Historians, geneticists, and advocates of Afrocentrism have argued for years that the first inhabitants of China were Black Africans. According to Chang Hsing-Lang, who was a respected writer and professor in the early 1900s, there was in fact a Negro Empire that existed in the South of China at the dawn of the nation’s history.
However, after hundreds of years of the worldwide spread of the teaching of white superiority and the inferiority of Africans and their descendants, the idea that the first inhabitants of China were Black has been denied and even covered up.
Thankfully, Jin Li, an award-winning DNA specialist, geneticist, and a professor at both the National Human Genome Center and Fudan's Institute of Genetics in Shanghai, has confirmed through a series of DNA tests that the first inhabitants of China were indeed of African descent.
During his studies, he has collected DNA samples from 165 different ethnic groups and over 12,000 samples in China and throughout other parts of Asia to test his theory. His purpose has been simple: to map historical human migration patterns around the world.
Li and his team found that the Chinese people originated from early humans in East Africa who moved through South Asia to China some 100,000 years ago. He commented, “We did not see even one single individual that could be considered as a descendant of the homo erectus in China, rather, everybody was a descendant of our ancestors from Africa.”
According to Fudan University, in 2019, in recognition of his work, Li was awarded the Chen Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in Genetic and Genomic Research (2019) by the Human Genome Organization (HUGO).
Regarding his discovery, Jin Li continued, “After I saw the evidence generated in my laboratory, I think we should all be happy with that. Because after all, modern humans from different parts of the world are not so different from each other and we are very close relatives.”
Other credible sources, like this article from Medium.com entitled Ancient Chinese Secret: These 14 Phenomenal Photos Reveal There Were Indeed Black Chinese, also confirm that Black people once made up a significant portion of the population before China’s modern era.
