The foreign bully, the guest and the low-income knowledge worker: performing multiple versions of whiteness in China

Abstract

With the rise of China’s economy, more and more white Westerners are moving to China for better job or business opportunities. In addition to the so-called transnational elites, there are an increasing number of middle-stratum white migrants whose lived experiences in China are marked by notable tensions between privileges and precariousness. Based on research in Beijing and Xi’an, this paper examines how white migrants from different backgrounds make strategic choices in coping with the decline of white skin privilege in China and feelings of insecurity in a highly competitive Chinese labour market. It identifies China as a new frontier zone where the meanings of whiteness are contested and reconstructed in interracial encounters between white migrants and various groups of Chinese. I argue that although these white migrants have little control over the multiple and contradictory ways that they are racialised in Chinese society, they still demonstrate a certain degree of agency in manipulating the Chinese gazes for their benefits through the strategic performance of different versions of whiteness.