Sinocentrism - To what extent should it be challenged?

[Daniel Tsui44]

19 hours ago, Matthewkell said:

The point is not the word 外国人 in itself but the tendency to use it in a homogenising way, as if "外国" is one country and culture. The “外国人都很开放” example is odd because, of course, there are many countries less 开放 than China. Muslim countries, North Korea, much of Africa, and much of the Indian subcontinent are considerably more conservative than China - if there was a global ranking of 开放, China would probably be somewhere close to the middle. There is a wide range of cultures in the world and they cannot be simply categorised as 外国.

There is a very common tendency for Chinese people to ask general questions like "What do 外国人 think of this?" "Do 外国人 also like to eat....?" "How do 外国人 decorate their homes?" These kinds of question I think reveal an assumption that 外国 is somehow a unified culture, and it really is quite sinocentric. As a thought experiment, imagine a Chinese person visiting the US and local Americans making comments like "I think foreigners like rice" and "Foreigners are all very conservative" or asking questions like "Do foreigners like football?" Would it not seem a little ethnocentric to you? 

 

 

 

I do think it is the word "外国人". I think you are trying to equate "外国人" with "non-Chinese". Or from my understanding, you are thinking that Chinese use “外国” as a name of a country that includes all countries except China, well, it's not. So which would you use between "外国人" and "其他国家的人" or some time "中国以外的国家的人" when they mean the same.

 

It's like I ask you "我喜欢这样子，其他人会喜欢吗？,". Then you told me that I'm self-centered to ask you like that because I'm trying to divide the world as "me" and "others" and I'm trying to think that you share the same thought or manner or whatever with others.  (外人 nowadays means "people not close", it's different from "其他人". So you don't use it to include someone you're talking to or it'll hurt people.)

 

When people ask you "外国人喜欢吃米饭吗？". Your answer could be "I don't know if others like it or not, but I ...", or "According to my knowledge, Indian people tend to like it, people from my country tend to ..., I ...."

 

 

[Lu]

45 minutes ago, Daniel Tsui44 said:

Or from my understanding, you are thinking that Chinese use “外国” as a name of a country that includes all countries except China, well, it's not.

So what does 外国 mean then? What place are people asking about when they ask 'How does such-and-such thing work in 外国' or 'what do houses cost in 外国'?

[somethingfunny]

Yeah, I don't really see how you can deny an equivalency between 外国人 and non-Chinese.  No matter how you break it down, that's always going to be the conclusion you come to.

 

For example:

 

What is the linguistic opposite of 外国人?

‘内国人’

 

What are 内国人?

All the people from* inside China.

 

Are all the people inside China Chinese?

Yes (and, for simplicity, I mean in how the majority of the group collectively self-identifies - there are people who won't say they are Chinese, but other Chinese people would say they are)

 

OK, 外国人=non-Chinese

 

*It's important to make this distinction and clarify that 'from' has a historical sense - a third generation Malaysian person can still be from China and would therefore not necessarily fall into the category of 外国人

[Daniel Tsui44]

Check out of the word "本国人"。

[somethingfunny]

Maybe first you could detail how the word fits into your claim that 外国人 does not fundamentally imply non-Chinese.

 

Telling people to look up individual words isn't really very productive.

[Matthewkell]

20 hours ago, Daniel Tsui44 said:

 

I do think it is the word "外国人". I think you are trying to equate "外国人" with "non-Chinese". Or from my understanding, you are thinking that Chinese use “外国” as a name of a country that includes all countries except China, well, it's not. So which would you use between "外国人" and "其他国家的人" or some time "中国以外的国家的人" when they mean the same.

 

It's like I ask you "我喜欢这样子，其他人会喜欢吗？,". Then you told me that I'm self-centered to ask you like that because I'm trying to divide the world as "me" and "others" and I'm trying to think that you share the same thought or manner or whatever with others.  (外人 nowadays means "people not close", it's different from "其他人". So you don't use it to include someone you're talking to or it'll hurt people.)

 

When people ask you "外国人喜欢吃米饭吗？". Your answer could be "I don't know if others like it or not, but I ...", or "According to my knowledge, Indian people tend to like it, people from my country tend to ..., I ...."

I have heard 外国人 used by Chinese who are not in China to refer to the locals of the country they are in though. (and also 国内 used to mean China by a Chinese person who is not in China.) This is not to do with the literal meaning of the word but how it is used - for example, imagine a British person visiting China referring to all the local Chinese with the English word "foreigners." Is that really not ethnocentric?
 

And for another specific example of what I mean, I was recently living in Estonia for a few months, renting a room in an old Soviet-era apartment. I was talking to a Chinese friend on 微信 who asked me to send some photos because, "我想看看外国人如何装饰房屋。“ Now, this seemed an odd question to me because the apartment was not representative of a typical home in my own country, and from my perspective (coming from a country where very few people live in apartments) this apartment could well be said to have more in common with Chinese residencies than with my own home in the UK. Now again, let's turn this on its head -  a Chinese person comes to visit Australia and locals ask to see pictures of their homes, not to see what Chinese homes are like, but to see "what foreign homes are like." Wouldn't you think this was a little ethnocentric?  

The examples you have given are of reasonable usage, but they are in no way representative of the word is often, or even typically, used according to my personal experience. Perhaps as a Chinese person you haven't actually come across so many of these types of questions as they would necessarily be directed towards "foreigners", but this really is not an issue of me misunderstanding the meaning of the word.

And as for your example about asking if other people also like something a certain way, again you are being selective in your examples. A closer analogy to what I'm talking about would be someone using an adjective to describe "all other people in the world." e.g. “世界上其他人都很开放”，which would indeed be self centered.  

[Daniel Tsui44]

On 2017/3/24 at 7:27 PM, somethingfunny said:

Maybe first you could detail how the word fits into your claim that 外国人 does not fundamentally imply non-Chinese.

外国人 （指非本国国籍的人）
外国人俗称“老外”，是指在一国境内不具有该国国籍而具有他国国籍的人或用于一国人对他国人的统称。

Do "外国人" have to have something to do with China or Chinese?

 

On 2017/3/25 at 2:47 PM, Matthewkell said:

I have heard 外国人 used by Chinese who are not in China to refer to the locals of the country they are in though. (and also 国内 used to mean China by a Chinese person who is not in China.)

 

 

 

On 2017/3/25 at 2:47 PM, Matthewkell said:

a Chinese person comes to visit Australia and locals ask to see pictures of their homes, not to see what Chinese homes are like, but to see "what foreign homes are like." Wouldn't you think this was a little ethnocentric?

 

 

If your friend says that "这里外国人真多" when he/she visit you in London, you'd better ask him/her to confirm that if he/she mean non-Britsh or non-Chinese. Both are reasonable. Consider that your friends fly from Beijing to London to visit you, they always feel very sleepy after 5PM, then few days later they fly back. Can you say they are very lazy because they sleep after 5PM in Britsh?

 

On 2017/3/25 at 2:47 PM, Matthewkell said:

for example, imagine a British person visiting China referring to all the local Chinese with the English word "foreigners." Is that really not ethnocentric?

Foreign: from or relating to a country that is not your own.  The word foreigner can sound negative and not very friendly. In everyday English, people often say people from other countries 

外国：指本国以外的国家。（Countries besides the country. or the phrase mentioned before "other countries".）

Are you say that using the phrase "people from other countries" is OK in English but ethnocentric in Chinese?

[Lu]

33 minutes ago, Daniel Tsui44 said:

Foreign: from or relating to a country that is not your own.

The thing is, I don't think I ever hear non-Chinese in China refer to Chinese people in China as 'foreigners', even though from their perspective Chinese people would be foreigners. Many non-Chinese in China even refer to themselves as foreigners.

 

There is nothing in the word 外國人 that inherently ties it to referring to non-Chinese especially. Indeed, it can be used in other cases as well. But it is commonly used to refer to non-Chinese specifically, whether inside China or outside, and as some people already mentioned, even when the Chinese person using the word is in another country, referrring to the locals of that country. It seems you don't believe this, which is a pity. Many non-Chinese in China, and non-Chinese speakers of Chinese, have heard it used with that meaning.

38 minutes ago, Daniel Tsui44 said:

If your friend says that "这里外国人真多" when he/she visit you in London, you'd better ask him/her to confirm that if he/she mean non-Britsh or non-Chinese. Both are reasonable.

But that's weird, no? Why would you call the non-Chinese locals 'foreigners'? Also, I've heard Chinese people say this when they are actually referring to non-white people (who often are actually nationals of the country the speaker is in), but not including themselves in this category.

[Daniel Tsui44]

Out of curiosity, how would you put it that you have a friend that from other country than you that you don't know or it doesn't matter who is vey interesting by Chinese in a casiou conversation.

[somethingfunny]

Your question isn't clear Daniel.

[陳德聰]

I think I have engaged this issue with people before by talking about the size and legitimacy of out-group (as opposed to in-group) I am willing to be considered as part of.

 

That is, I feel that I am willing to be considered a Canadian, because that is my nationality and I accept that nationality is "a thing". I am willing to be considered a man because I accept gender can be a thing and I identify with that. So if someone was like you men are so manly, I'd be like lol well I don't know that I fit that stereotype but I do not fundamentally disagree with the category of men existing.

 

But then you get "foreigner", which makes sense in a context where you are talking about citizens vs foreign nationals. Like yes, of course I am a foreigner in China. I'm a foreigner anywhere that's not Canada. It only gets iffy if I try to talk about foreigners to Canada in any context other than citizenship/immigration policy, or some topic that tries to make meaningful use of the distinction between foreign/local.

 

Enter 外國人, which despite its dictionary definition, is colloquially used outside of foreign affairs contexts by virtually everyone to mean a non-Chinese person. I think the tension there comes from the unwillingness to be part of an out-group that you feel is constructed based on a negative existence (not belonging, non-Chineseness, as opposed to belonging, yes-Canadian-ness). Nobody identifies as a "non-meateater", they call themselves vegetarians. Just like that, I think it's tough for people to positively identify with a term that means "non-Chinese".

 

 

[Daniel Tsui44]

 

On 2017/3/27 at 5:09 PM, Lu said:

The thing is, I don't think I ever hear non-Chinese in China refer to Chinese people in China as 'foreigners', even though from their perspective Chinese people would be foreigners. Many non-Chinese in China even refer to themselves as foreigners.

 

In English, if a person is away from his/her country, it's reasonable to regard him/her as "foreigner" which is an identity against to locals, but if he/she is in his/her country, it's wired for anyone to regard him/her as "foreigner", they can be referred as "people from other countries".

To this point, "foreigner" actually means "某某国的外国人", "people from other countries" means "外国人".

 

"How would foreigners think about Trump's election?"(People in America,not American.)

"How would people from other countries think about Trump's election?"(People, not American.)

People ask those question don't have to clarify where he/she is from, we'll think that he/she is a American.

 

“外国人怎么看待特朗普的当选？”

People tend to think that it is asked by Chinese at sight of the question, and "外国人" refers to non-Chinese. But it is just a translation of the former one. 

 

On 2017/3/29 at 4:10 PM, 陳德聰 said:

Enter 外國人, which despite its dictionary definition, is colloquially used outside of foreign affairs contexts by virtually everyone to mean a non-Chinese person.

It happens because most of the time Chinese is used among Chinese or Chinese with Non-Chinese, you can hardly found Chinese being used between non-Chinese. Consider this, what does "外国人" mean when a non-Chinese speak to a non-Chinese?

[陳德聰]

Unfortunately for your argument, you seem to have missed the last century or so of migration that has resulted in Chinese-speaking people of non-Chinese nationality existing all over the world.

 

What does it mean when myself, a Canadian, speaks in Chinese with another Chinese-speaking Canadian? Or another Chinese-speaking Chinese person who is geographically located outside of China?

 

Like I said, you will see it in materials talking about "foreign nationals", often with respect to immigration or foreign policy. Otherwise, in common speech, it still means non-Chinese people, and is widely understood to mean this. The only time it doesn't, is when the two speakers have a mutual understanding that they are going to use the word in a non-mainstream way, often to be humourous or poke fun at the word itself.

 

As an aside, when I ask people to be more specific, I almost always get 白人, but it's as if somehow 老外 was supposed to be the politer version and that cracks me up. For me it's like if you're going to generalise at least generalise about the people you are actually generalising and don't rope the whole rest of the world into this.

[Daniel Tsui44]

Looks like we do have good Chinese learner all over the world. I'm a Chinese and I'm almost 30 now. I'm still learning Chinese, of course, English too.

https://www.quora.com/When-referring-to-the-native-population-of-a-country-why-do-some-Chinese-refer-to-all-non-Chinese-as-外国人-foreigners/answer/David-Levy-5?srid=3GExZ

[studychinese]

Westerners (and I am one) can be laughably provincial in normal countries. Objecting to words like "foreigner" because the concept of nationality and citizenship in the west has be so degraded that a person from a foreign land can be considered a fellow countryman on the very first day that they step into the country. This is an ahistorical social construct that exists only in the west since 1945, and nowhere else, and will be swept away by 2045 in any event. Yet westerners go to China and act like its the end of history.

 

My advice: Don't assume that your ideology is right or what you learned in school and the media in the west is remotely accurate or correct. Have some humility.