The Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) published a video on its official Weibo page, the largest regime-controlled social media site in China, featuring Chinese dancers in brown face paint and turbans pretending to be Indian.
The video, reportedly featuring a message urging drivers to be safe on Chinese roads, also featured female dancers in Indian clothes, but not brownface. The video appeared on the official government page on Saturday but took some days to appear beyond the confines of Weibo, reaching Indian audiences who reacted to the video with outrage and disgust.
The MPS is the main repressive arm of the Chinese Communist Party, responsible for all policing activities including mass DNA collection and suppression of religious activities and political dissidence. The MPS is believed to be the government agency responsible for the establishment and management of illegal Chinese police stations around the world used to persecute dissidents, including the operation shut down in Manhattan in April.
The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based newspaper, described the makeup as “blackface” and attributed the video to a Chinese comedian known as “Brother Hao.” The video featured a parody of the song “Tunak Tunak Tun,” a 1990s Indian hit that became extremely popular throughout Asia at the time.
“The Ministry of Public Security, China’s primary policing authority, picked up the video from a popular Chinese video sharing platform called Bilibili, intending to teach about road safety rules,” the Morning Post noted on Tuesday.
“Motorcycle da da da #Police reminder: Seat belts should also be worn in the rear seats. Remember when riding a motorcycle, you can’t go on the road without a helmet!” the MPS Weibo account posted as its comment alongside the video.
The video the MPS shared appears to be part of a larger series of “Brother Hao” videos mocking Indians.
The video shared by the MPS was reportedly extremely popular among Chinese users on Weibo, who viewed the most over 190,000 times according to the Morning Post.
“It’s so magical, I watched it several times,” the newspaper quoted one Weibo user as saying.
Reception to the Chinese government posting a video clearly intended to mock Indian culture was far less warm.
“It’s like someday FBI woke up and started sharing racist videos of Chinese drivers wearing qipao [a Chinese dress],” Aadil Brar, a columnist for the Indian outlet The Print commented. That outlet noted that Indian social media users widely condemned the videos as “offensive” and “racist.”
The use of dark face paint by light-skinned people to mock other races, often referred to as black- or brownface depending on the target of the ridicule, is internationally considered extremely racist and offensive. In China, however, the Communist Party has repeatedly aired or otherwise promoted blackface content, often to advance the Party’s goals. In 2018, for example, during state television’s annual Lunar New Year variety show, a skit aired featuring a Chinese woman in black face paint, wearing a large prosthetic backside. The intent of the segment was to promote China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure plan in which China uses predatory loans to compromise the sovereignty of poor states.
China has learned the hard way that blackface might not be the best idea if you want to show your appreciation to African countries… pic.twitter.com/yaGctntrAL
— DW News (@dwnews) February 17, 2018
African nations are top targets for BRI projects and have suffered some of the most overt known racism at the hands of Chinese businessmen as a result. In Kenya, Chinese construction sites implemented an “apartheid” system that prevented local workers from using the same transportation or lunch facilities as imported Chinese labor. One Kenyan worker filmed a Chinese businessman referring to all Kenyans as “monkey people,” specifying that he included then-President Uhuru Kenyatta, and urging Kenyans to be more like “the white people.”
The growing Chinese presence in Africa has also resulted in a growing market for racist content on social media sites such as Weibo. In 2022, a BBC investigation revealed that Chinese nationals in Malawi were abusing local black children to produce racist, often personalized videos for paying customers in China. In the videos, the children, who do not speak Mandarin, were taught to unknowingly say racist and insulting things about themselves, such as “I am a black monster and I have a low IQ.” The videos would then receive high traffic on Weibo pages with names such as “Jokes About Black People Club.”
Despite receiving tremendous international backlash at the time, three years later, the Lunar New Year gala featured another “multicultural” segment with Han Chinese people in blackface. The culprits this time were dancers in a “multicultural” segment showcasing various victims of the Belt and Road Initiative.
CCTV
The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to the global revulsion with the segment by refusing to apologize, instead issuing a statement reading, “If anyone wants to seize on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala programme to make a fuss, or even sow discord in relations between China and African countries, they obviously have ulterior motives.”