Discrimination of Henan

This article discusses the issue of discrimination against people from the province Henan in Mainland China; the widespread negative stereotyping and discriminatory attitudes towards the people and province of Henan, China. This phenomenon emerged prominently in the early 21st century, fueled by various social, economic, and historical factors. Misrepresentations of Henan residents have manifested in derogatory jokes, media portrayals, and public discourse, often painting the province as a hub of crime, deceit, and backwardness. Understanding the roots and impacts of this demonization sheds light on broader issues of regional prejudice and social inequality within China.

Background

Henan is located in Zhongyuan, influenced by traditional culture, the ancient evaluation of its relatively positive "Zhongzhou vulgar honest thick quality straight, with ancient style, although a good just, and can sense of righteousness." Words are seldom deceitful, and if they are reproved, they are ashamed and dare not defend themselves." The Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China also held the same view on the customs of the Central Plains. After the Second Sino-Japanese War and the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the large-scale demonization of Henan began in the blood disaster of Henan in the mid-1990s, and the regional discrimination against Henan began to become clear. Some factories have clearly indicated that "Henan employees have been recruited" , and a local police station in Shenzhen directly issued a warning banner on the street that "resolutely crack down on Henan extortion gangs" . In the society, there is also a popular phrase "no Henan people, there is no security door", and some people's impression of Henan people is "stealing manhole covers", "selling blood", "collecting garbage".

Causes

From a political perspective, in mainland China, due to the fact that provinces serve as geographical units of centralized central government administrative divisions, rather than independent and complete structures, entities, or organizations of education, legislation, politics, language, culture, beliefs, and other functions, powers, and spirits, the understanding of these units and scales does not have definite and objective cognitive and deductive value beyond certain natural attributes and related statistical characteristics. Like other forms of discrimination, the logical basis of generalization and differential treatment is equally inadequate. However, due to the dependence of human society on language and words, improper use of conceptualized cognitive forms and essentialist ways of thinking may lead to confusion and misconceptions, making it difficult to completely remove this existing fixed pattern for a period of time. The real and valuable issues are the background factors and prerequisite conditions for the occurrence of this phenomenon, as well as the social regulation and control ability of the phenomenon. Commentators analyze the reasons for related phenomena and summarize them as follows:

War and famine migrants

See also: Henan Famine of 1942, Xinyang Incident, and Henan "75.8" Dam Failure

In the history of thousands of years, the Central Plains has undergone dozens of dynasties, as well as foreign invasions by the Mongols, Manchus and Japanese. Especially since modern Manchu Dynasty suffered from natural disasters and man-made disasters. Typical for example, in the 1930s and 1940s, due to the serious and sustained loclocid drought and flood disasters, but also due to the government during the war to block the Japanese people to dig the Zhengzhou Garden estuary of the Yellow River embankment, resulting in large-scale displacement of refugees in the yellow plain area and the Central Plains Mandarin area, and emigrate to the northwest region or elsewhere. Similarly, in modern and contemporary history, the prejudices encountered by refugees in northern Jiangsu in southern Jiangsu and Shanghai are based on similar reasons. It is assumed that persistent and widespread prejudice against the region began around these areas. (Before the 1980s, the transportation was inconvenient, and the proportion of Henan immigrants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang was very small.) During the Ming, Qing and the Republic of China, there was no systematic prejudice against the region; However, Wang Shixing, who held the "geographical environment determinism" in Ming Dynasty, believed that this region was "vulgar and honest and straight in quality".

The plasma economy contributed to the AIDS epidemic

Main article: Plasma Economy

Dr. Gao Yaojie was the first to reveal that farmers in some rural areas of the province were infected with AIDS by selling blood products for profit by government health departments. This has been exaggerated by some as the "Henan problem". However, Gao Yaojie and others later pointed out that this problem is common in the vast majority of provinces, regions and cities in the mainland, and Gao Yaojie pointed out that the infection of AIDS caused by blood sales and blood transfusions is definitely not a case. Again, this is not just a Henan province problem. Just because a Gao Yaojie came out of Henan and lifted the lid on Henan, other provinces, more serious than Henan everywhere, in the mid-1990s, many Henan farmers are running there (other provinces) to sell blood. Late last year, newspapers exposed illegal blood collection at the North 'an Farm Hospital in Heilongjiang Province, where a blood seller infected 19 people. An HIV-infected person surnamed Song in Dehui City, Jilin Province, sold blood to the government blood station 17 times in a year and a half, resulting in 21 people infected with AIDS.

Suffering from the injustice of the planning system

Since the 1980s, the state has highly monopolized resources, and the policy is inclined to invest in the North, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen regions, and the central and western regions have no policy support, and the brain drain has been hollowed out, and the economic development has been slow for many years. The imbalance of economic and cultural development under the planned economy system is more related to the unequal socio-economic and political environment of the region under the current system - the province has long been positioned by the national development strategy as "ensuring the agricultural foundation", and the degree of openness is the lowest in the six central provinces, and the data at the end of 2006 shows that the relevant openness index is only 2%, far lower than the domestic average level. Similarly, the province has the largest population base in the country, but its average GNP is low, its per capita resources are relatively small, its higher education is backward, it has a large number of migrant workers and a relatively small proportion of the middle and cultural classes. As one of the few countries in the world that implement the household registration system to manage the population, China's dual division of urban and rural identity and the practice of some people or enterprises to act according to their native place make the farmers in the province that export a large number of migrant workers in the situation of injustice or discrimination from time to time. In terms of social public rights and interests, taking higher education as an example, the state's division, allocation and restriction of public education resources in provinces have caused substantial damage to the rights of people in some regions, including the region, which is a phenomenon of official discrimination that has been widely criticized and criticized in recent years . For example, Xu Youyu, a philosophy scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, criticized that "the probability of Beijing students entering Peking University is 60 times that of Henan and 34 times that of Guizhou." The inaction of the corresponding management is seen to be largely the maintenance of the status quo by vested interests.

Chinese media rendering

The newly emerging mass media specifically excavates such phenomena and related issues in the region, collates and sensationalises them, unquestioning and selective attention to the "Yuanyang Rice" incident, unsubstantiated "collective discussion" reports, and rash conclusions in the early stage of the "Sudan Red" incident; A series of vicious events and misdeeds created by the media, such as the "toxic flour" dispute fabricated by commercial competition and the commercial fraud caused by external imposter, have made the region widely and profoundly misled and spread in the public cognition and psychology as an abstract concept and a concrete image.

The relevant phenomena expose and reflect the serious corruption and widespread fraud in the mainland system and society. The utilitarian kitsch mentality of some media, as well as the low moral quality and management level of the current situation; At the same time, the phenomenon reflects that ordinary people are strongly dissatisfied with the government and powerless to act against the society as a powerful political object. Due to the one-sided pursuit of circulation, website clicks and popularity by some media, negative news from the region is almost always more likely to be reported to readers in a deliberate or exaggerated way. In some large portal websites such as NetEase, Tencent, Phoenix (since 2009 almost every day will hype the negative news of Henan) and other news pages or push news often have the scandal of the region is recommended in a prominent position, and even the negative information of other provinces is altered, dubbed "Henan" to promote. In this regard, the forum of the media in the province from time to time there are netizens to discuss and condemn the untrue reports and immoral media.

Influenced by Chinese chauvinism and collectivism

Traditional Chinese society relies on and relies on the deep-rooted concept of group and tribal consciousness, which tends to recognize and label the essence of human beings by the internal blood and clan relationship and the external social and political identity or even some accidental group attributes. In ancient times, there was the principle of "nine ethnic groups" and "punishment of the company", but the identity politics in contemporary mainland has intensified, and after the founding of the People's Republic of China, various "identity discrimination" from the government has emerged in endlessly. In addition, due to the long-term promotion of strong ideological "class struggle" thinking, "collectivist" propaganda and "patriotic" education, and the serious failure of "education" to cultivate people's cognitive ability, critical consciousness and humanistic spirit, it is easy to cause individual rights, values and dignity to be ignored or even trampled on. And cause blind "self-centered" praise, beggar-thy-neighbor "chauvinism"; The collective unconscious of "non-self", "otherization" and even "demonization" strengthens and even creates the psychological basis and social environment on which regional discrimination depends.

Accordingly, the people are immature and lack the consciousness of "citizen" based on the modern society, and the regional consciousness and regional discrimination are the reflection and result of the traditional "private society" and the consciousness of small farmers. Similarly, the dispute between "southerners" and "northerners" has a long history and a long history in reality. In view of the fact that such prejudice is also echoed and disseminated in many people in secondary and higher education, some analysis believes that mainland education lacks the ability to cultivate people's respect for others, responsible words and deeds, independent thinking, rational identification and critical thinking.

Jung's theory of the collective unconscious and James Wilson's theory of the Broken window effect can explain this phenomenon. This phenomenon is also studied and concerned by experts and scholars who study mass communication and discrimination.

Responses

In the first case of regional discrimination, the Internet portal NetEase designed and produced a special webpage entitled "Ren Chengyu, Li Dongzhao, Honor Defender of Henan People" in February 2006 and quoted distorted and fabricated insulting and discriminatory reports by Shanghai Evening News. After browsing, Li Dongzhao said, "NetEase is biased and uses distorted, fabricated, discriminatory and offensive old news as material, and contains a large number of insulting words on the Web page, which infringes on his own survival and health," so he filed a lawsuit against NetEase and other representative media. On June 18, 2008, the Chongwen District Court of Beijing accepted the case. But now NetEase has added "civilized society, starting from rational Posting" next to the window for filling in comments. No territorial attacks." The prompt.

In response to various non-objective and irrational words and deeds, the province's media and people from all walks of life have tried to analyze, clarify and even resort to law, such as Ma Shuo, who wrote the book "Henan people provoke", Henan lawyer Ren Chengyu, Li Dongzhao sued the Shenzhen police discriminatory slogans and was eventually dropped by mediation, Li Dongzhao sued the Internet media NetEase media discrimination and so on. In recent years, local government departments have also been working to improve the overall image of the province, and have launched some "image optimization projects", which have made some changes. Analysts generally believe that the fundamental solution to this problem lies in the awakening of people's "civic consciousness", the sound spirit of social "rule of law" , and the balance and equality of the central government's political and economic development policies.  For example, the "regional discrimination case" was finally withdrawn by "mediation" due to the intervention of the "superior" of the defendant's police station, which disappointed the hopes of scholars who hoped to promote the progress of the rule of law through this case.

Extended Reading

"Who Did Henan People provoke", Ma Shuo, Hainan Publishing House, 2002-03-01