Evolution and modern theories of human origins, and racism, run deep, all around the world:

The Peking Man Delusion

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And while academics in China rage against the grain, the Chinese public is less than perturbed by stirrings in the scientific realm. Ask the average Chinese person who they evolved from, and the likely answer is “Peking man”. Suggest an African ancestor in response, and whole gamut of reactions to this bizarre notion is likely to surface. Ms. Zhang Yanfang, a 67-year-old Beijinger and retired office manager, on learning of the Africa theory, replied that she was not even aware such a hypothesis existed, “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Zhang replied, saying that she grew up learning, like every other Chinese person, that she descended from the Peking man. “I think it’s quite unlikely that we are related to Africans; the difference is too great in every respect—including that of race.”

While general ignorance might fuel popular skepticism towards ROAH, for many the disbelief in an African origin lies in the notion that the Chinese, with its unique and illustrious history, the longest continuing civilization in the world, and the creator of some of the greatest inventions ever, could fundamentally be “non-Chinese” in any way. Professor Frank Diktter, Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and author of The Discourse of Race in Modern China, believes that intellectualism can be strongly influenced by a cultural context, noting a similar resistance in the West to the multiple origins theory in the 19th century, “Monogenesis until recently was a view with its own cultural background. Despite the fact that Charles Darwin and others were talking in the name of science, it was very clear that Christianity and the idea of Adam and Eve provided a strong setting.” In China, views opposing this began emerging at the end of the 19th Century, when thinkers, likely influenced by strong Confucianism, says Professor Diktter, “insisted that Africans and Europeans came from one single origin, but that the Chinese were completely different.” The discovery at Zhoukoudian several decades later reinforced this view: “Chinese scientists took it to be proof that China is one long line of uninterrupted descent.”

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Stripped of cultural and historical connotations, the issue of race may be more than a mere reverence for one’s own. There exists a widely carried unfavorable perception of Africa and the African people. Both Professor Diktter and Professor Sam Crane, Chair and Professor of Political Science at Williams College, Massachusetts, agree that these views have a part to play in the debate. Such sentiments were demonstrably brought to the fore in 2009 when Lou Jing, a 20 year old mixed-race Shanghai woman whose father is of African-American descent, appeared on the TV talent contest Go! Oriental Angel. After speaking of what it meant to be Chinese, she almost immediately became a target of online abuse and slurs centered on the color of her skin. Many netizens were insulted that she considered herself Chinese at all, exposing the realities of identity and racial prejudices in modern day China.

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