JC: Your goal with The Chinese Question is to slay the coolie myth—the idea that Chinese laborers were passive and subservient sufferers exploited by various kinds of authorities in the 19th century. How does this myth relate to another dominant representation of the Chinese as greedy rich mercantile capitalists—or “crazy rich Asians”?
MN: The crazy rich Asians stereotype is an update of the oriental despot: a figure that exploits Chinese labor, but also wallows in luxury. Civilizations that support oriental despotism are unable to advance because they are hung up on excess. Oriental culture cannot industrialize because there’s no work ethic. People are either coolies or they are the super wealthy, whose lives are defined by excess.
The movie Crazy Rich Asians is a postmodern adaptation of that. All the wealth comes from real estate and finance; they’re part of a global capitalist transnational elite, the transnational billionaires. A lot of them are in Asia. The stereotype of that kind of excessive luxury is an echo from these old stereotypes about oriental despotism.
People don’t criticize Wall Street one percenters for being “crazy rich white” people. Nobody says Jeff Bezos is a “crazy rich white” dude.
JC: Some would still argue that class is a better analytic than race for analyzing working class Chinese people and the super wealthy Chinese elite, in the context of rising inequality under global capitalism. Why put them together in the same “Chinese” category for your study?
MN: I think we separate race and class at some peril. Class always has a racial dimension and race always has a class dimension, so I think we should not make them either this or that—we have to understand how they operate together.
I tried to do two things with the Chinese gold miners and the Chinese merchants. First, I wanted to identify how they saw themselves; how they understood their own interests; what their aspirations were; how they understand their place in the world; the ties that they had with each other. The importance of kinship and home village; the kinds of organizations that they brought with them from China, but then adapted to conditions in the West. I was trying to understand a culture, an ethnic culture, if you will.
Second, I wanted to identify how they were racialized and misunderstood by the white colonial officials. I wanted to find out how they were caricatured to suit political agendas that had nothing to do with real Chinese people.