During my years of miserable comfort in London, I was once asked by a Malay classmate from Brunei: 'When will you stop hanging around with so many Chinese people from different countries?'

Quite untypical of me, I said, 'Well, not until you stop seeing all your Muslim friends from the Middle East and South Asia.' And we both laughed.

Indeed, shaking off one's ethnic or religious significance is a tricky business, and all the more so if one seeks to look at one's own racial group with sarcasm, witticism and criticism.

To the disappointment of those who are quick to brand me an anti-Chinese freak, I am fairly confident of my Chinese credentials - whether or not this is necessary is another matter. After all, is someone who taught the Chinese language to British-born Chinese kids in Islington, North London, qualified to be anti-Chinese? Or does one call a person helping out at a remembrance service held for the 58 mainland Chinese who were suffocated to death in Dover, England, in the summer of 2000 a China-basher?

What about someone who is consistently fighting against demeaning remarks being made against mainland Chinese girls in Malaysia? Or would a person who once travelled across central Europe just to understand the plight of undocumented workers from China be a self-loathing Chinese?

Anyway, I draw solace from the fact that Noam Chomsky, too, is often accused of treachery of the Jews on account of his sharp criticisms of Israel.

In this regard, I thank Sim Kwang Yang for his empathy with my venture into assessing the Chinese race critically, and cannot agree more with him that ethnicity and religion are the two foremost terms of reference in Malaysia.

Forgetting is ideal

I don't know since when I got this oddball idea that nation is something that one can actually laugh at, for a large part of it is made of myths, while a considerable amount of it is about fighting and killing. Still, one chooses to look at the bright side of it nonetheless.

The British, for instance, hardly talk about the negative consequences of British colonialism in regard to the Red Indians in America and the Aborigines of Australia, while the Japanese, for all its past war crimes, continue to believe their emperors are the descendants of Amaterasu-o-mi-kami , a female goddess that created Japan.

At a recent forum in Taipei, Chua Beng Huat, a professor in sociology at the National University of Singapore, remarked that 'it would be ideal if one can do a bit of forgetting when it comes to history'. Chua was referring to the issue of reunification between China and Taiwan.

Given that Chua has witnessed the growth of an island at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula into a world-renowned entrepot in less than three decades, to what extent does he appreciate the profound sorrow of the Chinese worldwide over more than a century of humiliation of foreign invasions is certainly something for me to ponder.

Chinese civilisation has no doubt survived the havoc wrought by a number of 'foreign devils'. Whereas VS Naipaul refers to India as a 'wounded civilisation', it would appear that China managed to keep itself from a total colonial onslaught. In this regard, I concur with K Temoc that 'the greater body of Chinese civilisation would remain largely intact as it must have'.

Contrary to what Temoc has suggested, I am yet to confuse Chinese civilisation with Chinese pride. Raised in a purely Chinese-speaking environment, my vivid memories of being constantly taught to be proud of Chinese civilisation continue to influence my interactions with people of different origins.

And I certainly have no time for those like Wu Ming Cheng , who has chosen to ignore the core issue of Chinese racism but dream up a conspiracy in me to drive a wedge between the Chinese and the Jews. If such had been my agenda, I would have got rid of my Jewish name long ago. (Yeah, you really think I am joshing here, don't you?)

Chinese pride

So, what do I actually have a problem with? Well, tag me a self-righteous moralist if you like, but I must admit to having an acute discomfort with Chinese pride as a result of too much emphasis on the superiority of the Chinese civilisation, which is precisely the issue that I was driving at in my article that has generated heated debates as well as sharp rebukes.

Catherine Yeoh 's fury may be legitimate, but she has barked at the wrong tree as nowhere in my article did I deny the diversity and the coalescent nature of Chinese civilisation. The core issue that I sought to address, albeit imperfectly, was the sense of superiority that is common and prevalent among Chinese the world over.

Yeoh is entitled to argue that such phenomenon is not exclusive and peculiar to the Chinese. While I do not dismiss that racism is a universal challenge, I have however chosen to discuss the racist attitude of the Chinese. It was therefore pointless of Yeoh to mention the Hadrian Wall, the dominance of the Greek language and the imposition of the Japanese language on the Ainu. After all, does one excuse the misbehaviour of one's child by pointing out the naughtiness of other kids?

Or does the existence of a xenophobic Caucasian justify the racist attitude of a Chinese? I thought two wrongs never made one right!

But one thing is clear: while racism is an issue most shunned by any host society, it is all the harder to confront Chinese racism in the context of Malaysia. No one exemplifies this eschewal better than Just a Chinese , who went berserk by screaming 'Chinese are not racists but victims'.

I am quite certain that he/she is not alone, as I have for umpteen times met with the rebuke that 'how can we be racist against others when we don't even have political power?' This is akin to a Jew yelling at the world: "I am not racist because I have been in Auschwitz!"

I respect fully the right of Just a Chinese to vent his/her anger over Japan's failure to face up to its war responsibility. If he/she honestly believes that, by chanting 'death to all Japanese devils' while running amok, the Chinese mobs could help raise China's international image and convince the world of Beijing's ability to host the 2008 Olympics Games, may God bless the Middle Kingdom.

But what is racism? Must one really have political or institutional power in order to be racist?

The popular view among Chinese Malaysians is perhaps that offered by Antony Flew in Three Concepts of Racism that racism is a racially discriminatory behaviour. This is very true because the Malaysian state does exercise race-based policies in favour of the bumiputera communities.

But I tend to share also the broader views of Dinesh D'Souza, who sees racism as a belief. He supports this argument in The End of Racism by citing the fact that African slaves in America were not tattooed to confirm their social stigma, as was the case in many ancient cultures, because 'they were considered inferior as a race'. (1)

Anthony Appiah, meanwhile, went further by stating in Anatomy of Racism that racism is an ideology of superiority.

Superior race

Therefore, the fact that Malaysia has in place a racist institution does not negate the belief of the Chinese in themselves being a superior race. As Another Chinese has honestly admitted, we do refer to other races in derogatory terms, and I shall not repeat them here. You know what they are. This, inevitably, brings me into dispute with SK Lai, who has in his response rebutted my claims one by one.

But before I engage in further debate with Lai, I am more than willing to own up to my error in referring to the Hua Xia race of the Central Plain as Han Chinese, which was clearly a slip of mind on my part that is without excuse, and I thank Lai for pointing it out to me rightly.

Lai also appears to prefer 'Western Rong' to 'Western Qiang'. While I have no reason to reject the use of a different term, it must however be said that whether it should be Rong or Qiang remains disputable even in mainland China itself.

Be so as it may, I beg to differ when Lai claims that 'the terms Yi , Rong , Di and Man in their original definitions harboured no discriminatory meanings whatsoever'.

One has long heard of The White Man's Burden. I would argue that Chinese emperors down through the centuries too had their civilisation missions to accomplish, including conquering the peoples surrounding the Central Plain, and acquainting them with Chinese civilisation.

It is true that Yi , Rong , Di and Man later assimilated themselves with the Central Plain peoples, and they together were the forefathers of Han Chinese today. However, it is not to be overlooked that the process of assimilation was only complete when the four uncultured, or hua wai tribes acclimatised themselves with Han culture. In other words, it was the Central Plain culture that lifted them out of the state of barbarity.

From at least the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) onwards, the Hua Xia race began to call itself 'the people of the Middle Kingdom' ( Zhongguoren ), meaning that it was the civilised one surrounded by the uncivilised Man and Yi . Until today, Chinese continue to refer to 'uncivilised' and 'backward' countries as 'the Man Yi territories', although this will never appear in official documents of the Chinese government for the sake of diplomatic courtesy.

This ideology of racial hierarchy later evolved into the concept of the Hua Yi Order of the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907 AD), with a number of neighbouring states subjecting themselves to the tributary system engendered by the Chinese. Japan, for one, began to learn earnestly and eagerly from Tang, including the Chinese characters, or Kanji (the characters of the Han). Japan continued to send emissaries to mainland China on study trips, a practice that only ended in 894AD, when the fortunes and the strengths of Tang started to wane.

However, the Hua Yi Order, which exalted China to the position of the central empire, remained influential in the relations between China and its tributary states, including Japan, Korea and Vietnam, right to the end of the 19th century. When the Manchurians crossed the Great Wall, set foot on the Central Plain, and established the Qing Dynasty, they successfully subverted the Hua Yi Order and turned themselves into Hua also, thereby 'usurping' the throne of the Middle Kingdom.

This 'brave' act of the Manchurians to some extent inspired the Japanese to seek a tryst with their own destiny. The Black Ship of America forced Japan to open its door, and the Meiji Restoration was made possible. What is little known to many Chinese is that the era name Meiji in fact comes from the phrase, 'The Sage faces south and listens to the world, aspiring to an enlightened rule', in I-Ching , a well-known ancient Chinese classic.

(Japan of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries was so obsessed with the Hua Yi Order that it, too, attempted to conquer the Central Plain and hence assume the role of the central empire. The imperialist project, of course, went horribly wrong, bringing disastrous consequences to the peoples of Asia in general and of China in particular.)

I have no problem with Japan and Korea adopting Chinese characters and other elements of Han culture for the enhancement of their own civilisations. However, I question the fact that Chinese in general take pride in their own racial 'superiority', and am tired of hearing 'what is 500 years of Malay civilisation compared to our 5,000 years of history' etc..

It is in this context that I disapprove of what Tuoba Hong did to his own people - forced assimilation in great intensity and without respite. Some have rebutted me by arguing that Tuoba Hong only imposed the Han characters on the Xianbei, but did not ban them from speaking their own tongue. How very wrong this retort is.

According to Bo Yang, an expert of Chinese history who suffered nine years of detention without trial under the authoritarian Kuomintang rule in the 1960s and 1970s, and yet stands firm in his political convictions and refuses to be co-opted by the authorities, Tuoba Hong sought to thoroughly sinicise his own Xianbei people by, inter alia, banning their traditional costumes and replacing them with those of the Han, as well as outlawing the use of the Xianbei language altogether for those under the age of 30, and forcing them to speak only Chinese. Bo Yang is rather scathing of the near-servile mentality of Tuoba Hong. (2)

One may argue Bo Yang is anti-Chinese on account of his having written a highly controversial book The Ugly Chinaman in the 1980s. Unfortunately for those who are eager to prove me wrong, even Ray Huang (Huang Ren Yu), a mainstream Chinese historian, is surprised by the thoroughness of Tuoba Hong in 'civilising' the Xianbei, including forcing the Chinese language upon them and setting himself an example by discarding his own 'uncivilised' surname Tuoba and adopting the Chinese word 'Yuan' in its place. (3)

If Tuoba Hong can indeed be credited for this 'visionary' policy of his, what would become of our ideological tool against the nasty Malay supremacy advocated by Umno?

Self-reflection

I never question the legitimacy of the non-Han Beiwei Dynasty in the Central Plain, and am more than happy to commend it for having created a relatively more equal agrarian society compared to the preceding dynasties. Still, if a Han person is so much aggrandised by the superiority of Chinese civilisation, as Self-Conscious has stated, then he or she should stop lamenting over the hasty westernisation of many societies in the world today. They are only being pragmatic in pursuing frantically the superior technology of the West. Period.

The lengthy discussion above is to show that there indeed exists a racial hierarchy in Chinese civilisation, regardless of all the arguments to the contrary. The letter by Derek Tan , therefore, cannot have come more timely.

The notion of nation and race has been dominating human history since time immemorial, and it would be foolish of me to think we will see the back of it in the centuries to come. Daunting the task ahead may be, one must deal with the sense of superiority that is latent and concealed in each and every ethnic group nonetheless.

Washing the dirty linen in public is never an easy job. But if the Chinese watch with a gleeful grin the constant public chastising of the Malays by the powers-that-be, how about some self-reflection upon our prejudice towards others?

Or have we forgotten the ancient maxim of 'be strict with oneself, yet be generous towards others'?

Endnotes

1) Dinesh D'Souza , ' An American Dilemma: is slavery a racist institution? ', in The End of Racism , New York: Free Press 1995, p. 80.

2) Bo Yang, A Historical Outline of the Chinese , Volume 1, Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co. 2002, pp. 536 - 540.

3) Ray Huang, China: A Macro History , Taipei: Lingkingbooks 1993, pp. 115 - 116.

JOSH HONG acquired the peculiar habit of reading too much into news as early as when he was a teen. Constantly alarmed by the unofficial divide-and-rule policy of the major dailies in Malaysia, he hopes to bridge the gaps between different ethnic groups the best he can. He appreciates the existence of various races as a most gracious gift of God, and thanks Samuel P Huntington for strengthening his will to fight against hegemony of all kinds. His column Jottings and Joshing appear in Malaysiakini .