Lunar New Year: Chinese TV gala includes ‘racist blackface’ sketch

Spring Festival Gala with Chinese actors in blackfaceImage copyright
Youtube/CCTV

Image caption

By some estimates, the show is the most watched entertainment programme on earth

A skit on China’s biggest Lunar New Year TV show has sparked widespread criticism and accusations of racism.

In a comedy routine celebrating Chinese-African ties an Asian actress appears in blackface and with exaggerated buttocks.

Using make-up to lampoon black people – a practice known as blackface – is seen by many as deeply offensive.

The annual state media variety show is hugely popular, and has up to 800 million viewers.

Some observers have pointed out that this sketch would not have been intended as offensive to Africans.

However, this is not the first time Chinese entertainment shows have caused controversy with their portrayals of other ethnicities.

The controversial sketch was part of the four-hour CCTV New Year Gala – also known as the Spring Festival Gala – which aired on Thursday night. By some estimates, the show is the most watched entertainment programme on earth.

It starts with a group of African dancers in tribal costumes along with dancing animals. This is followed by a comedy skit where a young black woman ask a Chinese man to pretend to be her husband in front of her mother.

While the young woman is played by a black actor, her mother appears to be an Asian actor in blackface make-up, donning a tribal costume complete with huge fake buttocks.

She walks on stage carrying a fruit plate on her head and is accompanied by what is thought to be have been a black actor in a monkey suit, carrying a basket on his back.

Image copyright
Youtube/CCTV

Image caption

The African mother is played by a Chinese lady with extra buttocks added on

The skit praises Chinese-African cooperation, showing how much Africans benefit from Chinese investment and how grateful they are to Beijing.

At one stage, the character of the African mother exclaims how much she loves China.

China has over the past years stepped up investment into many African countries. The sketch was set around people working on the Nairobi-Mombasa railway project.

Europe’s racist history

The notion of blackface being racist is linked to the history of minstrel shows in the US and Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries where white actors would paint their skin black for condescending portrayals of black people.

In China, the vast majority of people have no experience of interacting with black people and are less aware of Europe’s and the US’ history of slavery and racism.

Nonetheless, Chinese users on the country’s biggest social media website Weibo have condemned the programme.

Image copyright
Youtube/CCTV

Image caption

Celebrating Chinese-African ties?

Comments included “it’s full of racism,” that “it makes me feel like I’m living in the last century,” and that “we are going to lose face internationally”.

Putting it into a larger context beyond the specific history of blackface, one user asks “if an American white person painted yellow, says I love the USA and recites some Trump quotes while pulling his eyes, how would you feel?”

Some Chinese articles criticising the annual gala on the eve of Lunar New Year, China’s biggest holiday, have been blocked overnight, as have some critical comments on Chinese social media sites.

In 2016, a TV advertisement for a laundry detergent had caused widespread outrage for being racist.

The ad featured a black man with paint stains on his face who gets put into a washing machine by a young Chinese woman to later re-emerge as a fair-skinned Chinese man.

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