical appearance, as well as nationality.

Coding and Analysis

In what interviews are concerned, I will apply a narrative and content type of analysis

through thematic coding, following Matthews and Ross (2010) guidelines. This has the advantage

of maintaining the specificities of the narrative and respondents own perceptions and

31
interpretation of their experience, while allowing for comparison, by finding common or different

themes and categories among them. It will also help me identify how themes are presented or

treated, and different patterns or typologies occurring across groups.

For the analytical purpose of this research, I will divide my sample into two main analytical

group: white teachers and black teachers. The division is done based on their skin color, the way

it is understood in common language regarding race. The reason I do this is because I am

interested in exploring the different ways in which race understood as phenotype, mainly skin

color, is experienced by foreign teachers in Chinas ESL market. By using a thematic analysis, I

am able to identify major themes that come up from my data and find the correlations both between

themes, as well the different ways they relate to the central topic, i.e. racialization. This process

will allow me to pinpoint the mechanisms through which blackness and whiteness become

racialized in Chinas ESL market. Other important variables I will take into consideration during

my analysis will be gender and nationality. Although focusing on the intersectionality of these

variables goes beyond the scope of this research, from an analytical point of view it would be

interesting to observe how the major themes that occur during and across the five stages of my

interview relate to the variables above mentioned. It will also help me assess if gender in particular

plays a role or not in further racializing a teacher or a group of teachers.

Regarding data coding, previous observations from my time in China gave me an idea of

the main themes which were going to emerge from my data. So I hand coded my data into the

following four main themes: 1) accounts of racialized distribution of job assignments and job

benefits; 2) accounts on the importance of skin color and country of origin (being a native of not)

in obtaining and securing a job as a teacher; 3) accounts of situations when white privilege was

at play, both inside the ESL market, as well as outside; 4) opinions regarding prejudice and

32
discrimination in China. These themes that emerged from the data gathered from my interviews

strongly reflect the conceptual framework developed as a theoretical support for my research.

Narrative analysis will further help identify similarities in treatment among all foreign

teachers, regardless of their race, and will reveal respondents agency or coping strategies, in

order to avoid or change certain treatments, as well as the outcomes of their strategies. Moreover,

since the study revolves around a controversial concept in China, content and narrative analysis

will offer me insight into specificities or paradoxes that might occur, especially in relation to the

main theoretical concepts.

By analyzing the content of my secondary data, I will assess social attitudes of the locals,

that might influence hiring and placement practices, which play an important role in the process

of racialization.

Conclusion

The second chapter was developed around the methodology of my research and the

methods used to gather and analyze data. The research was thought out as a case study, aimed at

explaining how the racialization of blackness and whiteness takes places in Chinas ESL

market, at a moment of rapid economic growth of the country. Since literature and theory on this

topic is relatively scarce, I ought to produce as much information and knowledge as possible

through my research, and the best way to do this, as I previously argued, is through semi-structured,

in-depth interviews as my main method of data gathering. This method suits best an exploratory

research such as mine, as it allows the participants to give an in-depth account on the way they

experienced and related to the main topic under investigation. By analyzing my data through

33
thematic coding, I break down the information into categories and themes and link them both

between each other as well as to the main concepts, identifying various patterns and typologies

emerging from these links.

Having presented both my conceptual framework which is going to support my research

theoretically and the methods deployed to help me get to the information I need to answer the

research question, I am now going to continue with the third chapter of this study, which aims to

contextualize and reveal the exploitative nature of intermediary recruitment agencies in China.

34
 Chapter III

ESL Industry in China. Business as usual

The role of recruitment agencies in shaping Chinas ESL market

When one talks about the ESL market in China nowadays, one talks about agents and

recruiting agencies. The cultural differences between the teachers and their Chinese employers,

mainly the language barrier which can turn the search for a job into a hassle, made it possible for

recruiting and placement agencies to develop and expand rapidly around this industry. Recruitment

and placement agencies act like intermediaries between potential teachers and schools, arranging

the documentation necessary for the teachers, thus lessening the bureaucratic burden of the

educational institutions. Before I get to the conceptual core of this study, which is racialization of

whiteness and blackness inside this industry, I aim to familiarize the reader with the modus

operandi of Chinese recruitment agencies, since all of the respondents, regardless of their race

identified them as the major factor that negatively influenced their experience in China through

their fierce business practices. The ESL industry appeared to be exploitative for all teachers

involved in it, but worse for non-white teachers, possibly due to the fact that Chinese employers

saw white teachers as a better investment. Furthermore, the structural constraints faced by

foreigners in China, such as the lack of rules and regulation of the ESL market reveal a flexible

and uncertain labor system which is constructed and sustained through concrete human actions.

35
 Agent chains and recruitment processes

The lack of proper regulation of Chinas ESL market makes it possible for many different

types of intermediary agencies to appear and operate in this industry. Although all of the

respondents were hired by the same company in China, their recruitment took place in various

ways, using different agents.

James, a white 22 years old South African was recruited directly by an agency

representative and said this agency was one of the few that got back at him in his attempt to find a

job in China, while still in his home city. James said the task of finding a job without yet having a

degree was more difficult than he initially thought, but the agency finally confirmed him as a

teacher, after an online interview, where they seemed pleased with his appearance and his accent.

The rest of the white teachers from Romania, Georgia and Brazil were recruited by a

Netherlands based Chinese agent, who was providing the agency in China with teachers. An

interesting aspect identified during the recruitment process of these three teachers was the use of

Western language to camouflage the realities of the teaching industry in China. For example, on

the Facebook page of the Netherlands based Chinese recruiter, the teachers remember the ads

calling for foreign teachers for a volunteer/internship type of job in China. Through the language

used, the potential candidates should have understood that the job was underpaid and the tasks

were not as difficult, since the recruiter was not looking for professionals. This was also the reason

why having a TEFL certificate or any kind of teaching certificate for that matter did not constitute

an important aspect of the recruitment process. Looking back at this process, George, a white

teacher from Romania recalls:

36
 When I finally applied for this job, she (the recruiter) never mentioned the word salary,

but something like pocket money. It was a small sum of money because it was mostly about the

experience, about seeing China, about doing something very easy. She never asked for previous

teaching experience because she always repeated to me not to worry because I would always be

assisted by Chinese teachers who would take care of controlling and disciplining the kids. You

only go there and do whatever you are told to do, talk to the kids and so forth. But it wasnt really

like this. [] Basically they were asking you to have total control over the class, a complete

teaching experience from A to Z. Not as easy as my recruiter said it would be. So, in my opinion

the information provided was incomplete, and some even false. The information was not exact,

and we cannot really talk about confusion coming from the agents side. It was something

deliberate. (George, Romania)

Unlike white teachers who approached the recruiters themselves, black teachers were

approached by two different African agents who made this opportunity known to them. The

African agents were people who used to work in China themselves and had connections there.

Being a labor broker in Africa seems to be a lucrative business because one gets to charge huge

fees for arranging someones documentation for the purpose of migration, given the highly

restrictive visa process imposed by the rest of the developed world on most African countries.

Unlike white teachers whose recruitment process was free of charge, because the Chinese agent

would get her share directly from the China based agency, black teachers had to pay the African

agent in Africa a substantial fee of 3000$ before leaving for China, regardless of whether they get

a job or not. Once they got to China, both Samuel and Tracey, the Ghanaian teacher, further had

to pay the African agents who welcomed and took care of them in China and who acted as

intermediaries between Chinese agencies and African teachers.

37
 Since the number of these agents is so great and the agent chains so complex, it is hard to

grasp all the reasons behind the way they operate in this industry. As I said, since African citizens

find it more difficult to migrate to other places, African agents seek this opportunity to charge high

fees for mediating a persons migration process. More on the topic of migratory choices and

realities in Cameroon, but which can be extrapolated to other African countries was researched by

Alpes (2012). On the other hand, the Chinese agent from the Netherlands used to study and live

there, which allowed her to socialize herself with the European recruiting system, merging both

Western language to attract prospective teachers, as well as cater for the needs of the Chinese ESL

market.

Expectations vs. reality

Although previous to their arrival in China, all of the teachers were promised free

accommodation, free meals when possible and a job position which they could fill right after the

arrival, things did not turn out to be this way. From the very beginning, even before getting to

China, both the African agents as well as the Chinese recruiter based in the Netherlands were

engaging in deceitful discourses, alluring and comforting the newly recruited teachers with

misleading information. All respondents said that during the initial talks they had with their

recruiters, they were made to believe that a schools representative in China had already viewed

their application and agreed to hire them. As Helena, a white teacher, remembers:

I had already received a picture of the school, the schools address, webpage because

she said the school already approved me. That I already had a school to teach in. (Helena, Brazil)

38
 This was a commonality experienced by all teachers, regardless of their countries of origin.

Once they arrived to China, they noticed that the agency was hiring teachers from all over the

world, but they were lacking available teaching positions. Moreover, the number of available

vacancies depended on the number of personal contacts the Chinese agent had established inside

China. This created situations many teachers could not foresee. Being told they would start work

soon after their arrival in China, many of them were lacking the financial resources to keep them

going through long periods of time without work, a practice called benching by Xiang (2007) in

his book on the Indian labor system in the IT industry. The consequence was that the recruiting

agency does not pay them or help them get through, so basically teachers find themselves with no

support whatsoever.

Although agents display the same behavior towards all teachers, regardless of their race,

teachers identified slight differential treatment in terms of accommodation provided. White

teachers were offered free individual accommodation, while their black counterparts had to share

their rooms with other teachers and the agent was constantly deducting money from their salaries,

saying they had to pay for utilities. But the explanation for this differential treatment may lie in

the fact that since blacks dont sell as well as whites in China as Helena pointed out, Chinese

agents may not be eager to invest in them. On the other hand, they are ready to invest more in

white teachers because they know their investment will pay back well since a) a white teacher can

be assigned a job faster and b) a white teacher is paid better than a black teacher, as my respondents

all agreed. More on the reasons and the mechanisms that lead to this conclusion will be talked

about in the next chapter, which encompasses the core findings of my study. But a quick

explanation for the racialization of Chinas ESL market might be the globalization of English as a

white language. China got incorporated into this racialized global ESL market and functions to

39
reinforce some of the racialized practices in other parts of the world. A good example of this is

Ramjattans (2014) study on the experiences of racialized ESOL teachers in private language

schools in Toronto.

All respondents regardless of their race remember being astonished by the amount of

money the agency was deducting from the salaries for their own profit. In addition to this, teaching

in China was not exactly the easy task they were told about in the beginning. Although their salaries

were set at around 3500RMB (about 470 ) to 5000RMB (680 ), once they got to China they

discovered that the agency was paying them a meager 20% to 25% of the actual, initial salary paid

by the schools. They soon realized they entered an industry where there was no such thing as

volunteer work for people who cannot afford certain services, such as acquiring a foreign language,

but an industry where parents were ready to pay ridiculous amounts of money for having a

foreigner teach their children. Helena, the white teacher from Brazil, recalls how she confronted

the reality of the ESL market, after working in China for a while:

What I realized after being in China for a while was that I was not doing any voluntary

job, as they initially said. Actually those people I was teaching, they had a lot of money, and what

the agencies were doing, they were collecting a lot of money from the childrens parents and

actually give me only a little bit saying that it is a volunteer job, but it was not actually. The school

was paying the agency 20000RMB (2700), and the agency was paying me 4000RMB (540)

(Helena, Brazil)

So teaching English was not mainly about education, but just another business, and a very

lucrative one for those involved. This is also highlighted by the language used by some

interviewees while recalling their experience in this industry, language which resembles that of

40
economics. But James clearly stated he felt treated like a business for being white by the school

he was working at while Helena remembers that some teachers sell better than others in China.

Illegalities and control

Under the umbrella of legality provided by the Z (work) visa and the Foreign Expert

Certificate, the placement agency was undertaking numerous illegal actions which rendered

foreign teachers vulnerable to exploitation and control. After their arrival in China, all teachers

must hand in their passport to the local immigration office in order to get their residency permit.

But one thing no one expected to happen was for the recruitment agency to forcefully retain their

passports once the official paperwork was done. The representatives of the agency were using

different discursive techniques in order to delay returning the passports to their owners, such as

denying the paperwork process was ready or saying that it was better to keep the passport inside

the agency office, for security reasons. Although people were asking for official help from their

embassies, nothing seemed to get through the web of lies and stubbornness of the recruiter to have

complete control over her teachers.

After the South African Embassy failed to help him, James, the white South African teacher

contacted the local security bureau. The detective in charge of his complaint had to contact the

agency on three different occasions in order to get James passport back.

So the third time I wouldnt go to the school anymore. I went straight to the security

bureau. So the detective called the company again and ask them to bring my passport to his office.

[] Once she arrived she provided me with my passport. [] So I went from there straight to the

office (companys office) and my boss wanted me to give her back my passport! What she did was

41
to make me sign a thing stating that she would deduct 1000RMB from my salary every month as a

warranty that I would not leave. So I did it because by this time I already knew that I was leaving,

that I was going to bail on these people. (James, South Africa)

So not only did the agency want to retain James passport again, but his employer also

required a fee as a warranty that her employee would not leave the company once he has his

passport. According to the agent, the fee was returnable at the end of the contract, but as the

experience of other teachers who ended their contract legally revealed, this thing never happens.

Furthermore, the employer started threatening and intimidating the foreign staff when they were

causing her troubles by asking her to hand over what was legally their possession. Below are

some testimonials of how the Chinese agent was using threats and intimidation in order to keep

her employees under her control.

[] So, I said okay, I will call the South African Embassy again and he said Dont do

that, or I cannot guarantee your safety. [] I felt very scared for the first time in China and very

alone. I felt petrified. (James, South Africa)

[] They were blackmailing me all the time, saying that they knew the address of my

family, they had people in my country that could scare them or do stuff to them and if I stopped

working for them, they would cancel my visa and then when I would try to leave the country I

would go straight to prison, because I would be illegal and all this stuff. So they were scaring me

all the time [] because they sent me the passport and they were afraid I would ditch them. They

were always sending me messages to keep me in control, like Are you working full time? Because

if not, we are going to decrease your salary and all this stuff. (Helen, Brazil)

42
 As George, the white teacher from Romania put it, once you get to China and face the hard

reality behind the lies and deceit, the employer acts in this way in order to prevent foreign teachers

from leaving the company in search of better paying agencies or of a direct contract between them

and the schools, which would grant the teacher access to a full salary which is often 4-5 times

higher than that offered by the recruiting agency. So the employer engages herself in illegal actions

and basically anything it takes to fully control teachers decisions and actions. Being deprived of

the passport, and thus of their capacity of free movement, teachers often become victims of

exploitation. Georges words clearly capture the behavior or his agents:

They dont seem to be scrupulous at all They would use anything against you if they

needed to. These things are basically paper tigers you know? They just want to intimidate you, but

in fact they do not really have the power they claim to have. Money is very important to them. So

if you happen to find yourself in a weak position in relation to them, you will be exploited. I also

learnt that from an American, a guy from New York who told me you need to stand your ground

in front of them. Dont let yourself intimidated, you need to stay strong and fight back. (George,

Romania)

This account clearly pictures the reality of the globalization and exploitation labor system

of temporary skilled migrants in China, regardless of their race.

Another action the agency engaged in was sending foreign teachers to fill in vacancies in

other provinces in China. According to the Chinese laws, workers in China are spatially restricted

by their residence permit. In China, both locals and foreigners are bound to perform labor in the

place where the residence permit is issued, otherwise one can find himself/herself in a position of

illegality. But the agency did not seem to mind this detail and the teachers were not aware they

were breaking the law by doing this. This action had the consequence of placing foreign teachers

43
in a vulnerable position of illegality, enhanced by the lack of passports in their possession. The

teachers were not only vulnerable to police controls, but their human agency was severely

restricted by this situation which was created by their recruiting agent with the clear purpose of

fully controlling her foreign teachers and bringing her as much profit as possible.

From my respondents accounts, it became clear that getting a salary in time and in full

was a luxury for most of them, particularly for black teachers who were taken by surprise by the

numerous salary deductions which were not supposed to happen according to the contract they

signed. George also adds to this: I have noticed that getting paid by E. was not a clause of the

contract that she needed to respect, but was determined by trust. Her personal trust in you. His

strategy of coping with the situation was to stay quiet and apparently submissive, trying to gain

his agents trust. His strategy also came about after witnessing that fighting against the agents and

their system was doomed to failure and would complicate the situation even more. The use of

contracts in this case appear to be unilateral. It seems that agencies use the contract as a concept

highly appreciated in other parts of the world. For them, a contract does not seem to take the

form of a mutual agreement where both parties have both obligations and rights that they must

respect. The contract is constantly broken by the Chinese agency when it profits them, without any

repercussions. It is merely used as a tool to first allure foreigners to China, because it provides the

agency an image of trust and legitimacy and then it is used against the trouble-making foreigners,

threatening them with the cancellation of the contract which will result in the cancellation of the

visa and thus leading to a situation of illegality in China. Traceys account of how she almost got

tricked into signing a contract in China with a longer due date is an example that also resembles

James memory of it. They both remember signing a 1 year-long contract before leaving their

home countries and another contract after they got in China. The clauses were the same in both

44
contracts, except the due date, which was prolonged by 1 year by the Chinese counterpart, without

any previous notice.

Ultimately, all of the white teachers left the agency before the contract was due, because

of the aggressive business practices that instilled fear through threats and intimidation. Looking

back, James, the white South African of British and Dutch descent remembers the moment when

he left China without letting his employer know:

Saturday morning I left for Changchun International Airport. I was so afraid that

someone would be there. I was so scared! [] From there I got to Hong Kong, to which, once

again I was afraid that if no one expected me at Changchun Airport, someone would be at Hong

Kong Airport . (James, South Africa)

His account reveals the feelings of fear and paranoia of constantly being followed and

controlled. The paradox was that these practices which were meant to keep people submissive

were the exact same ones that determined everyone to leave the agency without a notice. Samuel

and Tracey were the only ones who either stayed until the contract was due, or ended the contract

legally. All of the white teachers left the agency without previous notice once they had their

passports, except Leo, the white teacher from Georgia, who left the agency but never got his

passport back.

Conclusion

In this chapter I aimed to give an overview of the modus operandi of the recruitment agency

I used as a case study. Chinas ESL market appears to be extremely exploitative, controlling and

manipulating for the majority of teachers who come via agencies. Although this reality is

45
experienced pretty much the same by all racial groups, the details of their experiences reveal the

way in which situations are worse for non-white teachers due to the operations of racialization in

this context. As I have argued previously, behind the obvious racialized attitudes of the agents

towards foreign teachers that might be fueled by stereotypes, stands an even more powerful driving

force: profit. The accounts of my interviewees match the results of the 1992 survey, which rated

Chinese entrepreneurs the lowest when it comes to honesty. Foreign teachers get trapped in this

web of deceits and lies and get lured into signing a contract that will end up not working in

teachers favor at all. Quite the contrary. Their passports are retained against their will and it seems

almost impossible to get it back without repercussion from the agent. So everything revolving

around the labor contract does not have anything to do with rights and obligations and mutual

agreements, but with an unequal relationship that reflects in a very disadvantaged teacher and a

very powerful master. The unethical practices of various recruiting agencies are a result of the

globalization of labor recruitment system and the exploitation embedded in it, a situation which is

not unique to China (see Xiang, 2007). Nonetheless, this cumulus of practices definitely shape the

landscape of Chinas ESL market. We can see that although online testimonials focus on the lack

of professionalism of most English teachers in China who are only interested in making easy

money, most of them are actually getting tricked and then caught up in this industry, at the hands

of their agents.

46
 Chapter IV

The Idealized English Teacher

In this last chapter I am going to present the findings that speak about the idealized English

teacher in China. By analyzing the data gathered from my interviews I am going to present and

assess hiring practices in China in relation with stereotypes and attitudes regarding foreigners in

China and being a native or not in English language. I will also identify the situation where white

privilege came about to influence the outcomes for certain teachers, through the privileges it

embodies and its global spread, while making use of secondary data to back and contrast my

findings. Finally, I will show how my two analytical groups white teachers and black teachers

experienced these situation in various ways, touching on the specificities that may occur.

Racialization of hiring practices in China

When it comes to hiring practices inside the ESL market in China, the image painted by

respondents was pretty much a black and white one. All of the white teachers seemed to be aware

of the advantage and privilege of having a white face in China, especially when one is on a hunt

for a teaching job. James, the white South African, admits to not being fully prepared for his first

demo class, where he got the job even though he failed miserably. His words express his

perception of the situation clearly:

Once I arrived at the office, S. took me to the class where I had to give the demo and I

failed miserably. [] I was nervous. I think I was not fully ready to deal with this sort of situation.

47
I was confused, I did not know what to do The unfortunate part about it is that I actually got the

job. I said its unfortunate because of the fact that they literally picked me up because of the way

I spoke and my skin color. (James, South Africa)

James, who is of British and Dutch descent from South Africa and a native English speaker

recalls how his agent paraded him and other African teachers in front of their potential employer

as if they were show-offs. He admits the African teachers were far better prepared for demo

classes than him, because they had been in China for longer time and thus have had more

experience in interacting with this kind of setting. But he recalls being astonished by the fact that

the kindergarten representative chose him over his African counterparts. He believes this was a

consequence of how things are done in China:

You see, in China they put a lot of emphasis on the way that things are done there. The

way that you teach, the way that you look. The way that you present a sort of an image to other

people. So by having someone like me teach in their schools, with an accent like this and oh, look!

Im a white guy and all that sort of stuff that portrays a sort of image to the other people. To

the parents of the kids or the other people who might be looking. So by having me was like

showing off a trophy. They could theoretically use me to keep the parents and the kids at that

school and to attract even more. (James, South Africa)

Although his account regarding hiring practices highlights the racialized assignment of

jobs clearly based on phenotype and nativity, James also notices that this practice is mainly used

by agents and schools as a mechanism that will produce financial benefits for them, by portraying

an image to the potentially interested parents.

48
 Helena, the white Brazilian teacher also noticed that white teachers have better access to

job opportunities in China because of their physical appearance. During her interview for a job,

she remembers getting compliments for her physical traits, in particular for her big eyes and

curly hair, while her previous teaching experience didnt seem to be of particular importance for

the recruiter.

During his first interview, Leo also experienced that being white and Western looking is a

privilege in China. He remembers his recruiter telling him the school needed a Western looking

teacher because the foreign teacher they had at the time, a Filipina, looks too Chinese and parents

started complaining. Moreover, this guy, Leo says, was Canadian-Chinese and he knew I was

not from a native English speaking country but he said whatever, you are blonde and you are

white, you have blue eyes, I think its going to be okay.(Leo, Georgia). Leos account complicates

the idea of whiteness, which is not entirely based on native English proficiency inside Chinas

ESL market, but on phenotypical features as well.

George seemed to agree with the others, saying that recruiters in China could not care less

that you are unexperienced [] they do not care if you are prepared or not. In Changchun they

did not train us about teaching skills or how to control a class. People involved in this business

are only interested in money. Schools are only interested if you are native, and if you are white

even better. First to be white, and then to manage teaching. He, like many other teachers

interviewed, also believes that Chinese are ignorant about the fact that there are many black people

who are native English speakers. He also recalls Filipino teachers being rejected by the parents of

the children in the school where he was teaching, because according to them, Filipinos can only

be domestic workers, not teachers.

49
 Asked what seemed to have mattered the most to employers during interviews and demo

classes, all of the teachers, both black and white, strongly agreed that skin color mattered the most.

Being white was definitely an advantage, and then keeping the children happy, or being able to

handle a class. Age was identified as an important factor as well in terms of being energetic and

flexible, and gender was inconclusive, with some saying that white males earn more than their

female counterparts, but females, regardless of their race find a job easier compared to their male

counterparts, especially in kindergartens.

Compared to white teachers, black teachers experienced the ESL industry from a

completely different point of view. Both teachers recruited by the agency recalled being either

rejected for being black, or considered as a second option, regardless of their teaching abilities.

I go for a demo with another teacher. Sometimes the Chinese teacher does not even want

you to touch their kids, but when a white teacher comes in, they dont even listen to the demo, they

just tell the teacher he is approved. So what happens sometimes, they take that teacher, then after

a week, the school will call you again, because they want you to teach there. But I cannot go to

that because the first time I went they said yes to the white teacher. Of course I cannot go back to

such a school because for them, they are not interested in what I was doing. They only want a

white teacher, because they want to attract more kids. (Samuel, Kenya)

Samuel, the black teacher from Kenya agrees with James when it comes to the fact that a

white teacher can attract more children to a school only by being White. Traceys experience as a

native English speaker from Ghana are also reveling and support the idea of racialized hiring

practices in Chinas ESL market:

50
 I went for a demo and interview and they said they wanted white people. They cannot

accept black people. And it happened again when I was trying get extra jobs on my own. It was

this one guy I called, he was a Chinese man and I learnt he hooks people up with jobs so I called

him. And he asked me if I was Black or White. And I said I was Black. Then he said oh, Im sorry,

I was actually looking for a white person. I cant help you. Better luck next time. If I find anything

I will let you know. And that was it. I never heard from him again. (Tracey, Ghana)

Looking over and comparing all teachers encounters with Chinese recruiters, it becomes

obvious that skin color matters a lot, before experience or any other qualifications or credentials.

All teachers reported that no employer asked for any proof of their previous education or

experience, sometimes not even for a Passport or any other identity document. This is clear

evidence of what Samuel and James were talking about when they were saying Chinese employers

are seeking for teachers who can portray an image to people interested in their services, but they

are not looking for solid evidence to support that image. Being a white English teacher in China

seemed to portray an image of success and prestige as James puts it, and parents want their

children to be associated with that image. Connecting this section with the chapter on recruitment

agencies in China, it becomes clear that being associated with this sort of image comes at a very

high cost for the parents, price they are ready to pay. These images are different though for each

ethnic/racial group of foreigners and base themselves on misleading stereotypes deeply ingrained

in most of the parents mentality. For a better understanding of the mechanisms that allow these

images to come up and spread inside the Chinese society, including the ESL industry, in the next

section I will talk about the widespread white privilege identified and experienced by white

teachers, and the opposite experiences of their black counterparts.

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 Stereotypes at work: White face jobs vs. Black and poor

1. Stereotypes and white face jobs

White privilege can be easily noticed in other environments as well, not only in the hiring

practices of Chinese employers. White teachers reported positive attitudes towards them on the

streets, as well as easiness in getting jobs in other industries, such as modelling and acting, where

a white face sells again. An extremely interesting particularity that came up in the interviews,

was the presence of white face jobs in China. An industry that asks for white foreigners to be

present at different Chinese events or business launches, in order to raise the prestige and

exclusiveness of the business. In the following paragraphs I am going to exemplify this industry,

using quotes from two teachers, Helena and Leo, who were hired as white faces on different

occasions.

I did it once, at an exhibition. They paid me to walk 40 minutes around an art gallery,

just as a person who attended the exhibition. And I remember when the girl was hiring, she was

hiring all kind of foreigners, but then, one day before the event, she told us that unfortunately she

could not hire black foreigners anymore because her client asked for white faces only.(Helena,

Brazil).

I had a friend who told me there was the opening of a company, I dont know if I should

name it It was a really nice opening at Sheraton, a very expensive hotel in Shenzhen. [] Our

job was to pretend we were company employees, because only the manager of the company was

from the US and she was the only white face. So they needed more white faces there. [] so we

went there, we had this awesome lunch and dinner, and we got paid 250$ for just being White. I

was supposed to just sit there, in a suit, and do nothing. (Leo, Georgia)

52
 There was another one, where I had to pretend I was a rich businessman from a rich

country. There was an exhibition of Chinese antiques, selling Chinese teapots and vases and I had

to hold them and look excited about them. So that rich Chinese people would buy them, thinking a

foreigner was interested in them. (Leo, Georgia)

It is also Leo who says: You cannot imagine how big this chain of white faces is. The

agents are getting lots of money for these things, even foreigners are getting lots of money. But

usually those events are really boring because you just have to sit there and do nothing.

These statements clearly show the association of a white face with prestige, success and

development and also the extent to which these things happen in China, enabled by the power of

stereotypes that work within the Chinese culture. The extent to which these things happen is large,

with a well-developed industry around this process of stereotypes in action and agents who act as

white face hunters. Taking advantage of the widespread stereotype of a white face associated

with cultural, financial capital and power, Leo recalls organizing a two week creative art summer

camp in the living room of his own flat. Although he had no previous particular experience in arts,

he succeeded in charging 1000$ per student, and the summer camp turned out to be successful.

This situation is also exposed by David Boreinsteins documentary movie, Chinese

Dreamland. Yana is a Chinese agent who organizes elaborate spectacles meant to boost the real

estate bubble in Chengdu, China. Her main protagonists are foreign faces who perform as famous

entertainers, important businessmen, top models, architects and more. The interest aspect

identified in this documentary is that most white faces were portrayed as capital rich Westerners,

who embodied the traits of the developed world: rich, successful, attractive and smart. At the other

end, the Africans were performing tribal shows or some sort of music entertainment. This situation

clearly captures the stereotypes that Chinese society has of other ethnic groups. They perceive the

53
West as the center of development, power and success, while Africa is still caught up in its

backward ways. This image is further enhanced by Yanas open affirmation regarding the price of

hiring foreign faces to perform in such spectacles. While talking on the phone with a prospective

client, Yana informs her/him of the higher price attached to white faces. And if the price was

potential problem for the client, she/he could always choose to hire Africans, since they were

cheaper. This is a clear example of how different values attributed to certain ethnic/racial groups

in China actually have an equivalent in financial terms. This finding reveals again the language of

economics around the issue of skin color. White faces are hold higher, thus they are more

expensive. Africans are depicted as coming from an inferior, backward cultural background, so

they become cheaper. This empirical finding can be translated conceptually into racial capital.

Having a white face in China translates into racial capital that can be easily converted to social,

economic and even linguistic/English capital as we shall see in the following section.

Out of all the most powerful countries, USA seem to come first in Chinese preferences. As

George recalls, a white face on the streets is immediately identified as American.

You are being paid so much better if you are white. And everyone around you assumes

youre American if you are white and speak English. They were asking me if I was meiguoren,

which means American in Mandarin. Its obvious that they are prejudiced and they value

foreigners according to their country of origin. America comes first. Actually all of them want to

be American. Even the class I was teaching in was full of American flags.

This situation is very well reflected in the very high number of Chinese students in America

at the moment and the even higher number who strive to get there, around which an entire business

has developed. It also reveals nationality as another factor that complicates the issue of whiteness

in China. It appears to be a hierarchy of whiteness, with the US at the top of it. American

54
citizenship always comes first in all online ads examined, where nativity was a must, followed by

British and then Irish, Australian and New Zealand. This finding challenges the narrow definition

of race based on skin color showing that it can also be based on the economic and social power

of ones home country.

2. Stereotypes and encounters with local Chinese

Racialized attitudes which stem from stereotypes have been pointed out by African

respondents during the interviews. Samuel gives a clear account of his encounters with local

Chinese in various settings and how his skin color triggered an exaggerated reaction from their

part.

In China, you go to some places, you sit on a bus, the person next to you will stand up,

wont sit next to you. You sit down in the metro, no one will sit next to you. The bus is full but there

is an empty seat next to you, but no one will come and sit. [] its the first country Ive been to

and this happens. (Samuel, Kenya)

One time I went to the hospital, I was sick and the doctor was there. She was a lady and

she didnt even want to touch me or come close to me. So I had to wait for them to call a male

doctor, because the lady was not willing to touch me. One time I was sitting in the bus and an old

lady came and started scratching my skin as if to see if my skin was going to fall off and be white

underneath. One time at school, one of the teachers pulled up my t-shirt to look at my tummy to

see if I was black there too. Because they might think I am only black on my face and on my hands,

because the first thing they think is that we are black because we are dirty and second we are

55
black because in Africa is so hot that weve been burnt by the sun. Those are things I will never

forget.(Samuel, Kenya)

Although stressful, this kind of behavior can also be attributed to ignorance and lack of

daily interaction between local Chinese and foreigners. Many of the black respondents stressed

out this difference. They were reluctant to attribute these behaviors to pure racism, choosing

instead to associate them with lack of knowledge about other racial groups that translates into

curiosity and fear of the unknown. More on the foreigners opinions on this topic can be found

in the Annexes.

Lashinda, a French citizen of Cameroonian origins, who chose to stay anonymous for this

research, works as an engineer in Guangzhou. She recalls being sexually harassed by taxi drivers

on two separate occasions. Because of the stereotypes that lurk around African women in the

Chocolate City, she was taken for a prostitute and been offered a price. She remembers how this

situations caused her shock and frustration.

These accounts are a good example of how ESL teachers experiences in China are

mediated through stereotypes against different groups of foreigners. Although all teachers,

regardless of their racial background reported the same behavior coming from the side of local

Chinese, behavior such as intense staring, their picture being taken, locals wanting to feel their

hair or touching their skin, African respondents seem to have perceived these attitudes in a more

offensive way. As Adrienne, a black student from France recalls:

All those people staring at me, laughing at me, children, parents acting like children,

pointing at me, taking pictures of me touching my hair and all that stuff, really weird. I had the

feeling I was dealing with uncivilized people. Like I was in the zoo.(Adrienne, France)

56
 She also admitted to making huge efforts not to develop hostile attitudes against local

Chinese, like many foreigners she met in China. She had to push herself every day not to let

herself become depressed, or develop negative attitudes towards China and Chinese people.

Overall, during the interviews, this feeling of deep frustration was more obvious for the African

respondents than for the white ones. Contrary to Adriennes accounts, Helena, like all the other

white teachers, believed that foreigners are very well appreciated in China.

Chinese people seem to like foreigners a lot. People pay better salaries to foreigners, the

Western looking ones and they treat you nicely. [] Im well treated as a foreigner. They dont

see you as ET anymore, but they still regard you as special and interesting. [] Its satisfying

because you can have a nice life in an easy way, without much effort. (Helena, Brazil)

My respondents accounts of their experiences in China and the different emotional load

attached to them depending on skin color overlap those found online. Most online testimonials

given by white people focus on their amazement at the easiness of making it in China, while

some testimonials of African teachers speak about the psychological journey no one prepares

them for in advance. So it becomes clear that racialized attitudes in China affect these groups in

completely different ways: for white people it becomes a matter of making it in China because of

white privilege, while for the African group it becomes a matter of making it in spite of white

privilege. In addition, my respondents accounts correlated with their opinions on the exaggerated

reactions of local Chinese can be interpreted in terms of cultural clashes, which as are more intense

for Africans.

57
 3. Stereotypes and encounters with local police

Africans psychological strain in China is further enhanced by increased police surveillance

and racial profiling. Tracey, the Ghanaian teacher, reports how she was randomly stopped by the

police on two different occasions and asked for identification, while living and working in

Shenzhen. This situation revealed the vulnerable position with regards to local police, since her

passport was retain by the Chinese agent she was working for at that time. Lashinda, the black

French engineer also recalls her encounter with local police, during the time of Ebola outbreak:

That time I had an injury on my back, so I needed to stay home. Then the policemen came

into my apartment suddenly, at 11pm. They asked for my visa, for my passport and for my residency

document. So I was very shocked because it was very late. It was on Sunday, at 11 pm. I called my

HR, she was shocked as well. She said that normally they should not come and if they do, they

need to call you first. To make sure that you are home. And I also asked other foreigners living in

my building, French, Italian, if the policemen came into their apartments as well, and they said

they didnt. [] Two weeks later they came again to my apartment. I show again all my documents

and then they say that my pink paper (residency visa) is not available anymore. That I need to

renew it because I got out of China. They asked me where I have been, I said in Thailand, but that

was four months ago. So normally, two weeks ago, the first policeman should have told me this,

but he didnt. So I called my HR again and she was shocked and she said that this is not usual, so

she told me maybe because of the Ebola outbreak and because I am black, they control me.

(Lashinda, France)

From her story, it is obvious that Lashindas quality of being a French professional in China

did not protect her from these situations. From her account we can see how for some of the black

foreigners, skin color prevails over the privilege and power of ones home country. If one is black

58
in China, even with a privileged citizenship or occupation, one can find herself subject to racialized

behaviors driven by stereotypes.

At the opposite end, white teachers interaction with the police was overall a fruitful one.

James managed to get his passport back with the help of a local Chinese detective, in spite of the

general opinion of foreigners about Chinese authorities being all corrupt, and covering for each

other. Both Helena and Leo asked for help when they exited the country, and they ended up being

well advised and cared for. As Leo left his passport back at the agency in Northern China, he

presented himself at the police office with a new one that had just arrived from Georgia. After

explaining his situation, he managed to exit the country with a humanitarian visa.

Probably the most interesting encounter with the police was Georges, who recalls:

Coming back to the kindergarten, I was caught by the police. I already knew it was a case

of deportation. I have noticed there was something wrong, but I was simply unlucky. []So the

police simply fined me because I was working in Shenzhen, although my residence was in

Changchun, and you are only supposed to work where you are living at. [] Even this guy (the

policeman) called me three weeks later, inviting me to pass by his office and he told me Look,

there is this school Dont you want to work legally? although I knew I couldnt work legally

there anyway, but who knows probably he would have found a way to make it work. But the pay

he offered was too low, and he did not insist either. I just asked him for a sum of money which he

didnt agree to and that was it. He even asked me to be his informant and I agreed. But there was

no follow up for this. (George, Romania)

Compared to George who was simply fined and even offered a job by the policeman who

caught him working illegally, Tracey didnt seem as lucky.

59
 Once I was in school, teaching and then the police just came and I got arrested with the

other teachers. So my new visa was a student one. So I told them I was a student in a different city

and I had to work to pay for my fees so sometimes I comes to Shenzhen to work so I can raise some

money to pay my fees. They actually kept me and made sure I was deported back to my country.

But before that I was detained for one month and nine days. It was like a prison, because you get

to wear uniforms. The kind of food you eat, you dont drink anytime you feel like drinking. You

have a time when you have to drink, a time when you go to the library, for going to bed, a whole

lot of uncomfortable stuff and I would cry every day. Every day I would cry and pray. I would pray

they would come and call me and tell me that its time for me to go home. (Tracey, Ghana)

Tracey was arrested and detained together with other black teachers. Comparing her case

with Georges case, we see that the application of law is discretionary, and sometimes can be

detrimental to black teachers. Traceys experience is related to the state regulation of

undocumented Africans in Southern China, which was studied by Lan (2014). But this is a great

example of how law enforcement is penetrated by stereotypes as well, and determine different

outcomes for different groups of foreigners. Although I am aware that these accounts are

individual and can hardly be generalized to the whole foreign population in China, I still believe

it reveals interesting nuances of how deeply ingrained stereotypes can influence and lead to

discretionary law enforcements.

These accounts are a great example of how white privilege became globalized and

materializes itself in the Chinese context as well. The American cultural and economic supremacy

has particularly helped white privilege spread around the world and influence other societies,

especially those who are booming economically and want to align themselves with the rich and

powerful. Western colonial powers presence in the area, Christian missions from the past,

60
Western investments and multinationals, westernizing projects in China, all these helped shape

this common view of most Chinese people of a very powerful West, politically, economically and

culturally. These accounts reveal how the West is being associate with power, prestige and

distinction and how different nationalities tied by similar phenotype are included in the Westerns

pot, and given the same treatment of appreciation, while being looked up to. Just like in the

colonies where all Europeans were elevated to the status of whiteness (Goldberg, 2001), it

appears to be the same case in China. All foreigners who are not dark skinned, appear to be White

and embody Whiteness. Connecting this section to the first one, on racialized hiring practices, it

becomes clearer now how stereotypes of white and black people create different images with

different values attached to them. Since the face of a white Westerner creates the image of success,

prestige and capital, Chinese parents want to associate their children and consequently themselves

with that type of image. After explaining the mechanisms through which stereotypes act out in

Chinese society and furthermore, in Chinas ESL market, I will now move on to nativeness,

another important concept in the making of the idealized English teacher in China.

Performing nativeness

The main characteristic of an ideal English teacher in China is to be native. This

requirement is included in almost all online ads. Although being native or non-native and its

prerequisites has been debated by linguistic scientists, for the purpose of my research I am going

to focus on the ideology of nativeness that has penetrated the ESL market in China. Shuck (2006)

describes this ideology of nativeness as essentializing native-nonnative categories rooted in a

monolingualist model, conflated with other sociopolitical hierarchies like race. In his study, the

normal, taken for granted model on the language-race-nationality matrix was native English

61
speaker White USA. Those who did not fit this matrix entirely were rendered inferior and

marked as Others. Romney (2010) found that the same ideology of nativeness pervaded the ESL

industry as well, where the perceived ideal teacher has to be white and native. Being a native

English speaker in China seemed to be equated with holding the citizenship of an Anglo-European

English speaking country. Ones country of origin was the main factor that influenced the

definition of nativeness in most cases, in close connection with skin color.

Data gathered from the interviews revealed that being a native did matter to most

employers, but teachers did not consider it the main prerequisite to being successful in getting a

job, because nativeness could be performed. All non-native respondents admitted that in Chinas

ESL industry performing nativeness is largely practiced and actually encouraged by agents.

Performing nativeness seemed to automatically increase the pay and the prestige of the teacher,

as well as his/her employers.

From most teachers accounts it became obvious that being native was associated with a

higher financial award from the educational institution, who could also charge the parents a higher

fee. What is rather interesting about this aspect is that none of the teachers recall being asked for

any proof of their nativeness when they were hired, such as passport or any other form or

identification. The reasons why this performativity was accepted and unquestioned were usually

associated with Chinese peoples lack of exposure to foreigners and their inability to recognize

various accents. Another reason had to do with their willingness to accept a beautiful lie, which

can be supported by the fact that employers were not asking for proof when it came to being a

native or not.

There were other schools were I said my mom was from the USA, because I realized they

would decrease my salary even though they would like my demo class. If I told them I was native,

62
they would pay more. [] And they dont even mind my English skills. I mean some of the

employers have really good command of English and they listen to how you speak, and sometimes

you make mistakes. But if you say youre native, thats it. Its a beautiful lie they prefer to accept

because they feel that if they can convince the parents that you are a native speaker, thats it. They

dont mind much about quality, they mind about kids being happy, going home saying I like my

teacher, even though the teacher might not be teaching well. (Helena, Brazil)

It is a well-known thing, having to lie about your origins. Canada, USA or other native

English speaking countries. [] Anyway, the employers do not ask for any kind of papers.

(George, Romania)

Another interesting aspect of this ideology of nativeness is that white teachers found it

easier to perform nativeness than black teachers, because most of Chinese people seemed to

associate being white with being native, i.e. coming from an English speaking country. Tracey,

the Ghanaian teacher who qualified as native since the main language she uses back home in formal

institutions, including schools, is English, saw herself constrained to perform nativeness.

You know, I am from Ghana and I had to make up a CV and lie I was African and British,

you know Partly British and partly Ghanaian, because I didnt want to tell a complete lie, so I

would find something in the middle. Sometimes I would tell them I was from America. And it was

kind of accepted. I had to tell people these lies to get a job because if I told them I was Ghanaian,

trust me, the pay was seriously decreased. (Tracey, Ghana)

Traceys testimonial clearly shows that being native in the eyes of Chinese parents and

Chinese employers meant coming from one of the English speaking countries, and not improved

fluency and quality of language. Even though she was a native, the visibility of her dark skin color

63
cast a shadow of mistrust over her. And this has to do again with a deficient basic knowledge of

global geography and history of the average Chinese. Adriennes experience with Chinese people

regarding this issue is quite revealing.

[] there are some people, when I tell them I am French, they cannot figure out that you

are French and you are black, because for them French people are not black. (Adrienne, France)

Most teachers recall that during their interactions with various Chinese locals, some of

them highly educated, they revealed having a limited knowledge of political geography. Most of

them considered Africa to be a country, not a continent and they had very little knowledge about

the rest of the countries, except for the USA, UK and Australia. For those Chinese who were not

exposed to the outer world, lack of basic knowledge regarding these countries politics and racial

past is probably the reason why they find it hard to grasp the complexity of their societies.

Samuel also talked about having to pretend he was a native in order to get a job. His

testimonial also reveals how skin color and country of origin are more important to potential

employers than experience and how well a teacher can handle a class.

[] When you get to the premises, you havent even given the demo class, the Chinese

teachers will start asking where are you from and the agent would lie that you are from South

Africa or Canada. So hes not from Africa? No, hes not from Africa. Sometimes they only see

your skin color and they say no! no! no! so I had to lie to all the schools I went to. You had to say

a native country because if you said you were from Africa, nobody would give you a job. (Samuel,

Kenya)

Probably the most revealing testimony of how things work out in Chinas ESL industry at

the moment is Leos, the white Georgian teacher. After leaving his passport behind and starting

64
creating his own opportunities, Leo managed to multiply his incomes almost 8 fold than his initial

pay offered by the recruiting agency. Leo recalls:

I was faking my CV, writing that I was from UK. Actually the more I stayed in China, the

more I realized that nobody really cares about where you are from, unless its a super fancy, great

school. They only care about how you look and what your attitude is. So I was changing my BA, I

was adding a masters degree which I never got, I was adding some teaching certificates, changing

my nationality I even changed my name, because my real name was saying too much about

myself, that I was not from an English speaking country. (Leo, Georgia)

His account reveals the extent to which one can perform not only nativeness in Chinas

ESL industry, but nearly everything. This situation further highlights how much the ESL market

is more of a business like any other, and the educational aspect of it drops to a dangerous low point

with Chinese employers preferring to look the other way when it comes to irregularities. The

quality of teaching is highly threatened by the huge desire of agents and everyone involved in this

industry to make profits. On the other hand, the need to perform nativeness in China conceptually

complicates the idea of whiteness as purely based on skin color. It seems that Chinese evaluate

different groups of foreigners both by skin color, as showed in the previous section, as well as by

their nationality. The importance of nativeness, and the priority given to American citizenship

holders complicate the issue of black-white binary in the study of race and racialization. As

Bourdieu said, the ontology of nativeness is defined by social acceptance in a local context, just

like any other social construct such as whiteness or blackness. Lack of exposure to foreigners

and deficient knowledge about other countries racial history and politics render the average

Chinese to associate nativeness with being white and from an Anglo-European English speaking

country.

65
 Conclusion

In this chapter I have showed how stereotypes about different groups of foreigners in China

and prejudice against non-white groups influence both hiring practices in Chinas ESL market, as

well as daily interactions between foreigners and locals, or foreigners and local authorities. Since

both recruiting agencies and schools are offering a service, it is understandable that their actions

are profit driven. This is the reason why most of my respondents described their experiences using

a language of economics. To them it was clear that most parents wanted their children to be taught

by a white teacher and schools had to comply with that request in order to keep their clients

interested. Being a white foreigner in China came with a lot of advantages since light skin color is

associated not only with being a native English speaker and therefor makes it easier to obtain a

teaching job, but it is also associated with prestige, success and development as underscored by

the presence of white face jobs. So by having a white teacher, schools portray an image to their

clients, as some of my interviewees noticed, an image associated with success and quality.

Relating these findings to the papers research question of how whiteness and blackness

become racialized in Chinas ESL market, data showed that whiteness as a social construct is

shaped in an equal manner by both phenotype and nationality. Being white and Western looking

in China can translate into racial capital that can be easily converted to cultural, social and

economic capital both inside the ESL industry, as well as in other social settings. Furthermore,

racial capital can be converted to linguistic capital, with all of the teachers admitting to performing

nativeness, as a generalized practice inside Chinas ESL market. In addition to this, nationality

seems to enable a hierarchy of whiteness where the economic and cultural power of ones home

country influences the teachers position in the hierarchy. American and British citizens appear to

66
be the most privileged and thus, whitest of the whites, followed by Irish, Australians and New

Zealanders.

This situation tells us there is a hierarchy of desirability among teachers in China, hierarchy

that is mainly based on two main factors: skin color and nativity. Non-native, dark skin is

positioned at the bottom of the ladder, followed by native, dark skin, non-native white skin and

native, white skin at the top. From the data gathered, it became obvious that every position on the

scale was attached a value and a price tag. So dark skinned non-native teachers seemed to be the

cheapest while white, native teachers seemed to be the most expensive ones to hire. As the image

of these teachers is valued higher due to its symbolical association with financial and cultural

capital, this can also tell us something about the Chinese society, as the recipient of this service.

By having a white person teach their children, parents do not only associate teachers skin color

with his/her ability to teach, but it can be also seen as a reflection of the parents own value and

status inside the Chinese society.

Racialized hiring practices in Chinas ESL market seem to be a materialization of Chinese

stereotypes against non-white groups. The fascination with white skin as a marker for both ideal

beauty and elevated professions, together with the pervasiveness of global racial hierarchies,

render some Chinese willing to associate themselves with the rich, powerful and attractive ones.

This is exemplified and reflected by the ESL market as well. The type of teacher parents can afford

for their children reflects their financial capabilities and thus their position within the Chinese

society. Translating this into conceptual terms, we can say that everyone in China capitalizes on

race. From foreigners themselves who make use of their light complexion to get social and

financial advantages, to agents and educational institutions who capitalize on their employees

race for their own profits and success, to finally parents who capitalize on their childrens foreign

67
teachers race to reflect their own social and economic status inside Chinese society as a whole.

This general capitalization on race is enabled by stereotypes determined by Chinas historical

encounters with powerful Western forces, and consequently the pervasiveness of Western ideas

on race, and sustained through the lack of daily interaction between local Chinese and foreigners.

The presence of an overt racial language, together with a more basic reaction to different skin

colors are triggered by a lack of political correctness and lack of exposure to other cultures and

these, in change, are characteristics of a society that just took its first steps in opening itself to the

outer world.

68
 Conclusion

Through this research I analyzed a particular case of racialization, showing how the issue

of race is deeply influenced by the characteristics of the Chinese context. By using Brubakers

(2004) cognitive approach, I showed how and why people interpret their social experience inside

Chinas ESL market in racial terms. Nationality and nativeness in English complicate the

white-black binary nature of race. Nationality mediates the formation of whiteness inside

Chinas ESL market, leading to an existence of multiple shades of whiteness, each determined

by the teachers home countrys economic and cultural power in the global hierarchy. Being a

native English speaker goes hand in hand with nationality since for most Chinese, native English

speakers can only come from an Anglo-European English speaking country. Furthermore,

phenotype complicates the issue by allowing teachers with a light complexion to perform both

whiteness as well as nativeness in the eyes of Chinese employers and those of the parents. On

the other hand, dark skinned teachers are bound to be racialized as inferior. My findings match

Shucks (2006) language-nationality-race matrix, where the normal, taken for granted matrix is

English - USA (UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand) White. All teachers who do not fit this

matrix are automatically rendered inferior, according to Shuck. The difference in the Chinese

context is that having a light complexion, or being considered white according to common

knowledge, allows for performing whiteness and nativeness, and thus silences the power of

these categories. A limitation of the study in this sense is the lack of African American respondents.

Their experiences could have shown in a more clear way if nationality weighs more than race

in the making of whiteness in Chinas ESL industry.

69
 Data showed that ESL industry in China is strongly infused with this overall matrix of

performativity, over which light skinned teachers have more leverage. Their experiences were a

clear evidence of how they can perform nativeness and whiteness easier than black teachers

due to existent stereotypes and prejudice against non-white groups inside the Chinese society.

These stereotypes have their roots in the ideology of race used to boost Chinas lost greatness,

as well as in Western projects and Western social media influence in China, and further sustain

themselves through the lack of daily interaction between local Chinese and foreigners.

Racialization inside Chinas ESL market can only be understood at the intersection of

global racial hierarchies and Western race theories with social, economic and political

specificities of the Chinese context. This particular case study has to be understood in the wider

context of the globalization of English as a white language. In spite of its specific characteristics,

China got incorporated into the racialized global ESL market and functions to reinforce some of

the racialized practices in other parts of the world. Since my respondents denied having

experienced racialized attitudes and behavior in other environments such as business and trading,

foreign companies or universities, it becomes clear that racialization of non-white teachers in

China depends mostly on parents ideas of the ideal English teacher, which has to be white and

from a native English country such as the USA, UK, Australia, Ireland or New Zealand.

But evidence showed that the USA were given preference over the others, which also

indicates the desire and aspirations of most Chinese people to align themselves with the most

powerful country on the global scene. An interesting discovery was how everyone involved in

Chinas ESL industry capitalizes on race. Whiteness can be also perceived as having racial

capital, which can be easily be converted to cultural and economic capital in the Chinese context.

But foreign teachers are not the only ones capitalizing on their whiteness. Chinese stakeholders

70
such as agents and representatives of educational institutions also capitalize on their employees

race in order to portray an image of quality, success and prestige to the parents. Furthermore,

parents themselves make use of the teachers racial capital, seeing it as a marker of their own

social status inside the Chinese society. Since white, native English speaking teachers come at a

huge price for the parents, the fact that they can afford to pay for this image portrayed by a white

face teaching their children is seen as a clear indicator of their advanced economic development

and privilege and further portrays an image to the others. The way I see it, this generalized

capitalization on race inside Chinas ESL market allows both agents and parents alike to perform

their Chinese dream, a dream of prosperity and development. Since whiteness is associated

with attractiveness as well as cultural and economic capital as I have shown in the previous chapter,

the newly enriched Chinese middle and upper class seek to symbolically align themselves with

this image of success. In other words, Chinese stakeholders inside the ESL market use whiteness

and blackness and the meanings attributed to these social constructs as benchmarks in the

production of the Self. At a moment when China finds itself at a cross roads characterized by

increased globalization mixed with a strong ethnocentric project, Chinese are striving to redefine

the collective and individual Self, by integrating elements of the old and the new, of tradition

and globalization, and race is just another instrument used in this process.

So although racialization inside Chinas ESL market can be seen as the materialization of

prejudice hold again non-white groups, I believe the process of racialization can also be seen as an

instrument used by different segments of the Chinese population for their own interests. Agents

and recruitment agencies make use of racialization for their own profit and the process is infused

with pragmatic business decisions of investment and return of investment, while parents use this

71
as a signifier of their own status and power. The higher the price of the teacher they can afford to

hire, the higher their status inside the society.

This case study is meant to give insight into Chinas racialized ESL market at this point in

time. We need to pay close attention to the fact that I aimed to analyze a changing industry in a

changing context, as Castillo also noticed in one of his studies. Since the new immigration law

came into being, new regulations were in place which restricted visa access for many foreigners.

Interviewees also noticed increased surveillance and control of the immigrant population,

including white foreigners. Various unregulated WeChat groups and websites where foreigners

would seek job opportunities were closed. It is easy to see how these state regulations will also

have an impact on the ESL industry in the future, on the way teachers are hired and their legal

status. But for the moment, with Chinas booming economy and the increasing demand for English

teachers, which attracts migrants extremely diverse in terms of class, skin color and country of

origins, makes this site a very interesting case study of group dynamics. In addition to this, given

the exploitation endured by all respondents due to unethical practices of the recruiting agencies,

the policy relevance of this paper lies in the recommendation for a better regulation of Chinas

ESL industry, allowing for teachers right to be protected.

72
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http://www.iie.org/Services/Project-Atlas/United-States/International-Students-In-US

Chinese Dreamland (2015). Retrieved from

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2015/09/chinese-dreamland-

150916144034085.html

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 ANNEXES

PROFILES OF THE INTERVIEWEES

African Interviewees

ADRIENNE LASHINDA
Citizenship: France Citizenship: France
Ethnicity: Ivory Coast Ethnicity: Cameroon
Currently living in: Shenzhen, China Currently living in: Guangzhou, China
Current occupation: Student Current occupation: Chemist
Age: 22 Age: 30
Degree: BA in Business Degree: PhD in Organic Chemistry

SAMUEL TRACEY
Citizenship: Kenya Citizenship: Ghana
Ethnicity: Kenya Ethnicity: Ghana
Currently living in: Guangzhou, China Currently living in: Accra, Ghana
Current occupation: Business man (trade) Current occupation: Student
Age: 30 Age: 31
Degree: BA in Education Degree: BA in English Language and
Literature

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White Interviewees

JAMES HELENA
Citizenship: South Africa Citizenship: Brazil
Ethnicity: British/Dutch Ethnicity: Brazil
Currently living in: South Africa Currently living in: Shenzhen, China
Current occupation: Paramedic Current occupation: Student/part time
English teacher
Age: 22
Age: 23
Degree: no current degree
Degree: BA in Fashion Design

LEO
GEORGE
Citizenship: Georgia
Citizenship: Romania
Ethnicity: Georgia
Ethnicity: Romania
Currently living in: Shenzhen, China
Currently living in: Shenzhen, China
Current occupation: Part time English
teacher/model Current occupation: English teacher
Age: 25 Age: 40
Degree: BA in Social and Political Science Degree: BA in History Studies

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 RESPONDENTS OPINIONS ON CHINESE SOCIETY AND PREJUDICE IN CHINA

When they see you as a foreigner, they see you as a wallet. This is why I dont have

Chinese friends because when I start to discuss with them and I tell them I am an engineer

they see the money. And this is a bad way to start a relationship. Thats why I prefer to

keep my distance. (Lashinda, France)

From what I saw, China slowly closes to the outside. For New Years I went with my

friend to a French restaurant, where I went the previous year as well, to celebrate. Ten

minutes after New Year, the policemen came into the restaurant, asked the owner to stop

the music and asked all the foreigners to go back home. And they said: You are not in

your country. And they closed all the foreigner bars in the area and let open only the

Chinese ones. (Lashinda, France)

I think its their ignorance that strikes me the most. Because China is the first economic

power, but the social development has not been as great as the economic development. []

I think Chinese have a kind of a complex of inferiority towards white people and superiority

towards black people. [] when you talk to them they would say this is not about racism.

Its just about Chinese people and the other world. And in this other world there are the

white people and the black people. So it is like having a straight line. (Adrienne, France)

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 Sometimes they dont treat black people really well. Sometimes I was feeling that they

were pretty racist with them but its not that they hate them. Its like they treat them as

if theyre something strange. [] They are just afraid of black people. Its strange, the way

they behave but I dont think they mean something disrespectful. They are just excited and

curious. (Leo, Georgia)

I think that Chinese people are ignorant when it comes to the fact that there are many

native speakers who are black. Its just good to be white. So it becomes a matter of money.

(George, Romania)

I think that racial dynamics in China are classified by region, not by the people

themselves. I know for a fact that they are a conservative nation. That beauty and power

and money classify pretty much everything. A lot of them are just curious, just like I was

about them. You find this sort of people everywhere, people who use and abuse, and find

other people more usable than others. And that was pretty much what they did to me,

because of my color, because of my accent. And I cant say I was entirely dumb as well. I

wanted the experience. I wanted the chance to prove that I could do this. (James, South

Africa)

So there is this difference between people who love absolutely everything that has to do

with being Western and at the opposite end, there are people who hate the West because

this is how they were taught during the Cultural Revolution. So you can see that the more

educated, more economically developed people who get to travel more, they are less

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prejudiced. But there are still a lot of taboos. You can see Chinese people in the summer

using umbrellas to protect them from the sun, using a lot of sunscreen and whitening

lotions, because to them dark skin can also signify someone who works on the streets all

day in the sun, or can look more like Thai, Indonesian or Filipinos, and those countries

are poor. So it can signify a low social status, which they are trying to escape. (Helena,

Brazil)

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