askchapo

That article is translated from Chinese into not only English, but like 15 other languages, so I wouldn't take People's Daily's repeated use of the word as an endorsement from somebody with full understanding of the word "ethnic" including all racial connotations and baggage in American English. It is probable that the word they translated it from doesn't have the same baggage, especially because they list Han as one of the ethnic styles she draws from, and Han is the majority ethnic group of China.

I don't think the word ethnic is in itself problematic. The problem lies in otherizing non-white cultures by lumping them together as ethnic. I rarely hear the word ethnic used to describe French or English culture. Maybe German, although that's an interesting case considering German used to be an otherized, non-white race in the US.

The abstract of this paper describes it better than I can, but Whiteness is implicitly seen as normal, default, and idealized while Blackness is lumped together "over there". And white people benefit from this, but often are either unaware of it or don't want to be. Anyway, read that essay summary because it's really informative.

Bottom line is, if you mean a particular culture, just say that specifically rather than dropping it into the bucket that contains every culture that isn't white. Because generalizing such a diverse array of non-white cultures as "ethnic" and another diverse array of white-skinned cultures as "normal" is one of the ways white supremacy is propagated.