A short comment on Josh Hong's article Chinese racism - not quite in a nutshell .

I think he misinterprets some facts. I will give an example. The words Yi, Rong, Di shouldn't be translated as 'barbarian'. Chinese words and characters are in combination with other Chinese characters.

If you split the word Yi , you get: 'one', 'bow, 'man'. A more proper translation therefore would be hunter or nomad. I believe Western historians purposely mistranslated this word to 'prove' that Chinese were racist like the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Present-day Chinese are a combination of countless racial groups while Chinese culture is a combination of various cultures. For example the abacus, tea pot were imported from the Middle East while traditional Chinese music instrument such as the erhu (violin), bipa (mandolin), xiao and dizi (flutes) are all from the Hu tribe from western China.

Even the Chinese dragon is a combination of many animals - it doesn't really exist. It has the head of the Qirin, the mane of the lion, the horns of the deer, the body of the snake, the claws from the tiger and the tail of the fish.

This was because Huangdi united the various different tribes in ancient China and combined their symbols to create the Chinese dragon. You may say that Chinese elite is culturalist but they are definitely not racist.