Chinese state media’s New Year gala once again features blackface in segment depicting Africa
In one segment, several Chinese actors were featured in what appeared to be stereotypical African tribal garments. Some of the actors wore makeup to make their skin look darker — drawing pushback from China watchers on Twitter.
“We cannot stress enough the impact scenes such as these have on African and Afro-diasporic communities living in China,” the organization added.
“Like every year, the Chunwan gala featured yet another instance of blackface. Unfortunately, it’s an annual tradition with no signs of stopping anytime soon,” a group promoting the work of Black professionals focused on China, the Black China Caucus, wrote in a series of tweets.
Whatever its intentions, it was difficult to dissociate blackface from “from a long history of minstrelsy [and] fixation on problematic caricatures,” the caucus continued. It added that the gala’s organizers should not only end the tradition of including blackface but also hire some of the many Black people living in China.
The CCTV New Year’s Gala has caused international controversy for its use of blackface before, most notably in 2018 when the event used a Chinese actress in makeup with prosthetic buttocks to represent an African woman in an extended skit about the economic links between China and Africa.
Although the Africa-China relationship was portrayed in a positive manner — at one point, the African character says, “I love Chinese people! I love China!” — some observers said that missed the point. One described the show as “cringeworthy at best, completely racist at worst.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang later defended China, suggesting that Western media outlets that reported on the skit were trying to “sow discord in China’s relations with African countries,” which he called a “doomed futile effort.”
The tradition of blackface has a long history in China, and it was long viewed without negative connotations. Zhu Mingying, listed on the billing of the offending segment of the New Year’s gala, is a well-known singer who focuses on performances from other cultures and undertook tours of Africa as part of a cultural diplomacy program in the 1970s.
The gala has been running since 1983. Although it reports hundreds of millions of viewers each year, it has been criticized for being out of date and insensitive. In 2015, the show angered Chinese feminists, who accused it of having a misogynistic tone with its crude jokes about unmarried women and full-time mothers.
