Understanding Chinese International Students’ Stances on Anti-China Rhetoric: A Postcolonial Perspective

Abstract

Understanding Chinese International Students’ Stances on Anti-China Rhetoric: A Postcolonial Perspective Peng Yin (bio) Accompanied by the increasing presence of Chinese international students in US higher education institutions (HEIs; Institute of International Education, 2022), a growing body of scholarship has called attention to the rise of xenophobic and discriminatory sentiments toward this student population (Suspitsyna & Shalka, 2019; Yao, 2018; Yin, 2023; Yu, 2021). To unveil the nature of those xenophobic and discriminatory sentiments, scholars typically draw on Lee and Rice’s (2007) notion of neo-racism, which suggests that non-Western international students’ lived experiences of xenophobia and discrimination are largely triggered by bigoted and ethnocentric assumptions about the national origin of the students. These studies have collectively promoted a heightened awareness of the entanglements between national origin-based discrimination, namely anti-China sentiments, and the marginalization of Chinese international students. However, what remains relatively unknown is how Chinese international students make sense of and reflectively respond to anti-China rhetoric. This study intended to address the identified gap in the extant literature by conducting an exploratory and postcolonially informed investigation into Chinese international students’ stances on anti-China rhetoric. In doing so, the study sought to contribute to research and practice aimed at empowering Chinese international students and the broader non-Western international student population and developing a sustainable and equity-driven agenda to guide the internationalization of US HEIs. RELEVANT THEORETICAL LENSES In their work, Stein and Andreotti (2016) argued that national origin-based discrimination against non-Western international students was shaped by a dominant “global imaginary” rooted in the colonial myth of Western supremacy. It was through such global imaginary that “the West [was] understood to be at the top of a global hierarchy of humanity with the rest of the world trailing behind” (Stein & Andreotti, 2016, p. 226). Taking Stein and Andreotti’s (2016) argument as the point of departure, I situated the conceptualization of anti-China rhetoric in this study in relation to the colonial construction of the West/non-West divide. Through the prism of this divide, Chinese international students’ home and host countries—China and the US—were (re)presented along a fixed hierarchy of inferiority/superiority (Yin, 2023). To further unveil the political [End Page 600] underpinnings of the West/non-West divide, I drew on Said’s (1978) notion of Orientalism, which indexed the pervasiveness of a colonial project of knowledge production that gave rise to an “ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident’ ” (p. 2). Of note, according to Said (1978), the Orientalizing dynamics between the West and non-West worlds were chiefly realized through the formation of binary oppositions that served to fuel the ideology of Western exceptionalism. That is, by labeling the non-West as the inferior Other, the West at once affirmed its status as being culturally superior. With regard to how people from colonized/marginalized groups made sense of the West/non-West divide, Said (1978) posited a tendency of self-Orientalization, suggesting that (post)colonial subjects were inclined to reinforce the myth of Western supremacy by engaging in obedient practices resulting in the perpetuation of the colonial logic of the West/non-West divide (see also Mignolo, 2011). Notwithstanding its wide application, Said’s (1978) concept of self-Orientalization suffered from a major limitation in that it failed to take into account the agentive potential and authentic voices of (post)colonial subjects whose identities might not be fully molded by the coloniality of power. Among the postcolonial scholars whose work embodied valuable efforts to transcend the scope of self-Orientalization, Fanon (1952/2008) pointed out the contingent co-construction of the colonizer and the colonialized, which denoted a sense of agency associated with subju-gated groups. Porter (1983) further argued that the interplay between (post)colonial subjects and the paradigm of the West/non-West divide was irreducible to a flat relationship of subordination and domination. Along similar lines, Bhabha (1990, 1994) questioned the tenability of colonial authorities, introducing the notions of hybridity and the third space, which stressed the potential of (post)colonial subjects to resist the coloniality of power and imagine alternative ways of...