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Asymmetric discursive struggle

The discursive representation and contestation of Africanness and Blackness in Chinese cyberspace

ORCiD logo with link | The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong | Lingnan University, China
ORCiD logo with link | Lingnan University, China
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

This study was funded by Faculty Research Grant from Lingnan University (grant number #101902). Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Education University of Hong Kong.

Published online: 12 January 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00143.gu
Abstract
Focusing on the 2020 case of Okonkwonwoye (a Nigerian man) who attacked Wang (a Chinese nurse), this study analysed over 37,000 posts and comments from Weibo (a popular Chinese microblogging platform) to explore the representation and contestation of Africanness and Blackness in Chinese cyberspace. Utilising a mixed-methods approach combining thematic and critical discourse analyses, the study argues that digital racial conflict in this context is best understood as an “asymmetric discursive struggle”. The findings revealed a racist discourse that constructs Black people as a dehumanised and dangerous “Other” through animalistic nomination and ethnocentric predication, while framing African immigrants as an illegitimate demographic threat via nativist threat inflation. Contrastingly, the counter-discourse, while challenging these narratives, is quantitatively marginalised and qualitatively marked by cautious mitigation. This asymmetry demonstrates how the linguistic forms of online debate can reinforce and normalise dominant racial ideologies, revealing the unequal power dynamics that structure the entire discursive field.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Racism and digital discourse
  • 3.The historical construction of race in China
  • 4.The Okonkwonwoye case in Guangzhou
  • 5.Methods
    • 5.1Data collection
    • 5.2Procedure of analysis
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Thematic analysis of the corpus
    • 6.2DHA-informed analysis of “Criticising Black People and African Immigrants”
      • 6.2.1Nomination and predication: Constructing the “Other”
      • 6.2.2Argumentation and intensification: Legitimising racism
    • 6.3Argumentation and mitigation in counter-discourse: Contesting racism
  • 7.Discussion and conclusion
    • 7.1The discursive construction of the Black/African Other
    • 7.2Asymmetric discursive struggle
    • 7.3The paradoxical attitude of the Chinese government
    • 7.4Suggestions and limitations
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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