Han Chauvinist, Anti-Manchu backlash in the 21st century
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Never mind that the Manchus ruled China for 268 years (1644-1912), the last dynasty in the whole of Chinese history. Now another ethnic group, the Han, are complaining that the Manchus were not Chinese after all.
What’s Driving Anti-Qing Sentiment in Contemporary China?
A patriotic film backfired because a growing number of Han Chinese don’t see the Manchu-origin Qing dynasty as a part of their history.
By Zhenlin Cui, The Diplomat (May 27, 2026)
Because this film touches on so many hot button issues — Taiwan, Japan, ethnic policies, language — I will cite the article in extenso.
On May 22, a trailer for the film “The Belief” (also known as “Peng Hu” – its Chinese title means “Battle of Penghu”) was released on Chinese social media, announcing its release date of July 25. This date corresponds to the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894, after which China was forced to cede Taiwan to Japan.
The film primarily depicts the 1683 battle in Penghu between the Qing Dynasty navy and the Kingdom of Tungning (also known as the “Ming Zheng regime”), which was a regime ruled by Han Chinese in Taiwan. Notably, the Kingdom of Tungning was loyal to the Ming Dynasty, the Han empire ousted by the Qing rulers. The Qing Dynasty ultimately won the battle, forcing the Kingdom of Tungning to surrender.
Like most “main melody” films – meaning movies promoting the official ideology of the Chinese government – promotional materials for “The Belief” have also been released by some Chinese state media outlets. However, the film immediately sparked a wave of criticism on Chinese social media.
Most comments believe “The Belief” actually depicts the process of the Manchus, an “outsider ethnic group,” conquering a Han Chinese regime. Although the history of the Kingdom of Tungning is filled with bloody infighting and chaos, public opinion often romanticizes it as a resilient Han Chinese regime fiercely resisting foreign invasion. This has led to the state media’s support for the film being interpreted as an ideological failure promoting surrender.
The Chinese government had a different message in mind. It hopes to demonstrate its determination to (re)unify Taiwan through this film. The film’s slogan – “The trend of the world is coming with the wind” – is strikingly similar to the Chinese government’s claim that “the reunification of the motherland is an unstoppable historical trend.” Beijing apparently hopes to project the Qing Dynasty’s recapture of Taiwan onto its future (re)unification with the island. If the Taiwanese government, like the 17th century Kingdom of Tungning, rejects the conditions proposed by mainland China, Beijing will have the capability to achieve its goals by force.
In fact, this is the second time the film has sparked such a strong public debate. On October 25, 2025 – the 80th anniversary of Taiwan’s retrocession – the film released its posters and trailer, which also drew widespread criticism on social media. The announcement of its release date, despite the public pressure, is seen by some netizens as a further “provocation.”
The backlash to “The Belief” reflects a strong anti-Qing sentiment in contemporary Chinese society. Where is this mood coming from?
The Qing Dynasty ended over a century ago, making it unlikely that contemporary Chinese people possess a deep collective memory of living under Qing rule. Furthermore, the Manchus in China today have been highly assimilated by the Han Chinese, and their language has almost become extinct. This means that a serious cultural conflict between the Han Chinese and Manchus is also unlikely. These factors make this question particularly perplexing.
This anti-Qing sentiment is reminiscent of Han chauvinism, which has long existed in China. However, its influence has been limited since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. For decades, it was more of a topic of discussion within a small circle than a mainstream public opinion. For example, contrast the reception of “The Belief” with the surge in popularity of palace dramas and romance dramas set in the Qing Dynasty in mainland China during the 2010s. Some of these dramas achieved extremely high ratings during this period.
However, in recent years, films and television series set in this dynasty have faced more severe questioning and criticism regarding their political and nationalist implications. This represents a new wave of Han chauvinism, which has clashed with official discourse.
Under the Han chauvinistic narrative that has gained strength in recent years, the Qing Dynasty is often seen as a dark age for the Han people, bringing entirely negative consequences to Chinese history. This dynasty is frequently associated with massacres, national humiliation, monarchical autocracy, and cultural control. Some even compare it to the Japanese invasion of the 1930s and 1940s, arguing that the Qing Dynasty was a successful conquest of China, while Japan was a “defeated Qing.” In fact, these accusations are often one-sided and exaggerated.
This sentiment can be primarily explained as a result of rising nationalism among China’s younger generation. Nut more importantly, it stems from a socioeconomic narrative that has gained traction in Chinese public opinion in recent years, where the Manchus and the Qing Dynasty are assigned a class identity.
In recent years, due to the widening gap between rich and poor and the solidification of class structures, a “class narrative” is spreading among Chinese people, especially the younger generation, driven by pessimism and discontent with society. This narrative aims to explain the collective hopelessness and anxiety in Chinese society. Under this narrative, those in power and the wealthy are often portrayed as “exploiters” and the source of suffering for contemporary Chinese people.
Although sometimes accompanied by misinformation and conspiracy theories, this “class narrative” has combined with a more pervasive nationalist sentiment and spread to historical understanding. This has led to today’s anti-Qing sentiment.
Looking at history, the Manchus, who conquered China with a relatively small population, did enjoy certain privileges during their rule. These privileges have led to a deliberate distinction between the Manchus and Han Chinese in today’s sentiment, equating the Manchus with the “ruling class” and portraying them as “oppressors” of the Han. This reminds people of the rigid class system in today’s Chinese society. Viewed through this lens, the rise in anti-Qing sentiment is essentially a collective historical imagination, used to provide catharsis for contemporary Chinese dissatisfaction with reality.
While this sentiment may seem to contradict the Chinese government’s policy of ethnic unity, in the context of the People’s Republic of China’s new “Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress,” it may be used to advance Beijing’s more Han-centric ethnic policies. However, despite the possibility of exploiting this sentiment for the government’s ends, Beijing must recognize that the underlying collective pessimism and anxiety could become a potential destabilizing factor for society.
In an atmosphere where Emperor Xi is striving for, nay demanding, ethnic unity in a nation composed of 56 ethnic groups, the majority of whom are located in the resource rich, politically sensitive, overwhelmingly vast regions around the periphery of the East Asian Heartland (EAH), this is an explosive situation that could have potentially disastrous consequences for the PRC / CCP.
More importantly, if Han chauvinism gets out of control, it could threaten the stability of China, a multi-ethnic country, in its efforts to further achieve its goal of “national unity.”
Selected readings
- "A rebirth for Manchu?" (1/16/16)
- "Polyglot Manchu emperor" (4/6/23)
- "Sibe and the revival of Manchu" (10/4/21)
- "Manchu, Former Empire’s Language, Hangs On at China’s Edge" (1/11/16)
- "Sibe: a living Manchu language" (9/30/17)
- "Ornamental Manchu: the lengths to which a forger will go" (4/24/21)
- "A confusion of languages and names" (7/8/16)
Plus many Language Log posts about various aspects of Penghu / Pescadores and its culture.
[h.t. Geoffrey Wade]
Philip Taylor said,
May 29, 2026 @ 9:54 am
I found the upper-case "C" in the title of this article ("Han Chauvinist: …") extremely confusing, thinking for some time that it was the name of the protagonist about whom something was to follow. It took me quite some time to realise otherwise … And the upper-case "A" in "Anti-Manchu" seems equally unwanted, although of itself it caused no further confusion.
Scott P. said,
May 29, 2026 @ 11:00 am
I am having a hard time understanding the article's perspective. It says this:
Some even compare it to the Japanese invasion of the 1930s and 1940s, arguing that the Qing Dynasty was a successful conquest of China, while Japan was a “defeated Qing.” In fact, these accusations are often one-sided and exaggerated.
Okay, I think, the author feels that the Qing definitely did not conquer China. But then that is followed by this:
Looking at history, the Manchus, who conquered China with a relatively small population, did enjoy certain privileges during their rule.
So maybe they did conquer China after all! In that case, I don't know why saying so is "one-sided and exaggerated."
Jonathan Smith said,
May 29, 2026 @ 11:38 am
The problem in PRC popular as well as "sophisticated" discourse like the article is Faith (badumbum) in "China"/"The Chinese People": naturally it goes without saying that "C/TCP" were and could again be occupied/oppressed by foreign enemies, and also that "C/TCP" did and will again recover wayward territories that rightfully belong to "C/TCP"… but wait, when mapping these narratives to actual historical events, does e.g. Qing Empire = "C/TCP"… or not? Kinda hard to keep those ducks in a row.
John Tkacik said,
May 29, 2026 @ 12:07 pm
Wu Xiuquan Autobiography
"Wode Licheng" – My Experience (1908-1949)
People's Liberation Army Press 1984
With the successful conclusion of the 1911 Revolution led by President Sun Yat-sen, my hometown of Wuchang became famous. It was the first city to launch a successful revolutionary uprising. But, as far as that revolution was concerned, I only heard about it long afterwards from the mouths of my parents. I heard that on October 10 of that year, the entire city rattled with gunfire, and there was an attack on the imperial governor's Yamen and its garrison. Since our Imperial overlords were mostly Manchus, all the Manchus in the city tried to flee elsewhere after the uprising. The mutinous soldiers guarding the city gates began to stop each person exiting the city to see whether or not he was a Manchu. The guards asked everyone to repeat the phrase "six hundred and sixty-six," and anyone who couldn't repeat it with a proper Hubei accent was detained as a Manchu. Unfortunately, in the end there was a lot of indiscriminate killing and many people died. In those days, men wore their hair in long queues, and after the uprising, a few self-styled revolutionaries stood in the streets pulling men aside and forcing them to cut off their queues. In a very short time, every man in the city had cut off his queue and the streets were swept clean of traditional braids. Anyway, after the revolution our own family life was affected very directly. The doors of the Imperial Yamen had been closed and my grandfather and father lost their jobs. My family had to live off the little bit they had put aside as savings. I was only four years old at the time, and didn't understand why we were faced with such hardship. Things went from bad to worse. In 1913, my grandfather died and it wasn't long before we found ourselves numbered among the city's paupers.
CuConnacht said,
May 29, 2026 @ 12:54 pm
Scott P, I think the idea is that while the Qing were non-Han people who conquered China, the Japanese were non-Han people who tried to do so and failed, thus like the Qing but defeated. The accusations that are one-sided and exaggerated are the accusations that the Qing period was a dark age for the Han people, characterized by massacres, national humiliation, etc.
J.W. Brewer said,
May 29, 2026 @ 1:11 pm
I don't think it's very controversial that there was much anti-Manchu sentiment (sometimes expressed in crude and racialized ways) in the period that led up to the overthrow of Manchu rule. It is true that the leadership of the new ROC regime almost immediately rolled out the 五族共和 slogan, giving at least formal/rhetorical support to a multi-racial society in which both Han and Manchus were valued participants, but not everyone may have internalized that rhetoric. But it does seem that for the current mainland Communist regime to symbolically identify itself with the Manchu conquerors of Taiwan was maybe not very well thought through, because you don't actually have to be that much of a Han-chauvinist to see the Tungning regime as more "authentically Chinese" than the Manchus.
Tony Luan said,
May 29, 2026 @ 1:38 pm
The concept of the 'Han' has always been a cultural construct, never a biological race. The Han ethnicity was fundamentally forged during the Han Empire. Prior to this, the Zhou, Shang, Zhongshan, Chu, Dongyi, Ba, and Shu peoples were indisputably distinct and separate nations. Modern population genetics provides the physical proof: the DNA affinity between Northern Han populations and their neighboring ethnic minorities is significantly closer than their genetic tie to the Southern Han. Likewise, the genetic distance between the Southern Han and their surrounding indigenous minorities is far shorter than their connection to the Northern Han.
China’s imperial history is bookended by foreign conquests: it began with an alien regime, the Shang, and ended with another, the Qing. Throughout the millennia, only the Han, Western Jin, Song, and Ming dynasties can be accurately classified as periods of native Han dominance. The rest—the Shang, Zhou, Qin, the Sixteen Kingdoms, Northern Wei, the Northern Dynasties, Sui, Tang, Liao, Western Xia, Jin, Yuan, and Qing—were all characterized by complete or partial foreign rule. Even today, the state ideology of the People's Republic is rooted in Western Marxism-Leninism, and its foundational revolution was directly funded and engineered by the Soviet Union.
J.W. Brewer said,
May 29, 2026 @ 3:22 pm
Note that both the CCP and the KMT had previously tried to claim the legacy of the Ming loyalist who had himself invaded Taiwan while retreating from the Manchus. https://globaltaiwan.org/2022/07/the-ccp-invokes-the-legacy-of-koxinga-in-its-united-front-propaganda-for-taiwan/
Pamela said,
May 29, 2026 @ 4:35 pm
Everything old is new again. I'm guessing the article is confusing because it is trying to describe something contradictory and confusing. "Beijing apparently hopes to project the Qing Dynasty’s recapture of Taiwan onto its future (re)unification with the island." What could this mean? No state based in China had every ruled Taiwan before 1683, so there was no "recapture" during the Qing. There was a capture by Qing, a capture by Japan, and a last capture by the KMT. The Qing offered to trade the island to the Netherlands (which had driven Spain out of Taiwan and tried to colonize part of it) in exchange for mercenary service against Ming remnants, which was consistent with the Ming and Qing lack of interest in islands generally. But once Qing began to develop as a naval power in the later nineteenth century it suddenly developed a serious interest in Taiwan–just about the same time France and Japan did. Taiwan was a province of the Qing empire for exactly a decade before ceding the island to Japan in 1895. So that's a shade over two centuries as a mandate territory of Qing (administered as part of Fujian province) and a decade as a province of the Qing empire, half a century as a Japanese colony and followed by cession in the Treaty of San Francisco to the US, which returned it to the remnant ROC. With respect to the PRC, Taiwan has no history as a province, colony, mandate territory, or anthing else. Having said all that, the PRC is one of the few states after WWII that claims that
"history" licences invasion and occupation (which is apparently what inspires so much historical fantasy in China). Most of the rest of the world has claimed to respect self-determination, which has nothing to do with history and everything to do with a population's best interests in the present and future. Despite the fact of zero historical relationship between the PRC and Taiwan, there would have been many opportunities for a peaceful political union between the two if the PRC had not pursued its aims through subversion and intimidation.
John Swindle said,
May 30, 2026 @ 5:41 pm
I'm glad the movie was ineffective in threatening Taiwan.
Han chauvinism exists, and there wouldn't have to be actual Manchus or an actual threat of return to Manchu rule for there to be anti-Manchu agitation, but that's not what's happening. Nobody's calling for restoring the Qing Dynasty, and nobody's targeting today's remaining Manchus. As someone who has been identified by direct-to-consumer DNA testing as having a whopping 0.8% "Manchurian and Mongolian" ancestry I do not feel threatened in the slightest by this "Anti-Qing backlash," and not only because I'm not in China.
David Marjanović said,
May 31, 2026 @ 3:55 am
In their own propaganda, the ruling clan of the Manchus at the time – Aisin Gioro – had the Mandate of Heaven, the right and sacred duty, to usher in and rule the Qīng Era. So that's what they did. That they had Manchu origins was irrelevant; anyone can get the Mandate of Heaven.
Nationalism hadn't been invented yet in 1644. It developed in western Europe around the beginning of the 19th century and spread to China near the end of that century. The new Chinese nationalists noticed that many of the cronies of the Aisin Gioro were themselves ethnic Manchus; they interpreted the general social inequality in national terms and ended the Qīng Era on national grounds in 1911. (The previous attempt to conclude the era, the Tàipíng Rebellion, had instead been based on a new rival claim to the Mandate of Heaven, though with a reinterpretation of how it works.)
So, after leaning heavily into nationalism for the last few decades, the CCP now uses the new film to imply it has the Mandate of Heaven and has overlooked nationalism entirely. That's very strange, and had to backfire.
KIRINPUTRA said,
May 31, 2026 @ 5:01 am
Maybe it was never a question of whether the Manchu are Chinese, but whether the Chinese were Manchu.
Wait. There’s something interesting about … all this. I’m trying to get a finger on it.
The whole point of HAN-as-we-know-it is to enable & reinforce Chinese empire in an at-least-performatively egalitarian modern context, right?
What some call HAN today was simply CHINESE in Western languages in the most scholarly of contexts till the 20th century, not to mention in street language to this day.
It’s not like the rulers & subjects of “Tungning”, say, had HAN as an ethnic term in their (Hokkien) vocabulary. They didn’t. So why not just call them “Chinese”?
It is not less accurate. It is not less clear. It is more clear, and it is already still the prevailing usage.
HAN is a modern cover for institutional Chinese chauvinism. The whole point of HAN at this point is to facilitate empire. We bent over backwards to be selectively helpful and got our thoughts tied up in circles, and they didn’t even need the help. Why not reset and call the Chinese “the Chinese”?
KIRINPUTRA said,
May 31, 2026 @ 5:50 am
@ Pamela
Good points, but — for a modern 人 — the confusion & contradictions start with the 21st century Chinese TPE apologetics. Like, is it somehow okay for a Neo-Chinese state to do colonisation somewhere as long as they move their base there?
As for “a capture by Qing, a capture by Japan, and a last capture by [a political party]”: Why avoid naming the Republic of China? Also — strange as it is to think about — the ROC was just “China” at that point.
Or, did the Treaty of S.F. really transfer Formosa to (Nationalist China via) the U.S.?
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20136/volume-136-I-1832-English.pdf
No, right? Chinese TPE apologetics again, maybe.
It is Chinese TPE — not just the dictatorship before, but also the democracy now — that binds Formosa to the PR(O)C. The PROC keeps coming around b/c we (not me personally, I hope) have the remains of Free China in our beds…. Every lasting East Asian nation has its own nationalism, its own language, its own historical narrative from scratch from the beginning of time. To “self-determine” meaningfully & durably, we have to look into the void — as Vietnam & the Koreas have done — and, in spite of all our “Chinese, Manchu, whatever” Qing kings (colonisers after all), figure out who we were & will be.