You are, of course, correct about much of the Chinese populations attitude towards the Japanese. But, I would hasten to add even this, as you say, understandable attitude is changing slowly. There is great Japanese influence in many Chinese cities, Dalian comes to mind, a beautiful city on the NE China coast that boasts heavy Russian and Japanese architectural heritage, not to mention the heavy influx of Japanese businessmen, tourists and investors. This is just ONE example.

And, with approximately one billion uneducated peasants, who the hell has time to be a racist.

Even though whiteness, like all racial categories, is not an objective, self-evident entity, it is privileged in a system in which whiteness is constructed as the standard or norm against which all other racial categories are measured. Despite the subjectivity of racial categorization, non-whites are, as Derrick Bell argues, "marked with the caste of color in a society still determinedly white" (75). Thus, being white is to be non-raced, normal, or neutral, and discussions of race have traditionally applied only to those who are perceived as other than white. Toni Morrison has called scholars to the task of creating a critical reading practice that foregrounds the construction and representation of whiteness in fiction and allows readers to recognize literature's complicity with the discourse of white supremacy. The reading of whiteness into texts that are not explicitly about race is essential if we are to challenge whiteness as racial norm. Pearl S. Buck's novel, The Good Earth, provides an example of a popular text that, while not overtly concerned with racial construction, contains a subtle discourse that must be read critically from the perspective that Morrison suggests. An examination of the position of Chinese immigrants in the United States in the novel's initial publication and Buck's own racial politics provide crucial elements in an analysis of the subtle racial discourse in The Good Earth.

Passage taken from:

The Discourse of Whiteness:
Chinese-American History, Pearl S. Buck, and The Good Earth
Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900 - present), Spring 2002, Volume 1, Issue 1
http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/spring_2002/spencer.htm

Stephen Spencer
Wilmington College