Africans launched Chinese civilisation
By Nsaka Sesepkekiu
Student of African and Asian Studies
Faculty of Humanities
University of the West Indies
Trinidad and Tobago
Whenever we hear the term “Chinese” we often associate the word with short slanted eyed people who can fight kung fu. With the recent celebration of establishment of the People’s Republic of China, I wish not only to congratulate them but also to add some insight into their history.
The original, first, native, primitive inhabitants of China were black Africans who arrived there about 100,000 years ago and dominated the region until a few thousand years ago when the Mongol advance into that region began. These Africans who fled the Mongol onslaught can still be found in South East Asia and the Pacific Islands misnomered Nigritos or “small black men.” The Agta of the Philippines is one such example. Indeed archeology, forensic and otherwise confirm that China’s first two dynasties, the Xia and the Ch’ang/Sh’ang, were largely Black African with an Australoid, called “Madras Indian” or “Chamar” in Trinidad, present in small percentages. These Africans would carry an art of fighting developed in the Horn of Africa into China which today we call martial arts: Tai Chi, Kung fu and Tae Kwon Do. Even the oracle of the I-Ching came with a later African group, the Akkadians of Babylon.
Around 500 BCE an African living in India called Gautama would establish a religion called Buddhism which would come to dominate Chinese thought. Any one who is in doubt should consult Geoffrey Higgins’s Anacalypsis, Albert Churchward’s Origin and development of Religions, Gerald Massey’s Egypt the Light of the World, Riunoko Rashidi’s African Presence in Early Asia and J A Roger’s Sex and Race Vol 1. Many Africans survived the Mongol invasion into the twentieth century only to be exterminated by Chairman Mao’s programme of Cultural cleansing. Under this programme millions of Africans and Afro-Asians were killed from 1951-1956. Contribute we still did, giving the People’s Republic of China its first Chief Minister in the name of Eugene Chen, a Trinidadian of George Street, Port-of-Spain, who was of an African mother and a Chinese father.
For further reading on this individual one should consult J A Rogers’ World’s Great Men of Colour Vol I. So next time the word China or Chinese is mentioned remember that Africans played a pivotal role in launching what is called Chinese civilisation, if such a thing exists.