I, Sinya Lee, age 34, Han, and a U.S. citizen, hereby demand that China immediately stop all policies that discriminate against Han people（漢人）.
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The Current State of Discrimination Against Han People in China
Han people in China are subjected to comprehensive discrimination and persecution. For a Han person in China, on the one hand, their culture and faith are taken away; on the other hand, their freedom to reproduce is taken away. Looking upward, they cannot inherit the history and culture of their ancestors; looking downward, they cannot continue their family line. Han people in China have been stripped of the dignity and meaning of being human, and the entire people have been reduced to livestock like chickens, ducks, cattle, and horses.
In terms of culture and faith, China specifically destroys and insults Han culture and beliefs. Characters such as “漢,” “華,” and “龍” have all been deliberately altered. Today, Han people in China do not even have the freedom to use traditional Chinese characters. Traditional Chinese characters are prohibited from being published, used on company signs, or appearing in official documents. In terms of language, Han people can only use the Beijing dialect, that is, the creole language of Beijing Manchus. Han languages such as Wu, Min, and Cantonese are being deliberately eliminated. When Han children speak their own mother tongues at school, they may even be physically punished by teachers. In terms of faith, the core of Han belief lies in ancestor worship. Yet Han people are forced to be cremated and are forbidden from being buried in the earth and resting in peace. Tashan near Nanyang in my hometown of Chenghai was originally the burial ground of my clan. As a result, countless graves were blasted open, and tombstones were used as building materials. This kind of targeted insult against our ancestors and our faith is unbearably painful. And this insult targets only the Han. Uyghurs and Hui people still enjoy the privilege of earth burial, and the traditional sky burial of Tibetans has not been banned either.
In terms of childbirth, for the first time since the creation of the world, Han people have been deprived of reproductive freedom. Decades of “family planning policy”, together with the one-child policy and forced abortions targeting only Han people, constitute a shameless violation of the basic rights of Han people. According to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, forcibly preventing a nation or ethnic group from reproducing is a typical crime of genocide. China’s family planning policy against Han people is one of the most horrific crimes of genocide in human history. Countless Han pregnant women who were close to giving birth were forcibly subjected to abortions by the Chinese government. A healthy fetus, fully capable of surviving independently and being born, was killed directly with poison or even forceps. It was extremely cruel; even imagining that scene is unbearable.
Continuing the family line and carrying on the ancestral incense are also core parts of Han belief. The one-child policy and forced abortions forced countless Han people, in order to continue the family line according to traditional beliefs, to carry out sex-selective abortions. Countless people were forced to kill their own daughters with their own hands, creating even more tragedies. This also caused a severe gender imbalance in the Han population in China, which further led to a continued decline in fertility among the next generation.
In terms of economic and social upward mobility, Han people have also suffered countless forms of discrimination. China is a socialist country, and the state controls the social economy. In all organizations controlled by the state, Han people—especially Han people from Guangdong and the four “Shanhe” provinces (Shanxi, Shandong, Henan, Hebei) — have suffered extremely serious discrimination. China’s public universities such as Tsinghua and Peking University monopolize educational resources. Yet in Beijing, where Manchus are concentrated, the per-capita number of admission slots for Tsinghua and Peking University is 40 times that of Henan Province and around 80 times that of Guangdong Province. Manchus also enjoy extra bonus points. In other words, a Manchu Qing remnant in Beijing has a chance of getting into Tsinghua or Peking University that is 100 times that of a Han person from the Central Plains, and more than 200 times that of a Han person from Guangdong. Civil service positions and state-owned enterprises within the system also have preferential policies for ethnic minorities similar to bonus points in the gaokao.
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The Anti-Han Alliance of Non-Han People in China
In China, non-Han people not only do not have to bear the discriminatory policies mentioned above, but even enjoy countless preferential treatments. These preferential treatments are not limited to cultural and economic opportunities; they are institutionalized legal superiority. In China, even equality before the law cannot be achieved. The “Two Fews and One Leniency” policy toward non-Han people in China—“criminal offenders from non-Han groups should be subject to ‘fewer arrests and fewer executions,’ and handling should be as lenient as possible”—has made non-Han people in China a de facto privileged class.
Although China officially says there are 56 ethnic groups, after decades of non-Han privilege, only two groups remain: Han and non-Han people in China. In order to maintain their privileged status and obtain support and transfer payments from Han people, all non-Han people in China have spontaneously united to discriminate against Han people together. China’s Tartars, Muslims, and southwestern non-Han groups have in fact already united into one common group for the sake of privilege: “non-Han people in China.” This identity is 100 percent founded entirely on discrimination against, hatred of, and oppression of the Han. Through cultural works such as Wolf Totem, The Battle of Penghu, and Qing palace dramas, China’s non-Han people continuously promote theories of Han inferiority and Han original sin, attempting to establish a racial-caste ladder consisting of Westerners, non-Han people in China, and Han people, and to nail Han people forever to the bottom caste.
In the face of shared privilege and shared interests, bloodline, culture, and history become unimportant. Historically, Tartars, Muslims, and southwestern non-Han groups have had blood feuds with one another. During the Mongol Empire, Mongols massacred Persians, Arabs, and Russians. The entire Middle East was left with nine out of ten households empty, and the Islamic world never recovered from that point onward. During the Manchu Qing period, Manchus carried out genocide against the Dzungar Mongols and population-reduction policies against other Mongols. In Shaanxi, the Manchu Qing supported Han people in suppressing the Hui rebellion. In Guangdong, Cantonese, Teochew, and Hakka people called themselves orthodox Han in order to avoid being regarded by the Qing government as uncivilized Miao-Yao people and being suppressed. Yet today, for the sake of shared privilege and shared interests, and in order to oppress Han people together, Manchus, Mongols, Hui, Uyghurs, Miao, and Yao are able to overcome all bloodline and cultural differences and historical hatred, and unite closely together.
Zhang Guimei, a Manchu from Liaoning, went to Yunnan to serve as the principal of a public school. As a result, the first class of students admitted only non-Han girls and did not admit Han people or boys at all. Later, even when many Han males were still dropping out of school, she attempted to admit Bangladeshi Rohingya. Although during the Manchu Qing period, Manchus discriminated against non-Han people in Yunnan even more than they discriminated against Han people, in today’s China, shared hatred of Han people makes Zhang Guimei prefer admitting Rohingya over admitting Han males.
In 2020, I posted a commentary article on Zhihu satirizing China for prohibiting Teochew Han high school students from marrying, while allowing Muslims complete reproductive freedom. I merely stated this fact indirectly, yet a Liaoning Manchu influencer named “Xiagongshi”（夏攻狮） took a screenshot of my commentary article and reported it, trying to put the label of “undermining ethnic unity” on me, attempting to make China persecute me and force me into silence about China’s discriminatory policies.
In modern China, Zhang Guimei, Xiagongshi, and these Manchus from Beijing and surrounding areas, along with Mongols and Tibetans in the communist party, serve as the “elites” of non-Han people in China. They are responsible for promoting the theory of Han original sin, formulating discriminatory policies, and persecuting Han people who speak out. Ordinary non-Han civilians support these non-Han elites. They can get into 985 universities through bonus points, beat Han students at non-Han universities, and use non-Han quotas to become civil servants. If they cannot pass the exams, they can still force-sell qiegao in Shanghai. Non-Han elites and civilians are in collusion, and the common interest that unites them is the oppression of the Han.
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Relationship with Chinese Americans
Many non-Han people in China will certainly attack me and label me. They will say that I am an American, so why should I care about China’s affairs?
First, I pursue justice equally. As early as April 2019, I donated more than 500 U.S. dollars—around 4,000 RMB—to SFFA for legal fees to sue Harvard University. More than four years after my donation, in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Harvard defeated, ending Harvard University’s decades-long discriminatory policies against Han / East Asian students. No matter how difficult it is, I will strive to pursue justice.
Second, even from a self-interested perspective, China’s discrimination against Han people is not only related to Han people in China, but is also closely related to Han people in America (Chinese Americans.) Martin Luther King Jr. said that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” China also often propagates the idea that only when the motherland is strong can overseas Han people have dignity. This statement is truly very reasonable. The current status of Han people in the motherland, in the Teochew saying, is “bullied by all, ridden by all.” Anyone can bully them. If Han people are so weak in the motherland, how can overseas Han people possibly live well? Han people who immigrate from China to the United States are accustomed to being discriminated against and to bowing and scraping before outsiders. How can the status of Han people in America possibly rise? And when an American goes to China and sees the current situation in which Han people are so discriminated against in China, how could that American, after returning to the United States, possibly not discriminate against Han people? Only when the motherland is strong, and only when Han people in the motherland are no longer ridden by everyone, can overseas Han people have dignity.
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Petition
I hereby demand that China immediately stop all discriminatory policies targeting the Han:
- Completely abolish family-planning policies. Han people, regardless of education level, wealth, household registration, or “political status,” should enjoy complete reproductive freedom.
- Completely abolish provincial quotas in the gaokao and bonus points for ethnic minorities. Chinese citizens, regardless of ethnicity or province of origin, should have the same right to education.
- Completely abolish ethnic-minority quotas at all levels of civil service and in state-owned enterprises. Han people should enjoy social resources equal to those of ethnic minorities.
- Completely abolish bans targeting the Han on earth burial, “feudal superstition,” “dialects,” and traditional Chinese characters (Hanzi, Hanja, or Kanji). The Han should enjoy freedom of belief and culture.
- Stop unfairly insulting and discriminating against Han people in speech and discourse. If Wolf Totem can be legally published in China, then my On “Manchu-Mongol Values” should also be published.
- Revoke all public positions and honors held by the Manchu Zhang Guimei.
I am a resident of New York State in the United States. This open letter is part of my normal exercise of the freedom of speech granted to me by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
This article was published on my personal website, hosted in the U.S. state of Oregon. Original Chinese version: https://sinyalee.com/blog/?p=1191. English version: https://sinyalee.com/essays/?p=147
Screenshots of the article are stored on Tencent’s WeChat, the international version of WeChat. The international version of WeChat is a chat application with servers located in places such as Singapore and the Netherlands, and it operates legally in the United States. Tencent is asked to comply with U.S. law and stop suppressing the freedom of speech of U.S. citizens in the United States.
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Sinya Lee
June 28, 2026
Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, New York, United States
