For years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pushed ethnic minority groups like Tibetans and Uyghurs to adopt an identity rooted in Chinese nationality and allegiance to the ruling Communist Party.
Now, that push has been codified into a sweeping new law that reaches into classrooms, neighborhoods and homes – and gives Beijing the right to target people outside of its borders that it believes violate its rules.
The statute, officially known as the Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law, came into effect on July 1. It bans acts that “undermine ethnic unity or create ethnic division” among China’s 56 officially recognized ethnicities, which include a Han Chinese majority that makes up over 90% of the country’s 1.4 billion people.
I mean Korea and China were definitely where they did the worst war crimes, but I have met plenty of Filipino, Malaysian, Singaporean, Vietnamese, and Indonesian who hold a lot of prejudice against the Japanese. For the most part it’s mainly aimed at the Japanese government, and not as directed towards individuals.
I am Korean, and Korean and Chinese people are definitely more vocal about it. But it’s not something a lot of Asians would really speak openly about to white people, even if you’ve been there a while. And just because a country has been occupied by different countries in their past it does not mean make any other instance feel any better, there are just more people to dislike.
I’ve heard my Vietnamese family and friends speak far more negatively about Koreans and Chinese than Japanese. Koreans committed some war crimes against Vietnamese during the American war and are considered some of the most rude tourists. The Chinese govt’s continued aggression against Vietnam keeps them at the top of the unpopular list though.