This song was written by Bowie together with Iggy Pop, and first came out in 1977 in the album The Idiot. At the time it didn't sell very well, but became much more famous in 1983, when Bowie recorded it on his new album, Let's Dance.

The song was written while Bowie and Iggy were in Berlin. There are a lot of ideas as to what the lyrics are about. They have been seen as an attack on 'westernising' of an Asian culture, but could also refer to drug use as 'China White' is a slang term for heroin. As with most good songs, it probably has several meanings, so both these ideas could be true.

One of David Bowie's biographers also believes that the song is about a Vietnamese woman, Kuelan Nguyen, whom Iggy Pop fell in love with in France but who was with someone else at the time.