WATCH: This Wildly Racist Chinese Washing Advert Is Copping Fair Heat

By

Published

May 27, 2016

A Chinese commercial for Qiaobi-brand laundry detergent has come under global criticism for being astoundingly, wildly racist.

In the commercial, a young, paint-splatted black man approaches a young Chinese woman. She rebuffs his advances, throws him into the washing machine, and washes him into a Chinese man.

It’s also a blatant disregard for the laws of physics and the very real consequences of getting drowned in a washing machine, but yeah. It’s mostly the racist thing that has everyone fkn spewing.

Facebook user Christopher Powell shared the ad yesterday, and it’s blown up.

His original post has garnered almost 10,000 shares at the time of writing, and as you can probably imagine, the comments are not… good.

According to Shanghai-based blog Shanghaiist, the ad has been screening on television and in Wanda Cinemas over the last month.

They also report that it’s indicative of widespread attitudes to race and colour in China.

“As any foreigner who has ever lived in China can attest, attitudes regarding race and skin colour are often quite different here from back home. Still even with prior experience, sometimes this country can leave you completely and utterly dumbfounded.

“Thanks to traditional beauty standards valuing white skin, many Chinese people have a well-established phobia of dark skin which unfortunately also breeds racist attitudes towards people of African descent, who are viewed by some as “dirty” simply because of their skin tone.”

The ad, as several media outlets have reported, is actually a rip-off of a a series Italian ads for detergent from about nine years ago, except that these ones state that “coloured is better”.