“I am Chinese, not Chinese”: some implications of an ambiguity and proposals for alternatives

Prompted by the meme, “我是華人不是中國人,” and playing on its (machine-) translation into English as “I am Chinese, not Chinese,” this article explores how in English the word “Chinese” ambiguates what are two separately named concepts in Chinese: 華人 (Huaren, referring to Chinese ethnicity) and 中國人 (Zhongguoren, referring to Chinese citizenship). Within the prc Firewall, the official designation is: 華人也是中國人, translated as Chinese are also Chinese), which co-implicates the two terms, endowing them with a singular, fixed, and primordialist sense. Beyond the Firewall, there are suggestions that 華人and 中國人should be recognized as separable terms, with 華人as a hybrid, hyphenated, and localized notion, indicative of some changing senses of identity. A new English coinage, Huabrid (華裔 Huayi) may help to encapsulate multiple and hybrid senses of how 華裔/Huayi/Chinese/Huabrid can be thought of as separable from 中國人/Zhongguoren/Chinese.