Periodic Reporting for period 4 - CHINAWHITE (The Reconfiguration of Whiteness in China: Privileges, Precariousness, and Racialized Performances)
Reporting period: 2023-12-01 to 2025-05-31
This research examined the shifting meanings of whiteness in the new historical context of China’s rise, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, and geopolitical tensions between China and major Western countries. It has broadened whiteness studies in Western academia and treats China as a new site for the global circulation of white privileges and precariousness. The project has explored how multiple versions of whiteness are imagined, negotiated, and performed through daily life interactions between multiple groups of white migrants and various institutional and social actors in China. By critically interrogating China’s role in contributing to the fragmentation and reconfiguration of white privileges at the global scale, this research has shed light on the complex ways that white hegemony may reproduce itself, albeit in distorted and contradictory manners, in multiple political, social, and cultural contexts.
The team conducted ethnographic fieldwork among white westerners in various Chinese cities, including English teachers, self-initiated entrepreneurs, foreign models, and foreign spouses of Chinese citizens. We have presented our findings in multiple conferences. The project resulted in three PhD dissertations and over twenty articles in peer reviewed academic journals, including top ranking journals such as American Anthropologist, The Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Anthropological Quarterly. We organized three international workshops, which led to the publication of two special issues: one in Asian Anthropology (2022) and one in New Diversities (2022). A third special issue is under preparation to be submitted to Gender, Place, and Culture.
This research has contributed to the development of new theories on race and racialization in non-Western societies. Existing literature on race and whiteness studies are dominated by a West-centric perspective and there is little consideration of the mediation of specific socio-political and cultural context. Our research privileges the disciplinary power of the Chinese gazes in redefining and transforming the meanings of whiteness in various social fields. We have also adopted a transnational perspective in examining the tensions and gaps in the global circulation of racial knowledge via international migration. The PI co-edited a book with Milos Debnár, Migration, Transnational Flows, and the Contested Meanings of Race in Asia, which was published Open Access by Springer in 2025. The PI is also preparing a book manuscript, which will be published in the near future.