Just curious… are there any caucasian citizens of the People’s Republic of China?
Or for that matter, any non-chinese-nationals who are citizens?
-FrL-
There are bunches of nonethnic Chinese living in China. They are largely invisible, like the bunches of ethnic Chinese living in the former Soviet Union.
The Uighurs come from Xinjiang in Western China. They are believed to be of caucasian ancestry and, by report at least, many look quite “caucasian”.
Uighurs. Now that’s an ill-fated name for a minority group.
I presume the OP is not talking about native ethnic groups, but immigrants. And there’s one obvious group, the Hong Kong residents of non-Chinese origin.
I believe that a good chunk of the minorities in the far west of China, particularly Xinjiang province, are Turkic (and therefore Caucasian) in origin. I’m not an expert in this type of thing, though, so hopefully someone who knows more about central-Asian ethnic groups will be by shortly (paging Tamerlane?)
Also, this site gives a brief run-down of the ethnic minorities in China. No indications of their “races”, though.
There used to be large caucasian populations in the west of “China proper”. Cave paintings, skeletons, etc. have proven that. They are mostly long gone. But in the new China (which has absorbed Sinkiang and such), there are still quite a few caucasians. Note that there are also large numbers of muslims in these areas too. The whole area of Asia from the Urals to western China is a melange of different peoples mixed together. See this.
I remember reading this article about a guy who’s heritage was obviously from some part of Russia, looking very western European (and yes, I know where Russia is…). He and his family had only Chinese names and didn’t know how their lineage went. Then they were able to trace it back or something. Saw it on the internet. Might be able to google it up if you care.
And I imagine just about any White resident in Hong Kong who was born there would be holding British citizenship? I can imagine some guy trying to drop his British citizenship and pick up a Hong Kong one out of some sense of “patriotism,” but never heard of one.
There’s also the famous case of this one White American who was able to ditch his citizenship and pick up a Japanese one. His first name was David. His Japanese name was Da-bi-tu. Forgot the last name.
I dont’ think that Turkic means Caucasian. Here is the President of Kazakhstan. The Kazakhs are a Turkic people.
Here is an Uyghur girl. Some Uyghurs don’t look like what we think when we think of Asians, but they don’t look like what we would think of as Caucasians either. To me they look similar to a lot of Kazakhs and Uzbeks look like.
I’m not talking about ex-pats, but those who lost British Overseas citizenship at the handover - I very much doubt that none of them were white. (Anybody with such citizenship can gain full British citizenship, but only by living the UK for [ur;=http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/ind/en/home/applying/british_nationality/advice_about_nationality/bn2_-_british_overseas.html]five years)
Chinese immigration policy is notoriously racist - for example when I lived there in the early '90s, ‘oriental’ looking people (of any origin: Korean, Japanese, whatever) don’t have to fill in a declaration promising they didn’t have AIDS on entering the country. :rolleyes:
However, there is at least one American citizen who became a Chinese citizen under the communists: Sidney Rittenberg, author of the superb book The Man Who Stayed Behind, who worked as Mao’s translater for a while.
Also, when I lived in HK, I met a guy whose family had been offed during the Japanese invasion of Manchuria when he was a small child, and he had been taken in by a Chinese family and raised as one of their own. Not sure if he gained citizenship, but he was totally Chinese, despite his caucasian features.
I used to know someone who was an ethnic German, was born in Shanghai, and later emigrated to the United States. I don’t know if his birth in China gave him Chinese citizenship.
Not sure of its provenance, but this site says:
[quote]
Anyone according with any of the following circumstances is regarded as the citizen of China:[ul][li]Persons belonging to any of the nationalities in China[]Any person born in China whose parents are both Chinese nationals or one of whose parents is a Chinese national[]Any person born abroad whose parents are both Chinese nationals or one of whose parents is a Chinese nationalAny person born in China whose parents are stateless or of uncertain nationality and have settled in China[/ul][/li][/quote]
Which would make it pretty difficult for a total foreigner to get citizenship.
I remember an NPR story about ten years ago about the “Jews of Shanghai.” A small but thriving Jewish community has been there since the Imperial days.
David Aldwinckle, now known as “Arudou Debito”, is now a citizen of Japan. He is now on a crusade to make life “easier” for long-term residents by stirring up high-profile anti-foreigner discrimination cases against various municipalities and private entities.
To continue the hijack with apologies, it is not so difficult for a foreigner to get citizenship in Japan, provided that one is fluent in Japanese (Level 1 certified on the JLPT). No idea about China.
Yeah, but getting Japanese citizenship isn’t that hard, provided you’ve been here a while and are willing to ditch your old one. The vast majority of people who obtain Japanese citizenship are either Korean or Chinese, though I think loss of citizenship in their home country is keeping a lot of western residents from applying. Appart from Debito Arudou, there’s the much more notable, if less loud-mouthed, Marutei Tsurunen, Japan’s first (officially) foreign-born member of the Diet.
From my own experience in China, I’ve noticed that there was a lot of variation in the phenotypes of westerners like the Uygur, ranging from slightly east-Asian like the picture of the girl linked above to very much like Afghans like the second man on this page.
Very, very few Caucasians in the sense of “Westerners” become Chinese nationals.
The best known recent example of a Caucasian who has become a Chinese national is Mike Rowse, Director-General of Investment Promotion (Hong Kong), a government-run body.
Interestingly, Rowse refers to himself as a Hong Kong citizen (“Something inside of me wants to carry a Hong Kong passport, to sell Hong Kong as a full Hong Kong citizen”), rather than as a Chinese citizen, which perhaps reflects the murkiness of the twilight world he inhabits, since there is no formal, legal category of “Hong Kong citizen”. Essentially, it is Hong Kong residents (not Hong Kong citizens) who have Chinese nationality that are Chinese citizens.
Very few Caucasians seek to become Chinese nationals, and exceptions will be made to the ethnically-based requirements in only the most exceptional circumstances. Rowse’s switch was politically driven - on both sides - but the fact that he had (re)married a Chinese woman undoubtedly helped smooth the way. He himself admits that his Chinese language skills aren’t up to much.
Here are the factors that are taken into consideration by the relevant authorities (note the final broad category) when considering naturalizing foreign nationals:
Yes, Mike Rowse. He travels the world selling Hong Kong to overseas investors. He has a Hong Kong passport, for which only PRC citizens who are permanent residents of HK are eligible. It looks similar to an ordinary Chinese passport, but has an additional reference to HK on the cover.
One of his assistants is a youngish ethnic-Chinese HK lady who travels on an Australian passport. When they’re on a roadshow arriving in a foreign country, he likes to walk up to the immigration desk at the airport with this colleague, hand over both passports together, then look at the immigration officer’s face when he finds out who is travelling on which document.
Well, he thinks it’s funny.
Qadgop, why would you make this offensive comment? I personally know some Uyghurs and I don’t see anything ill-fated about their name. I’m taking a class in the Uyghur language too. They are Turkic people, but that doesn’t mean they look like folks in Istanbul, where the population probably has more European ancestry than anything else. The original Central Asian Turks, of whom the Uyghurs are a good example, look more similar to Mongolians than to Europeans (although they don’t look exactly the same as Mongolians, either).
There was an ancient population in Xinjiang who spoke an Indo-European language known as Tocharian (that wasn’t its real name, but we don’t know what its real name was). They left manuscripts in former Buddhist monasteries in the Tarim Basin. Also, the people who became the famed “Mummies of Ürümchi” lived in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang between 1000 and 2000 B.C. Their appearance is similar to Europeans.
It’s tempting to connect the Mummies of Ürümchi with the speakers of Tocharian, but the Tocharian manuscripts were dated between the 6th and 8th centuries AD. So the earliest of the manuscripts is some 1700 years later than the latest of the mummies. They may well have been the same people, but the direct connection is missing. In between the time of the last mummies and the earliest Tocharian manuscripts, there was an Indo-European speaking people living in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang; the Chinese called them Yuezhi. They were probably Tocharian speakers.
To answer the OP: Yes. There are Tajiks living in southwestern Xinjiang, between Kashgar and the border of Tajikistan. They are an Iranian people, hence Aryan. (Note: this is the real meaning of “Aryan,” not the Nazi meaning.) Their language is essentially the same as Persian. There is a whole Tajik Autonomous County there called Tashqorghan.
not sure what the OP is looking for. Among the ethnic Chinese, the Uighers have been mentioned already. Also the Kazak’s (cossacks) are a seperate caucasion group in Xinjiang.
It is extremely difficult for anyone to become a Chinese citizen, even for ethnic Chinese. There’s enough people here already. Heck only a handful of people in the entire country have become permanent residents.
I don’t know of any foreigners that are Chinese citizens beyond a few Reds from the early days. There were a lot of refugees from WW2 in china at one point, but given the hard times and cultural revolution, I’d be pretty surprised if any meaningful number had Chinese citizenship.