Reconfiguring the Global Color Line: The Paradoxical Discourse of Race in Zou Rong’s Revolutionary Army

YUANXIN WANG

American Political Science Review2026https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055426101464article
AJG 4*ABDC A*
Weight
0.50

Abstract

This article examines the racial discourse of Zou Rong, a 20th-century Chinese radical intellectual, and the puzzling rendering of transnational racial politics at work in his pamphlet The Revolutionary Army . In this text, Zou employs the imported concept of race to refashion Han Chinese identity within a politically motivated global racial taxonomy. He then problematizes the “double enslavement” of the Han race at the trans-imperial nexus of domestic Manchu domination and global white supremacy. Finally, he urges a multifront revolution in China by discursively vindicating Han Chinese racial uplift within a newly reconfigured system of racial hierarchy. In reconstructing the formation and broader political stakes of Zou’s racial discourse, this article centers the deeply contingent and paradoxical alignment of racism and imperialism and the nuanced power relations between peoples of color. It also exemplifies a transnational approach to comparative political theory that focuses on the circulation and negotiation of ideas.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055426101464

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@article{yuanxin2026,
  title        = {{Reconfiguring the Global Color Line: The Paradoxical Discourse of Race in Zou Rong’s Revolutionary Army}},
  author       = {YUANXIN WANG},
  journal      = {American Political Science Review},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055426101464},
}

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F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
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