Chinaperson

English

Etymology

China +‎ person. Coined by American political candidate Don Blankenship on April 23, 2018, during a live interview for West Virginia radio station 106.3 "The River". A few days later, Blankenship's campaign team went on to release a televised attack ad with the first-known attestation of the plural form "Chinapeople".

Noun

Chinaperson (plural Chinapersons or Chinapeople)

1. (offensive, uncommon) A Chinese person.

   Synonym: Chinaman

   • 2018 April 26, Ben Zimmer, “'Chinaperson' and the Sanitization of a Racial Slur”, in The Atlantic‎^[3], archived from the original on 2023-11-26, Politics:

     In a radio interview earlier this week, Don Blankenship, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in West Virginia, accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of having foreign-policy conflicts of interest, based on McConnell's marriage to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. But Blankenship's comments attracted attention not just for what he had to say—intimating that McConnell's wife and her family has some insidious influence on him—but how he said it.

     "I have an issue when the father-in-law is a wealthy Chinaperson and there’s a lot of connections to some of the brass, if you will, in China," Blankenship said.

     Chinaperson? Blankenship's characterization of Chao's Chinese American father, the businessman James S.C. Chao, was something of a linguistic feat: simultaneously evoking the old slur of Chinaman and ham-handedly attempting to sanitize it. One can almost hear Blankenship hit the edit button halfway through the word, thinking he'd avoid a political faux pas by switching to the gender-neutral–person.

   • 2018 May 7, Andrew Prokop, “Cocaine Mitch: Don Blankenship's factually dubious attack on McConnell, explained”, in Vox‎^[4], archived from the original on 2024-01-26, Politics:

     But with "Cocaine Mitch" specifically and his attacks on McConnell generally, he may have stumbled into an effective strategy, of launching both corruption-focused and racist attacks at the unpopular majority leader and his family.

     "Swamp Captain Mitch McConnell has created millions of jobs for Chinapeople," Blankenship says in his second "Cocaine Mitch" ad (embedded above). "While doing so, Mitch has gotten rich. In fact, his China family has given him tens of millions of dollars." He continues: "The war to drain the swamp and create jobs for West Virginia people has begun. I will beat Joe Manchin and ditch Cocaine Mitch for the sake of the kids."

   • 2018 May 6, Nathalie Baptiste, “This Ex-Con Coal Baron Is Reportedly Within Striking Distance of West Virginia's GOP Senate Nomination”, in Mother Jones‎^[5], archived from the original on 2023-12-02, Politics:

     It's not hard to understand why the Republican establishment might be uncomfortable with Blankenship as a candidate. His team has run several controversial TV ads, including one that referred to the family of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, as "Chinapersons." Later, Blanksenhip defended the ad by saying it wasn't racist because he never mentioned any of the races, which according to him, are "Negro, White Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian."

Hyponyms

• Chinawoman

Anagrams

• chaperonins, nanospheric