Orientalism first emerged in the late 18th century in European centers of learning and their colonial outposts, when Western scholars started to focus on East Asian societies – studying their languages, literature, religions and art.

More recently it has become associated with a depiction of Asia and Asian people in a stereotyped way, exemplifying a colonialist view. 

Edward Said, an influential Palestinian-American literary and cultural critic, sparked discourse about its use in his 1978 book Orientalism. Said describes Orientalism as a fictional creation of East Asian culture. 

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"It's about the so-called Western knowledge and constructs of China, without any intention to engage with China and its history and its people in any real way," explains Jenny Clegg, Vice President of Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU).

"Said understood Orientalism as a structure of cultural power – that the only source of truth about China is the West," she adds.

Said established that Western representations of the Orient perpetuated this notion of the culture and the people being the 'other,' affording them no sense of belonging, and reducing them to stereotypes.

"The Orient is watched, since it's almost (but never quite) offensive behavior issues out of a reservoir of infinite peculiarity; the European, whose sensibility tours the Orient, is a watcher, never involved, always detached," wrote Said.

Why is 'Oriental' racist?

It was the role of European Orientalism to speak on behalf of the East and these comments resulted in a set of stereotypes about the Orient – the Oriental despot, the exotic Orient and the erotic Orient, explains Wen-Chin Ouyang, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the London-based School of Oriental and African Studies.

From Chinese men being seen as physically weak and culturally barbaric to Asian women being fetishized, it is the cultural framework against which tangible racism is practiced against Asians in the West.

"By proxy, it can be racist," argues Ouyang. "It's very easy when you reduce someone to something that is beneath you, inferior to you, that needs your help to become civilized, [to think] they're not capable of developing or expressing themselves, it's racism and sexism.

"You reduce the 'other' to an essence that is incapable of being dynamic, that does not have agency, that is incapable of understanding."

Hence, referring to someone as an Oriental would be deemed offensive, especially if "that term came with follow-ups that would reduce them to someone without a brain or without language," warns Ouyang.

However, it is the context that matters more than the word and "the intention behind it."

In May 2016, the then U.S. ​​President Barack Obama signed legislation which removed the term Oriental from U.S. federal law. It has been replaced with the term 'Asian-American.'

"Many Americans may not be aware that the word Oriental is derogatory. But it is an insulting term that needed to be removed from the books, and I am extremely pleased that my legislation to do that is now the law of the land," U.S. Representative Grace Meng, who sponsored the change in legislation, told CBS News at the time.

The stereotypes: Exotic, erotic and evil

The stereotypes are further perpetuated through misrepresentations in the media and through art and culture.

Ouyang points out that the Chinese and the Japanese characters are not necessarily distinguished in films: "they're just East Asian," she says, all put in the same box.

"You don't find them as the heroes or leading characters and they are just in the background as secondary characters," she says.

She talks about the Asian character in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's – Mr Yunioshi, played by Mickey Rooney – being portrayed as a "comical character who is always unkempt, wearing funny glasses and a funny hat and he speaks with a heavy accent."

And while she says there have been some changes in recent years, they are not all necessarily positive.

"I think since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Chinese have come to replace the Russians as the antagonist of the American and the European white hero," adds Ouyang.

It is also important to acknowledge that the representation of East Asian women in films can also be problematic and more importantly, not always a true reflection of society. 

"They are portrayed as either very erotic and manipulative evil women characters (the Dragon Lady), or the much more geisha-like subservient women (the Lotus Blossom), who need white men to come to their rescue," says the academic. 

"Both these women characters remain prevalent in European and North American popular culture."

Fetishization and hypersexualization of women

It is argued that the Dragon Lady characteristics feed the racist misconception that East Asians pose a threat to the West, while the submissive Lotus Blossom further perpetuates the racist notion of Asian women being subservient and helpless.

These stereotypes have also led to the fetishization and hypersexualization of Asian women – seen either as a temptress or demure and in need of saving. 

"I think this oversexualized thing is really just not on," Anna Chen tells CGTN. She's a writer, performer, poet and broadcaster, born in Britain to a Chinese father and British mother. 

"If you're an Asian girl, you could be treated in any way and nobody would stick up for you, nobody would protect you, nobody was concerned. You were just there as an object.

"My experiences in terms of the intersectionality of being a woman, being quite young, being Asian as well, that all shows up in the workplace, in terms of being treated differently, as not knowledgeable."

Research has shown that stereotypes can also breed gender violence against women by objectifying them.

According to the U.S.-based nonprofit organization Stop AAPI Hate (AAPI standing for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders), women report hate incidents 2.3 times more than men.

Self-Orientalism: A mechanism for survival?

But what of self-Orientalism? It is the Orientalization of the Eastern world by itself, the internalization of the Orientalist point of view by individuals or institutions, and it manifests in different ways and behaviors.

Ouyang explains it as individuals and societies believing "We need European knowledge in order to help us improve ourselves. We are backward because we are not rational. We are incapable of developing. We would not have been capable of modernizing ourselves without imperialism and colonialism."

She says it filters down to basic levels of thinking – "All Chinese men are desperate or tyrants" – and in some instances, when Chinese women mistake being modern for being Western.

Self-Orientalism can also present itself in other forms, such as when individuals do not challenge what they are being taught or when they engage in dismissal of their native language. 

Ouyang says it does not help when languages are placed in a hierarchy – where an individual speaks one language at home, and the more "acceptable and widely understood" language at school, their own language may disappear from that hierarchy. 

"At home, your parents tell you you're not supposed to speak your own language, so you just pretend your own language doesn't exist and you focus on English and European languages," she says. "This may be sort of a mechanism for survival, but underpinning all that is a kind of self-Orientalism." 

It is no surprise that among those parts of immigrant communities where their own languages and cultures are not appreciated and accepted, "immigrant children are channelled into becoming American or British or French."

Ouyang says there are conversations taking place about steps that need to be taken to dismantle Orientalism and self-Orientalism.

"Part of the work that we're doing is trying to nuance Orientalism, by introducing gender, class, and race as categories for interrogation," she says.

"We're all engaged in power relations, whether you want more power or not is not necessarily as important, but we are all involved in these power relations. And no matter what we do, we project our will or our desire for power, consciously or unconsciously, into our understanding of anything that is not within ourselves."

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