List Of Chinese Novels With Overt Racism/Nationalism

Okay, I am making this list because I know I am not the only reader who gets upset when a decent novel gets ruined due to the author injecting unnecessary racist/nationalistic crap into the plot. And the thing is, you usually don't get any warning until after you have completed more than a hundred chapters, after you have immersed yourself into the lives of the protagonist and supporting characters.

So to save time for potential readers and to spare them the misery of seeing a decent story ruined by racist/nationalistic crap, I am compiling a list of Chinese novels with overt racism/nationalism. Please feel free to add on to my list. But remember to explain why a certain title is included when you do so.

You can follow my format.

The Strong, The Few, True Cultivators On Campus

Spoiler

All of a sudden, without any warning, the MC started beating up Japanese students at his university. Because all Japanese students in China were spying on China and out to subvert Chinese citizens into spying for Japan.

And the Japanese students did it in the worst possible way. By challenging the Chinese martial arts clubs and forcibly shutting them down. Like they were 2-bit villains in a 60s Hong Kong movie about the 2nd World War.

The nationalistic parts were so badly written and the dialogue given to the Japanese characters were so cliche that I suspected that there were 2 people writing this novel. The actual novelist and some Communist Party official assigned to mind the novelist.

God and Devil World

In God and Devil World, the male lead once ran into some Japanese survivors. They were all going through a zombie apocalypse then. You know, friends and family members turning into man-eating zombies and all that. Food supplies were running low. Starvation was nigh. And our OP protagonist showed up to save the day.

And the Japanese survivors said, "Diaoyu islands belong to us!"

I was like, "What what what wtf? what. the. f**k? In a zombie apocalypse where you just saw your friends and family members die horrible deaths, the first thing that pops into your mind after meeting a Chinese person who just saved your life is the Diaoyu Islands dispute??"

The Almighty Martial Arts System

Spoiler

The racism and nationalistic crap did not start until 100+ chapters into the novel.

First there was this contest between Chinese and Western doctors. You would think that it's normal rivalry between doctors who studied Chinese medicine and doctors who studied Western medical science but that's not the case. First of all, they weren't doctors from the same hospital or even the same country. They were Chinese doctors from China who studied Chinese medicine and European doctors who studied Western medical science. A showdown between two races of doctors.

And of course, the evil European doctors had to resort to poisoning patients in order to win the contest because, you know, they studied Western medicine so they just HAD TO resort to poisoning patients in order to defeat Chinese doctors.

Why would the European doctors want to beat the Chinese doctors in public? Because doing so would reduce the number of new students who would want to study Chinese medicine and eventually there would be too few of them left in China. Too few to save the Chinese leaders who would be poisoned or whatever by the evil Europeans.

What about Chinese doctors who studied Western medical science? Couldn't they save the Chinese leaders from poisoning and stuff? Well, according to the novel, Chinese doctors could never uncover the full potential of Western medicine due to them being Chinese. So they would be useless when it comes to things like saving lives.

After that, the Japanese. An evil Japanese swordsman had to invade China, killing Chinese swordsmen here and there to sharpen his skills. Why couldn't he do it in Japan? No idea. He was going to fight his Japanese rival in Japan but then decided to go on a killing spree in China, like a normal Japanese swordsman. That was sarcasm.

And of course, the protagonist had to intervene and kill the dishonorable bastard. There's also this organization dedicated to defeating Japanese swordsman and a supporting female lead who vowed to eradicate Japanese swordsmen. Oh yeah, almost every Chinese swordsmen behaved honorably and it seemed like only Japanese swordsmen did things like crippling and scarring their opponents.

There might be a couple of okay Japanese characters, but I think the novel's going to go for a China vs. Japan showdown.

Shura's Wrath

I haven't read this novel but, according to other readers, there's a lot of unwarranted hate against Japan. And Taiwan was not considered to be a real country in the story.

Strongest Abandoned Son

Again, I haven't read this novel but other readers did say there's a lot of unwarranted hate against the Japanese. And last I heard, although the racism wasn't as bad as God and Devil World, it's heading there.

Godly Stay-Home Dad

The MC told his 4-year-old daughter that she couldn't be a Chinese unless she gets rid of her English name, Emily. That's just in Chapter 4 and I can only expect things to get worse later.

Very Pure and Ambiguous: The Prequel

A reader commented that the protagonist raped a Japanese girl and justified it by saying the Japanese did the same crap during WW2.

I Really Am A Superstar

According to some readers, there is a lot of unwarranted hate towards Koreans and Japanese in the novel. The protagonist once led his college to yell at some Japanese characters and he also beat up a Korean star. Probably just because he's Korean.

Ultimate Teacher

Spoiler

It had a good start. At first, I thought it was going to be another romantic comedy with awesome Tai Chi fighting scenes, but the nationalistic crap started happening around Chapter 72. That's during a school exchange program with a Japanese high school. The Japanese high school sent over a team to China, to visit the protagonist's high school and all went well until a Japanese teacher stood up to insult Chinese culture.

And of course, it led to the "good" protagonist counter-attacking Japanese (and Korean) culture. Basically, Chinese culture was described as vast like the sea while Japanese culture was shallow like a well.

This would have been a great novel if it weren't for the author's desire to put down Japanese culture. The protagonist actually did a good job promoting Chinese literature during the earlier chapters. He's supposed to be a Chinese literature teacher after all. But then the author had to arrange for "villainous" Japanese to show up to highlight the superiority of Chinese culture. I really dislike this sort of scenario. The earlier chapters about Chinese literature were already very interesting. There's no need to prove that Chinese culture is good by putting down Japanese or Korean culture.

I don't know about other readers but as an ethnic Chinese myself, I really am not interested in sitting through another China vs. Japan mini-WW2 drama.

Returning From The Immortal World

Spoiler

In the novel, there's an episode where the protagonist fought some pirates. The pirates had kidnapped and raped a group of women. However, the protagonist was indifferent to the plight of most of the women hostages because they were Japanese. And in the end, he only saved one single woman hostage. Why? Because she's the only Chinese in the group.

HacKer

What can I say? According to readers who have read the novel, it gets extremely nationalistic and racist later on. So what did the protagonist do? He hacked computers to wipe out millions of Japanese and for no good reason. It's just his duty as a patriotic Chinese. And he went on to target other countries around the world. All in the name of patriotism. Millions died just because he wanted to be a good Chinese citizen.

Also apparently, it's considered immoral to steal even a few bucks from a bank via hacking but it's totally okay to kill millions of foreigners. I don't know about you but I can't deal with this level of hypocrisy.

极品捉鬼系统

There's no English title currently. I found this novel on Qidian so you guys might be able to find this on Qidian's English site sooner or later and then it will find its way here.

I suppose, at that time, it could be called "Ultimate Ghost Catching System".

Anyway, this novel is about a poor high school boy who got himself a Ghost Catching System. With level ups, skills and items and so on and so forth. The works. Early on in the novel, he got himself a trio of ghost helpers from the system's shop. 2 of them were Sadako and Kayako. From The Grudge and Ju-on movies. The third one was from some Chinese myth.

I thought it looked promising at that time. Since the protagonist was willing to work with 2 Japanese ghosts and there weren't any anti-Japanese remarks from anyone. They had a good working relationship and the protagonist even got his Japanese ghost helpers some pills to help them level up.

Okay. And then many chapters later, after I have grown to admire the protagonist's guts and sense of honor, he suddenly started spewing anti-Japanese sentiments all of a sudden.

Spoiler

The catalyst? He ran into a demon who's originally from Japan. So he's like, "I hate the Japanese! Especially Japanese demons! I must kill you today!"

And then he roped in some constables from the Chinese Hell by spewing nationalistic crap. Like, "The Japanese demon's here to kill us Chinese! He even said Chinese ghosts suck! Kill the Japanese demon to defend our honor!"

What made this worse was that he used a derogatory term to refer to the Japanese. He called Japan the "Land of Shorties".

The reason why I am posting this here is because it might get added to NU later on and also because it's really sneaky. Usually, with modern Chinese novels, you can expect some level of racism sooner or later. BUT, in some novels, the protagonist might have Japanese friends or some admiration for the Japanese culture or they might be living in Japan, and you wouldn't expect to see dumb anti-Japanese crap in those novels.

But here, the protagonist was working with 2 Japanese ghosts only to suddenly turn into a Japanese hater all of a sudden. Sneaky.

Otherworldly Evil Monarch

According to a reader, the protagonist wanted to wipe out an entire race of beings because they reminded him of the Japanese.

Yama Rising

According to one reviewer, this novel reeks of nationalism.

You can read the review for yourself here: https://www.novelupdates.com/series/yama-rising/#comment-227375

 

It's not China's fault that they're the Divine Realm of Earth.

 

Lmao OK

 

I don't have a judgement on the issue, but I'm wondering if there are tags that exist for this, and if not, maybe suggest it?

 

x1000 likes!

 

I don't think so. At least when I was reading Cultivators on Campus, there wasn't any tags to warn me. And because I read the raws instead of English translations, I get to find things out for myself. How do I insert tags into novels that somebody else posted?

 

China had hate towards Japan as during WWII Japan tried taking over the whole of Asia. They were particularly cruel towards the Chinese as the Chinese used to look down of them.(plus they took over China because of the good resources and close proximity I think) As a result, many chinese died under the Japanese during WWII. E.g. in my country sookching(cleansing) or mass killing of Chinese was carried out.

But who cares meh.

It's mainly them having grudges. Different countries teach history differently. China definitely focused alot on this topic

I'm so glad I remeber what my teacher taught 1 year ago

 

Can't forget I'm Really A Superstar if we are talking about racism.

 

Can you provide an example or two from the novel?

 

I Really Am A Superstar

 

Could you give me an example (or two) of racism from the novel?

 

He literally makes entire episode out of shit talking koreans. Leads an entire college to shout at the japanese. Beats up a Korean star. And literally causes billions of dollars worth of damages to the Korean economy.

 

Iras is one such example. Mc even publicly denounces japanese and is extremely nationalistic.

But then, pretty much every novel is like that. Some are subtle, mentioning the greatness of the east (even in fictional worlds) and the chaos of the west (looking at you TJSS).
This type of fanaticism is ingrained in the chinese by the ccp, you cant Really blame the authors. If they say otherwise, they could even get censored lol.

 

I had a laugh reading that, thanks OP.

 

The Japanese arc arc felt like it was added on the command of the Chinese govt. The conflict was for such a petty reason and Japanese were shown as villains that literally killed their mothers then and there.

 

For IRAS, the korean arc (hacking and bad mouthing) at least still quite interesting (esp the hacking arc) but the part where he suddenly denounce the Japan and US are total stupid. The arcs contribute nothing, have no literature to enjoy and seems broken from the main story. I skip those arc and continue reading as if doesn't exist

 

I'd like to help but I won't bother listing most CN novels that have some nationalism n racism there n there .

 

It would be harder to find a Chinese web novel without overt nationalism. And that would just be a novel with no mention of anything outside China, or it would be set in a fantasy world heavily based on China where other cultures don't exist.

Seriously, even when they blatantly rip off characters from Japanese stories, or write self-insert fanfiction with anime, the nicest thing they have to say about Japan is they love Japanese porn stars and anime waifus. And then they tell the waifus to shut up and get in the kitchen (or in bed) while ranting about how China's better.

 

Added Ultimate Teacher to the list. It remains untranslated for some reason. I will say that the beginning chapters are interesting.

 

It depends on how you define racism / nationalism. If you ask whether there're CN authors who accept the Western biases on China and accept that China is an evil, weak, rude, inferior nation, then no, I don't think there's any of them. Nobody pays CN authors to write according to what the West tells the world about China. There're some works that glorify Japan and Korea and the white people but they are not very popular among Chinese readers.