Tag: foreign men

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Are China’s AMWF Couples Rarer Just Because Only 25% of Foreigners in China Are Women?

A couple weeks ago, I happened to share a Global Times article titled, “When a Chinese Man Loves a White Woman”, which mentioned me and this blog. Naturally, it generated some conversation on social media. One of the comments came from a guy, asking why the author hadn’t mentioned the preponderance of male foreigners as a reason for the rarity of couples of Western women and Chinese men in China.

For those of you who don’t know, approximately 75 percent of the foreign population in China is in fact male.

It would be tempting to point to this gender imbalance as the primary explanation for why couples of Western women and Asian men are such a minority. But if you did, you’d be missing the big picture.

After all, this gender imbalance fails to explain why there are so few AMWF couples around the world, and why even Chinese American men don’t feel the love from their fellow Americans (see the essay “Are Asian Men Undateable?”). If Asian men who were born and raised in the West have it tough in the dating world, we could hardly expect better for Asian foreign men who come to the West for work or education.

I would argue, then, that even if the foreign population in China was equally split among gender – 50 percent female and 50 percent male – you would still see an imbalance in the interracial dating world in China. You would still see far more couples of Western men and Asian women, and far fewer couples of Western women and Asian men.

The reality is, prejudices and stereotypes are slow to fade. Even 50 years after the Loving versus Virginia US Supreme Court decision, interracial couples still feel the sting of discrimination from their fellow Americans (as reported by NPR). Meanwhile, Hollywood has an abysmal record when it comes to featuring interracial romance on the screen overall (and we’re not even talking about just AMWF couples here).

It’s going to take a lot more than enticing more foreign women to come to China to boost the numbers of Western women and Asian men in love over here.

P.S.: If you’re wondering why couples of Western women and Asian men are so rare, have a look at On the Rarity of Foreign Women and Chinese Boyfriends/Chinese Husbands. See also my piece for the Huffington Post titled Why Won’t Western Women Date Chinese Men?

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When Marrying Foreigners Cost American Women Their Citizenship

Mae Franking, featured in the book Eurasian, married a Chinese man at a time when the Expatriation Act meant American women who wed foreigners would lose their citizenship.

Among the many dark, discriminatory chapters in American history, there was a moment in time where my marriage to Jun, a Chinese citizen, would have cost me my American citizenship. As reported by NPR:

In March of 1907, Congress passed the Expatriation Act, which decreed, among other things, that U.S. women who married non-citizens were no longer Americans. If their husband later became a naturalized citizen, they could go through the naturalization process to regain citizenship.

Could you imagine the gut-wrenching choices confronting women of this era who fell in love with foreigners? They included Mae Franking (the subject of Mae Franking’s My Chinese Marriage as well as part of the book Eurasian), whose decision to follow her husband to China was clearly precipitated by the harsh and xenophobic policies of the era (a time when the Chinese Exclusion Act was still in full force). Had I met Jun during that time, would I have had the same courage and devotion to sacrifice my American citizenship in the name of love?

But here’s what’s even worse:

…none of these rules applied to American men when they chose a spouse.

“It’s as though she walks under his umbrella. He puts his arm around her and poof! she’s a citizen,” says Linda Kerber, a professor who teaches gender and legal history at the University of Iowa. “She has had the good sense to come out from these monarchies and opt for an American. She’s a sensible woman, we adore her.”

“Whereas an American-born woman who marries a foreign man, oh my goodness, she is disloyal,” Kerber said.

Doesn’t this just reek of entitlement? The idea that American women must only make themselves available to American men, while the latter are more than welcome to “shop around” internationally for their spouses.

This shameful, double standard of a policy persisted until 1940. That’s more than 30 years that American women were forced into a decision nobody should have to make – your passport or your partner.

As fortunate as I am that I was never presented with this choice, the fact that it even happened should make us pause. After all, xenophobia still remains a virulent force in our society today, from Muslim bans and Islamophobia to the continued fears about China. Once you’re willing to oppose the entry of certain foreign individuals to your country, it’s not that short a jump to the draconian Expatriation Act.

We must all remain vigilant and committed to the words of the late Martin Luther King, Jr. — that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” We must all remember it wasn’t that long ago that marrying foreigners cost American women their citizenship.

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Is Beijing Becoming Dangerous for Couples of Foreign Men and Chinese Women?

This past Thursday, when I awoke to news of the disastrous Tianjin factory explosion, I didn’t think things could get any worse.

Then I saw this photo in a WeChat group I belong to, where one of the women recounted her horrifying discovery of a bloodied Chinese woman, stabbed to death by a katana sword, while passing through Beijing’s popular Sanlitun neighborhood.

Sanlitun-Uniqlo-stabbing

Did you happen to notice the white foreign man hovering over her? Here’s another photo from the scene – you can’t miss his blood-soaked T-shirt.

Sanlitun-Uniqlo-stabbing-8

I saw this on Twitter:

mmexport1439450389962 Here’s the story on Beijing Cream.

Then a friend on WeChat said, “There have been a lot of random beatings of foreign men with Chinese women in Gongti [District in Beijing] and Wudaokou [District in Beijing]. I wonder if [it is] connected or not.”

I immediately typed in the words “foreign men Chinese women wudaokou” into my Internet browser, and sure enough, the evidence surfaced – especially a story on The World of Chinese titled Group accused of attacking foreigners arrested, which notes several attacks where the victims were foreign men walking with Chinese women (or, in one case, a Korean woman who appeared Chinese to attackers).

Whoa.

Still, it’s one thing to beat someone, and another to stab someone to death.

The following day, I discovered this Tweet (via an updated version of the story at Beijing Cream):

Note that “老外” is the Chinese term for foreigners (in this case, foreign men) — confirming this as a hate crime.

So, is Beijing becoming a more dangerous place for these couples? Is this the natural escalation of “foreigners behaving badly” in China? (You know, guys like Chinabounder, or these other high-profile cases of foreign men doing some really despicable things to Chinese women in public.) What do you think?

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