Who is Chinese? The answer may seem simple at first: a person who looks Chinese.

But imagine a young woman born and brought up in the U.S. Her grandmother is from China, and she happens to have inherited many of her grandmother’s physical traits. She doesn’t speak Chinese or identify in any way with Chinese culture, and she thinks of herself as a proud American. When she is called Chinese, she forcefully rejects the label.

Or consider my own case. Canadian by birth, with Caucasian physical features, I have lived and worked in China for more than two decades, speak the Chinese language, identify with Chinese culture and am now a permanent resident of China. But almost no one considers me Chinese.

Both of these instances point to the difficulty with a view that is deeply ingrained in contemporary China and at least implicitly endorsed elsewhere: That to be Chinese is to belong to a race.

I feel welcomed and loved in China. My wife is Chinese, and I’ve done my best to integrate since arriving in 2004. But I can’t fully succeed. My Chinese friends sometimes call me a “Chinese son-in-law.” It’s meant as a compliment, but the implication in Chinese is that I’m not fully Chinese.


The obstacles are not legal. It is possible to gain citizenship by marrying a Chinese person, but in practice few do. According to the 2010 census, the country’s population of 1.39 billion citizens includes just 1,448 naturalized Chinese. China does not allow dual citizenship, which makes the decision more difficult, but in principle, race is not a barrier to becoming a Chinese citizen.

Nor is language the main obstacle to popular acceptance. My Chinese is far from perfect, but I can give academic talks in Chinese, and I can surprise taxi drivers when I call for a ride and they arrive expecting to see a Chinese customer. Millions of poorly educated Chinese citizens speak hardly any Mandarin, and yet nobody questions their Chineseness.

It certainly isn’t any lack of commitment on my part to Chinese culture. I’ve been working on Confucian philosophy for many years, and it inspires the way I lead my life. I’m told over and over that my commitment to Chinese culture is more “Chinese” than that of many Chinese people. At conferences in China, I often find myself the only person wearing Chinese-style clothing.

The real obstacle to popular acceptance is the assumption that Chineseness is a racial category. Stereotypes against outsiders are common in any culture, and China is no exception. Pejorative statements about non-Han Chinese can be found in ancient texts, and there have been tragic outbursts of racism in Chinese history. The Jie people, who were probably of Central Asian stock, established the Later Zhao dynasty but were massacred shortly thereafter, around A.D. 350. The killings were said to be based on their Caucasian looks, and many bearded people were killed just because they were too Jie-looking.


But there is a more inspiring current in Chinese history as well. As the historian Yuri Pines of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem has noted, the dominant elite culture in ancient China emphasized cultural belonging, not race or ethnicity, as the most important trait for citizenship. Chinese people were those who adhered to the common ritual norms of the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 B.C.). One could learn to be Chinese.

During much of its history, particularly the eras of prosperity and glory, China was an open society that welcomed foreigners. The Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907) is a classic example. The capital Chang’an was a multicultural urban center with nearly a million residents and drew ambitious migrants from around the world. Its greatest generals were Turks, Koreans and Sogdians (an ancient Iranian civilization). Arab scholars could participate in the imperial examinations. Li Bai, its most famous poet, was perhaps of Central Asian stock.

But the open attitude of the Tang dynasty eventually gave way. After the shocking rebellion of An Lushan in the 8th century and the sacking of the capital by Uighurs and Tibetans, Chinese attitudes toward outsiders took a markedly negative turn.

This is a recurrent pattern. When China is powerful and secure, foreigners are welcome and considered employable, including at the highest levels of government. When China is weak, foreigners are often viewed with suspicion and even hatred. The most famous modern case is the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901, which sought to violently expel the Western and Christian presence in China.


Indeed, China’s most insecure period was the “century of humiliation” from the 1840s to the 1940s. Chinese elites came to realize that not only was China not the center of the world, it was a weak country unable to stand up for itself. China lost wars to Western countries and Japan, and its territory was carved up by foreign powers.

It was in the wake of these events that a race-based conception of Chinese identity took hold. Leading reformers of the day, such as the scholar and political thinker Kang Youwei, traveled the world and came to the pessimistic conclusion that different races were engaged in a deadly struggle for survival. They saw Chinese identity as the legitimate racial basis for a nation-state that could take its place against other similarly constituted nations.

That legacy still shapes attitudes today. But China has rebuilt a strong and powerful state, with less to fear from foreign bullying, and it has become a key player in our vast, cosmopolitan world economy. To my mind, China has reached a point in its history when it can return to a more generous conception of identity and embrace those who meet the cultural criteria of Chineseness.

There are also pragmatic grounds for such a shift. Yan Xuetong, a leading theorist of international relations at Tsinghua University, argues that China should employ more foreigners as public officials and put them on the road to citizenship. Once China passes a necessary threshold of hard power, he says, China should compete for human talent rather than for economic or military superiority.


A meritocratic immigration policy open to all, regardless of ethnic or racial background, would also serve China’s economic interests. The now-discarded one-child policy has created a demographic bulge, with the elderly constituting an ever-growing proportion of the population. The country would greatly benefit from the contributions of talented young migrants from around the world.

President Xi Jinping describes his broad agenda for the country as the “China dream.” My own China dream is more modest: to be viewed as a Chinese not just in my own mind but in the minds of my fellow Chinese.

— Dr. Bell is dean of the school of political science and public administration at Shandong University and a professor at Tsinghua University. His most recent book is “The China Model.”