Mirror and Mismatch China and the global politics of the far-right


How about the Chinese state? And how is this influenced by what’s happening elsewhere in the world?

This is another reason for why it is difficult to talk about China in discussions of the far right. The Chinese state presents itself as anti-imperialist and, of course, socialist. The fact that there are no elections and no political movements allowed outside the official apparatus also contributes to China’s marginalisation in far-right studies, which tend to prioritise electoral politics. In a wonderful article on the global politics of the far right, Anievas and Saull talk about a set of ‘common enabling conditions’ that ‘laterally connect Modi’s India and Bolsonaro’s Brazil with the “UKIPisation” of Britain and ‘Trumpification’ of America insofar as the neoliberal-driven de-industrialisation of the “advanced” capitalist powers was internationally entwined with the large-scale processes of “accumulation by dispossession” most dramatically experienced by such “late” state-led industrialisers like the BRIC states and, most notably, China’.5 The article and the special issue it introduces, however, engage little with China itself beyond how its portrayal as a threat enable far-right politics in the US. Unlike Modi-ism or Erdoğan-ism, the one-party system and the socialist state probably make the usual frameworks and languages of analysis inadequate or a poor fit when it comes to China's relationship with the global politics of the far right. 

We can indeed situate Xiism within broader contestations of the ‘liberal international order’ from other emerging powers such as India and Türkiye.6 Rather than being an external challenger, China has been integral to both the relatively stable hegemony of global neoliberalism in the 1990s and 2000s, and to the intensification of the post-liberal contestations we now witness. This represents a partial and selective rejection of some aspects of the liberal international order, such as the normative hierarchy that tends to stigmatise or impose ‘symbolic disempowerment’ on nations or subjects considered illiberal,7 which co-exists with embracing other aspects, such as globalisation, multilateralism, and the United Nations (UN) system. In contrast to the anti-globalism of the Western far right, Kumral notes that for emerging powers, neoliberal globalisation continues to be seen as ‘opportunities for upward mobility for national economies in international stratification’.8 She argues that Modi and Erdoğan synthesise neoliberalism with developmentalism, offering ‘selective redistributionist policies that target the poorest sections’, providing the rising middle class with a ‘master development narrative of a rising Turkey/India in a period of global hegemonic transformation’ and a re-imagining of past empires.9 Xiism runs parallel to these projects in many aspects, being embedded in the ‘common enabling conditions’ mentioned earlier, including the shifting economic power relations and capitalism’s ‘spatial fix’ of manufacturing jobs, which has contributed to different attitudes towards globalisation in the North and the South. As Eli Friedman puts it, if the social ‘dissolution wrought by neoliberal capitalism has revitalized fascism in the West, it has been similarly important in the rise of ethnonationalist dictator in China’.10

Intersecting with these economic processes is postcolonial identity politics, which often takes the form of civilisational discourses that assert one’s identity and cultural particularities against ‘Western hegemony’ or ‘cultural imperialism’. This is not particularly new. For example, the Guomindang’s (the Nationalist Party) conservative revolution in the 1930s was doing very much the same: justifying authoritarianism and social conservatism through claims about cultural authenticity and resistance to Western imperialism.11 However, in contemporary China and shaped by the post-Cold War international order, we also see arguments about security in addition to those about authenticity. Certain values or movements are framed both as ‘not ours’ (not Chinese) and as instruments of regime-change attempts threatening national security. Among the cultural elites, conservative intellectuals in China have been influenced by figures such as Samuel Huntington and Carl Schmitt in their articulation of China as a ‘civilizational state’. Drawing heavily on Huntington and in an explicitly gendered language, Gan Yang, a prominent conservative philosopher based at Tsinghua University, characterised the earlier pursuit by Türkiye and Russia of ‘Westernised’ modernisation as ‘self-castration’, whereby they lose their own racial-civilisational identity.12 Jiang Shigong, another state-adjacent intellectual and a Schmittian legal theorist, argues that the prevailing discourse of ‘integrating with the world’ in the 1990s and 2000s means that ‘we’ have lost ‘our civilisational impulse and political will to defend ourselves’.13 Ironically, again, these prominent intellectuals of conservative civilisationism, such as Gan Yang, Jiang Shigong, and Zhang Weiwei, are known as the ‘new left’ despite their affinities with European and US conservative thought.

As I have recently argued,14 civilisational discourse becomes a vehicle for claiming difference internationally and suppressing difference domestically. At the international level, Xi’s ‘Global Civilisation Initiative’ advocates diversity and warns against ‘imposing one’s values and models onto others’. Domestically, assimilationist ethnic policy is accompanied with the re-centring of zhonghua minzu (Chinese nation or race-nation)15 and zhonghua wenming (Chinese civilisation) as key concepts in the country’s political discourse. Under the slogan of ‘forging a strong communal consciousness of the Chinese nation’, assimilationist policies seek to erase and securitise difference, while turning a depolitcised, exoticised version of ethnic difference into resources for tourism and consumerism. These policies scale back a range of preferential policies that ethnic minorities used to enjoy, infringe on cultural and religious rights, and remove minority languages as medium of instruction in formal education.16 At the same time, we see abundant scenes of minority ‘singing and dancing’ in domestic and external propaganda as a display of ‘diversity’ and ‘unity’, which reduces living religious and cultural traditions to exoticised patriotic performances.17 With the rise of ecotourism, as Guldana Salimjan argues, the rebranding of Indigenous lands as Han ecotourist destinations to appreciate ‘untainted nature’ is marked by land dispossession and labour injustice.18 

What about in terms of social media and internet discourse? Do we see similar threads of xenophobia, misogyny, and reactionary social violence in Chinese social media that we see in other parts of the world?

Absolutely. My previous work has focused extensively on the transnational circulation of far-right narratives and tropes in the digital sphere.19 A lot of this is misinformation and conspiracy theories about demographic and cultural crises of ‘the West’. So, when internet users in China deploy the same imaginaries about ‘Western civilisation’ being undermined by ‘non-white’ immigrants and ‘woke’ ideologies as Western far-right actors, it’s about the decline of ‘the other’, told as a cautionary tale with a sense of geopolitical Schadenfreude. The cautionary tale serves to bolster ethnonationalist anxieties and delegitimise domestic social movements in a fashion of “this must never happen in China’. We have seen the rise of grassroots Islamophobic influencers or muhei (穆黑), who mobilise both globally, circulating scripts of Islamophobia, and more locally rooted patterns of prejudice.20

Many of the anti-immigration narratives are about portraying crises of ‘the other’, although they sometimes extend to China’s own immigration policy (statistically China has one of the lowest shares of foreign-born residents worldwide). The online backlash against the new regulations on foreigners’ permanent residency in 2020 provides one such example. Apart from ‘racist coverage of African immigrant communities in Guangzhou’,21 the backlash also features themes that reflect certain locally specific grammars of grievance. This includes the longstanding perception that foreigners get special preferential treatment, and the discontent with unequal status among Chinese citizens themselves due to the hukou system –  which produces an unequal citizenship regime that disadvantages rural migrant workers, who are often excluded from urban social citizenship and welfare provisions or included but on a differential basis.22 While this institution is unique to China, it is commonly observed in the affective politics of right-wing populism that grievances about inequalities or marginalisation are weaponised and channelled towards hatred against the ethnocultural other. Han supremacist narratives online also frequently frame ethnic minorities in China as undeservingly privileged and Han males as being victimised.23

In the more recent backlash against China’s newly introduced K-visa, which is intended to attract talent in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), we also see that blatant racism is entangled with socioeconomic anxieties. Ultranationalist influencers are spreading a wave of misinformation that claims that Indians were already ‘studying the visa’ and would come to China in large numbers, taking an already shrinking number of graduate jobs. These online posts reproduce racist stereotypes about Indians having ‘fake diplomas’ or ‘lack of hygiene’, while also tapping into widespread anxieties about economic slowdown and the lack of job opportunities. On the previous point about ideological fusion, some defenders of the Chinese regime on X (formerly Twitter) use an apparently socialist rhetoric to justify anti-immigration ethnonationalism, claiming that China is a socialist ‘ethno-state’, and that multiculturalism and immigration are the products of neoliberalism.24

Feminism has emerged as one of the most powerful mobilising issues in China’s digital sphere. Like reactionary movements elsewhere, the rise of misogyny and anti-feminism is a reaction to the growing influence of feminism and gender-related debates in public discourse. Some online communities known as the Chinese manosphere, and the techno-nationalist discourse I discussed earlier, have a strong misogynist undertone. Furthermore, anti-feminism is often geopoliticised. Feminists are stigmatised by anti-feminist nationalists as agents of ‘foreign hostile forces’ or as ‘connected to Islamists’,25 exemplifying the kind of right-wing intersectionality26 that fuses different and often contradictory talking points (Islamophobia and anti-feminism) that we also see elsewhere.

An interesting political slur that has gained currency among nationalist influencers in recent years is zhiren 殖人, supposedly meaning a colonial or ‘mentally colonised’ person. Critics of the regime in general, but feminists and queer activists in particular, are often labelled zhiren. It is of course a longstanding and widespread phenomenon to discredit social groups who hold dissenting political views by calling them traitors, collaborators, or otherwise ‘anti-national’. However, I read the explicit invocation of colonial here as symptomatic of a newly emerging and distinctively post-liberal sensibility (different from, say, anti-imperialism in the Maoist era) as the moral authority of the liberal order erodes. Rather than (or in addition to) denouncing perceived external hierarchies, the accusation of coloniality is turned inwards to target the internal other, whose identification with progressive values is recast as colonial subservience and national betrayal.27

How does Chinese popular discourse and the official state discourse respond to the demonisation of China by some elements of the right in the West?

Demonisation feeds into victimhood nationalism, which is useful in distracting attention from debates on concrete issues to moralised narratives about injury and humiliation.28 However, popular or official nationalism does not consider demonisation to be only from elements of the right. Sinophobia from the right tends to more blatant forms of racism, as seen in Trump’s rhetoric about ‘kung flu’ and ‘China virus’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. This of course invited strong reactions and led to the a ‘narrative battle’ of blame games with US and China accusing each other of causing the virus.29 But nationalists equally resent ‘demonisation’ from the centre and progressive liberals, which is seen as condescending and rooted in a sense of moral superiority. Some might regard this as more despicable than animosity based on straightforward racism or strategic calculation. Indeed, conservative nationalists largely favoured Trump over the Democratic candidate in both the 2016 and 2024 elections.30 In a global survey conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations after Trump’s re-election but before he assumed office, more Chinese respondents saw his return a ‘good thing’ for US citizens, for the world and for China than those who saw it a ‘bad thing’ or were neutral.31

For conservative nationalists, apart from ideological affinities regarding gender and ethnicity, it is believed that since both US parties are anti-China, Trump is at least less interested in ‘preaching’ liberal values abroad or funding the ‘zhiren’ in China (a talking point used by some nationalist influencers during the 2024 US election). Trump’s newly released National Security Strategy in fact echoes Chinese techno-nationalist views in this respect: it criticises the liberal universalist agenda of promoting democracy and no longer approaches the US–China rivalry through the framework of democracy versus authoritarianism, but as a matter of strategic and geo-economic calculus.32 The competition might be ruthless, yet they share the same post-liberal political sensibilities.

Samuel Huntington, a US conservative, and John Mearsheimer, an International Relations (IR) neo-realist, have both been highly influential in shaping Chinese international thought in both intellectual and popular spaces. Convinced that all US actors are ‘anti-China’ anyway, Chinese nationalists consider strategic competition (realist IR) or ‘clashes of civilization’ (Huntington) to be more reasonable and honest grounds for hostility than the neoconservative or liberal internationalists’ moralised interpretation of world order. Leaving aside the factor of great power rivalry, far-right European leaders are well-regarded in popular and official discourse. Victor Orbán is a clear example, and Georgia Meloni has also been given favourable coverage in both state and social media.

Is there resistance to these trends of reactionary nationalism? What form does it take?

Yes. Resistance comes from a range of different positions: progressive liberals, feminists, queer activists, anticolonial internationalists, dissident Marxists, or dissident Maoists who speak an older form of Maoist language.33 As I mentioned before, digital feminism has been thriving within China’s online public sphere even though the space for offline mobilisation has diminished. Feminist discourses in China are extremely diverse, including currents that are, for example, neoliberal, trans-exclusive, or classist. There is no monolithic picture. However, feminist voices form one of the most distinctive digital counter-publics that offer an alternative to state-sanctioned or grassroots narratives of masculinist nationalism. One of the surprisingly lively spaces is podcasting. Some of the most successful podcasts are led by women who are critical and culturally progressive. Their popularity among younger and well-educated urban women have also brought commercial sponsorship and partnerships.

Despite stringent censorship, the digital ecosystem remains decentralised, allowing the existence of anonymous, informal, and non-institutionalised forms of publication. Yawen Li has, for example, detailed some of the initiatives of anticolonial internationalists in China, who run publications or WeChat accounts focused on colonialism, patriarchy, capitalist exploitation, and resistance across the world.34 From Ukraine to Palestine, Chinese internationalists refuse to align their expression of solidarity with the geopolitical interests of either China or ‘the West’. Jing Wang has written about how Chinese Muslims strategically voice dissent online in the shadow of both censorship and anti-Muslim sentiments.35 For many ordinary internet users, non-engagement with such racist, misogynist, and ultranationalist messaging is also a form of resistance.

There is also the incredible growth of diaspora Chinese communities engaged in feminist, anti-racist, decolonial, and anti-authoritarian activism, especially after the ‘whitepaper movement’ of late 2022.36 These growing spaces of transnational activism draw on feminist ethics of care and solidarity, challenging and critiquing patriarchal power structures and the dualistic geopolitical imaginary of ‘authoritarian China’ versus the ‘free world’ that shaped earlier forms of pro-democratic advocacy among the diaspora.37 In an ongoing project on digital counter-publics and transnational Chinese feminism, my collaborators and I have been working with queer feminist Chinese organisers across Europe, Japan, and North America to understand how they theorise and practise transnational solidarity beyond binaries and rooted in the interconnections of different structures of domination. Chinese diaspora activists have also done extraordinary work in mobilising for Palestine’s liberation and against genocide through collectives such as the Palestine Solidarity Action Network (PSAN). Their work provides a transnational analysis of connections between settler-colonial violence in Palestine and Xinjiang, standing against US imperialism without glossing over Chinese authoritarianism and colonialism. 

How can we build global alliances against the far right that better integrate Chinese perspectives?

I think it’s essential to build global alliances that better integrate Chinese perspectives. The starting point would be listening to and building alliances with grassroots organisations from within China and in the diaspora. As I have said, there are many creative forms of resistance to authoritarian and conservative nationalism within China and among the diaspora. The Western left space is not particularly used to hearing voices that are critical of both Western imperialism and non-Western authoritarianism, as well as drawing linkages between them. Sometimes, the concern about racism and not wanting to encourage imperialist foreign policies leads to an unwillingness to engage with criticisms of the Chinese state, including those from Chinese nationals and from minoritised groups in China. 

Yao Lin conceptualises this as what he calls ‘interregimatic missolidarisation’. By this he means an ostensibly supportive relationship that does not really correspond to struggles against injustice or oppression within a different regime. This is not only due to cultural or linguistic distance, but also because of the ways in which different structures give rise to different forms of injustice, creating both experiential and discursive barriers to transnational solidarity.38 Our conversations with diaspora Chinese organisers engaged in anti-racist, queer, feminist, and decolonial work reflect this. Their lived experiences are often exoticised or dismissed by ‘mainstream’ civil society, and they find it easier to connect with or be understood by other immigrant groups.  

This also brings to mind Shadi Mokhatari’s critique of the ‘uncritical anti-imperialist solidarities’ and the victimhood politics of the ‘anti-imperialist-branding states’. Here again, allegedly anti-imperialist actors mis-solidarise with the oppressor, conflate the state with citizens at large, as well as essentialist notions of culture, and disregard the agency of the oppressed.39 A particular strand of decolonial discourse has been characterised by this kind of misguided anti-imperialism and cultural essentialism. In The Politics of Decolonial Investigations, for example, Walter Mignolo argues that countries like China and Russia are leading the process of ‘de-Westernization’ and ‘civilizational resurgence’ against ‘neoliberal globalism.40 This vision of the so-called ‘multipolar civilizational order’ bears a disturbing resemblance to that of the European far right, where racial-civilisational categories are defined in terms of ontological and epistemological difference and ‘indigenous’ civilisational identity is placed in opposition to the ‘globalist’ order.41

For me, then, solidarity requires calling out this misplaced equation of geopolitical opposition with decolonisation or emancipation. It requires listening to and understanding the lived experiences of activists from across the Global South who are organising against authoritarianism and imperialism. Historically speaking, and in the aftermath of 1989, overseas Chinese pro-democracy politics tended to be aligned with the right in Europe and the US. But this is changing. Younger diaspora groups are now looking for new languages and imaginaries, creating decentralised spaces of resistance and solidarity. They are already building transnational alliances against the far right in many ways. What remains is for established left-wing movements to recognise, engage with, and support these emergent transnational practices.