I refer to letters sent by Just a Chinese and Lai SK regarding Josh Hong's article on Chinese racism.

The writers strongly disapprove of Hong's article because some of them feel that as a Chinese, Hong should not have 'such slanted views of his race' and that by having such a view, Hong is seen to have somewhat betrayed his own race ('our own kind to accuse us of racism').

Some others quoted at length from Chinese history to dispel claims that there are racist elements in the Chinese race.

Before I proceed further, I am also a Chinese. But I do not wish to penalise Hong for criticising 'our race'. Despite the amount of evidence put forth in this forum against the premise of Hong's article, there is also plenty of evidence to show that there are a lot of racists and elements of racism in the Chinese community.

I am not writing to say that the Chinese are a racist group of people. I write to dispute those writers' claims that 'anyone with a reasonable amount of knowledge of China's history (would not) accuse the Chinese of being racist' and (that the claim) that racism has been an element in China's 5,000 years civilisation 'is intellectually ignorant'.

To put it simply, the Chinese, just like other race, have their own fair share of racists on their plate. And my, what a big plate...

A long time ago, I read a book called Chinese Women in Southeast Asia , which associated the Chinese with a superiority complex. As a member of the Chinese community, I have had many encounters with racist remarks peppering the conversations of Chinese people regardless of the language or dialect used.

I have heard Chinese Malaysians using a very offensive term to refer to another race. And to my surprise, I found a Singaporean Chinese using the same term, but spoken in her own dialect. There is no shortage of racists and derogatory tags for other races in the Chinese language.

Since the learned writers who wrote in response to Hong's article touched on Chinese history, I would like to air a few unanswered questions lingering in my head. Has China not been referring to itself as the 'Middle Kingdom'?

Have historians not documented that this is because China regards itself very highly and considers other nations not its equals? Lynn Pan wrote in Sons of the Yellow Emperor that '... the (Chinese) empire recognised no other ruler as sovereign, and admitted no other state to equality'. Now, if that does not smack of racism, what does?

As much as China's history shows that it has been great and kindly to other races, the very same history also show countless elements of conceit and of a superiority complex. Loren Ryter of Cornell University wrote: 'Even on the Chinese mainland, the Chinese were notorious for being Sino-centric and xenophobic, but the British were surprised that even the overseas Chinese were equally as self-assured and unapproachable'.

And what of treatment meted out to the Tibetans, the Uighurs, and other non-Chinese stock living within the jurisdiction of the Chinese government? We Chinese, it seems to me, are too often victims of racism, but our people are also notorious perpetrators of racism unto other races.

I am writing not as an expert on human races or sciences. I just writing down my own experience as a Chinese. I have encountered too many elements of racism from my own kind. As such I must say I am very curious why the writers who wrote in response to Hong's article were shocked that the term 'racism' could be associated with the Chinese race.

And why not, one might ask, because every race has its share of bad apples - the Chinese race is not an exception. Even more shocking to me is the fact that these writers, as Chinese, seem to have never encountered any form of Chinese racism.

Now, honestly...