China Brands, Marketing & Consumers
“Seriously China?” – China’s ‘Completely Racist’ Qiaobi Washing Powder Commercial
A Chinese ad campaign for washing detergent brand Qiaobi (俏比) that recently aired on TV and in cinemas is making its rounds on the internet, and is drawing much controversy for being “completely racist”.
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Diandian GUO
May 26, 2016 at 8:00 pm
I think the racist reading of this ad departs completely from a western mentality, western referring to countries with history of slavery, colonization and other related activities. Discrimination against coloured people is a highly sensitive issue in some western societies exactly because of the historical relevance, because of self-reflection on past activities.
However the discourse of race is not so much dominant in China, especially concerning people black skins, because historically Chinese interaction with African people are scarce. By the time China established amiable diplomatic relations with newly independent African countries in the 1960s, African people were depicted as a kind-hearted friend of Chinese people.
As a Chinese saying goes: what is not in the speaker’s intention is in the hearer’s mind (说者无意听者有心). For Chinese, turning black skin into light one shows preference to the latter (which cannot be excluded from western influence and has not been existing forever). It does not mean that Chinese people are racist or tolerant of racism, but that the racist discourse does not register that sensitively, given that the society has no apparent motive to fight against racial discrimination.
On the whole, the popularity of this video on English media is more a reflection of western mentality than a reaction to Chinese mentality.
By the way, believing black is dirty is old fashioned, since people normally associate dark skin with the mud they got from field work. There is perhaps not so awful many black people in China for the general public to really get used to black as a natural skin colour, so they tend to explain from their own experiences. Discrimination from ignorance, I believe, is slightly different from intentional discrimination.
J
May 27, 2016 at 2:41 am
Most discrimination (if not all) is based on ignorance. It’s no excuse.
Alternatively, how would you react if the ad depicted a white woman luring an Asian man into a washing machine for him to turn into a white man?
Qflux
May 27, 2016 at 8:34 am
People seemed fine with the white loser getting transformed into a black god. Cheered it on really. The *only* issue was ironically that they said “colored”. If they had skipped that and said “women don’t like pale pathetic little losers” instead of “women prefer coloured” it would have won awards (although fitting that tag line into a laundry context would be a trick)
Qflux
May 27, 2016 at 8:38 am
Chinese were discriminating based on skin tone while “white people” still lived in caves.
Dark skin = works in sun = poor.
Fair skin = always shaded = rich
Sometimes it’s that easy, sorry. Although I know the reflex to blame “the West” for 150,000 years of human histories issues while simultaneously stripping credit for anything positive coming from “the West” because of all of that prior history is a well developed one.
Rebecca Webb
May 28, 2016 at 3:51 am
Diandian GUO,
I absolutely agree with you!
Ondra
May 27, 2016 at 6:20 am
The supposed commercial from Czechia is not a commercial – it’s a political satire reacting to increased xenophobic sentiments in mid-1990s. The brand is called “Arijec” (Aryan), resembling P&G’s Ariel brand.
Manya Koetse
May 27, 2016 at 7:54 am
Well noted, thank you, I’ve removed this example now. For those interested, this is a link to the satire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkn-dlcSCEo.
Qiu
May 29, 2016 at 9:51 am
What do you mean by “China’s” commercial. If Walmart makes a racist commercial would you label it as “America’s Completely Racist Commercial”??
On one hand you are acting like a SJW and denouncing the commercial (which I agree is fucking racist.), but on the other hand you just generalized one fucked up company’s behavior to the entire country.
Dan
August 14, 2016 at 7:34 pm
Don’t worry white people the Chinese don’t like you either.