Chinese social media is littered with racist videos, particularly content that mocks black people or portrays them through offensive racial stereotypes, research by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found.

The human rights watchdog analysed hundreds of videos posted on Chinese social media since 2021 and found that major platforms, including Bilibili, Douyin, Kuaishou, Weibo and Xiaohongshu, “do not routinely address racist content”. 

One type of video that is popular on Chinese social media portrays people in African countries as primitive or impoverished, with Chinese people – often the content creators – being shown as wealthy saviours.

One video posted on Douyin in April this year shows a woman in an African country washing her hands in a hut, before drinking what is described as homemade alcohol from a muddy blue container. The video, which is captioned “#LifeInAfrica #cleanandhygienic #PrimitiveTribe” has 12,000 likes and several negative comments underneath, such as: “Thank you to my eight generations of ancestors for giving birth to me in China.”

Other videos denigrate interracial relationships, particularly between black men and Chinese women, in ways that are both racist and misogynist. HRW found that Chinese women who post photographs with their black male partners on Chinese social media sometimes receive online harassment, including death threats, rape threats and doxing, where private residential addresses and images are shared online.

In other cases, Chinese people who support victims of anti-black racism in China were called traitors online.

Chinese authorities have condemned online racism, especially when there is a backlash, and pledged to crack down on “unlawful online acts”. Last month, Lu Ke, a Chinese vlogger, was convicted in Malawi of 14 charges including child trafficking and procurement of children for use of entertainment, and ordered to leave the country. He was arrested last year after a BBC Africa Eye documentary exposed him as the creator of videos featuring Malawian children, which were being sold on Chinese social media for up to £55. 

Lu had coached the children to recite messages in Mandarin that they didn’t understand, such as: “I am black monster, my IQ is low.”

The social media platforms included in the HRW investigation have all published community guidelines banning content promoting racial or ethnic hatred and discrimination. But HRW said these policies are “inadequate”.

The researchers note that Beijing’s Great Firewall of censorship on the Chinese internet means that platforms have thousands of content moderators who remove or restrict politically sensitive content. Comments critical of government policies, the Communist party or even just gripes about the economy are deleted within hours, whereas content that is derogatory about ethnic minorities often remains online and earn thousands of likes.

HRW said: “The amount and extremity of racist content on the Chinese internet suggest that the platforms either are not meeting their own standards banning racist content, or that their policies are inadequate when addressing racist content, both contrary to their human rights responsibilities.”

Manya Koetse, the editor-in-chief of Whats on Weibo, a website, said that since the BBC Africa Eye documentary, racist videos on Weibo were taken down more promptly. But, she noted, “often what is perceived as racist content against black people in western content is not perceived as racist content against black people in China”.

Yaqiu Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “The Chinese government likes to tout China-Africa anti-colonial solidarity and unity, but at the same time ignores pervasive hate speech against black people on the Chinese internet.

“Major Chinese social media platforms are failing to fulfil their own guidelines to address pervasive racist content.”

Douyin told HRW that the platform “on average take[s] action on more than 300 videos and comments per day that include violative content targeting black people”.

ByteDance (Douyin’s parent company), Bilibili, Kuaishou, Weibo and Xiaohongshu have been approached for comment. By Amy Hawkins/ Additional research by Tzu-Wei Liu. The Guardian