I'm not so certain what they're speaking of is racism as Americans know it. It may be a form of "culturism" (where a group believes "My culture is the best.")
I have a friend who was raised in Vietnam of pure mainland Chinese parents (from the diaspora). Educated in Chinese schools (there was a huge Chinese community in Saigon where the Chinese dominated business), he spoke primarily Chinese until the age of 14. In his 14th year, Chinese schools were forced by the Vietnamese government to use the Vietnamese language in all classes, so he had to learn formal Vietnamese, and to read, write and speak Vietnamese in, say, geography class.
In summary we have an individual who
- culturally is classical Chinese,
- was born in Vietnam,
- is a naturalized US citizen,
- whose Chinese cultural habits and language date from the time of his parents' migration (circa 1920's) and are classical (non-Mandarin) Chinese,
- whose Vietnamese language and cultural skills are weaker, dating from middle school on,
- who also took English as a foreign language beginning in middle school,
- who also learned Mandarin so he could speak to his brother's new wife, a mainland Chinese woman.
Anyway, he worked in an office in the USA with mainland Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, and the usual mishmash of other Americans. Astonishingly, each of the Chinese groups, and the Vietnamese group, treated him as an outsider. With the exception of the Vietnamese, these groups tended to promote from within and to prefer their own group in inter-office politics. He went so far as, at one point, to specifically inquire into people's beliefs and was surprised to find that there was _no_ group that accepted him as a member, except the Americans! This despite the fact that everyone liked him.
Recently, for reasons unknown to me, he has become a flaming pro-mainland Chinese proponent vis-a-vis the USA, despite having no direct ties to the current Chinese culture or government. Many times I've had to point out to him that the only thing he truly is, and the only culture that truly accepts him, is "American".
I really got his goat by pointing out that he has little in common with mainland Chinese, certainly neither language nor culture, and that he is to them, culturally the equivalent of their grandfather or even great-grandfather.
I'm Chinese American. I won't claim to represent everyone and everything Chinese, here are my two cents.
China is what happens when you enclose a really big population in a box. And this box is really comfortable; you have little incentive to go outside of it. You have the company of millions of other Chinese folk, and Chinese culture and its derivatives (to this day many of us see Korea and Japan as copies of Chinese culture) can entertain us indefinitely. The average Chinese has little incentive to run off and seek interaction with other races, other bits of culture. I suspect (but might be wrong) language barriers also play a role in this.
Even today in places outside China, you can notice how Chinese will naturally gravitate toward each other into little "bubble" communities. The fact that there are just so many of us makes this very easy. I know other cultures do this as well, but like I said, we have the population advantage.
Chinese are racist because we have very limited experience with other, non-East Asian cultures. Oftentimes you will see Chinese follow straightforward stereotypes regarding ethnicity. For example, Chinese attitudes toward blacks easily stem from what they see in the news or media (Movies, crime reports, etc.). Confirmation bias does play a bit in here: Chinese culture already has a pretty simple ideal in which darker-skinned people are unfortunately shafted and considered undesirable.
When it comes to history, Chinese people again suffer from the box-syndrome - many are proud and fervently study Chinese history, and thus barely scrape the surface of world history. My immigrant father could recite many Chinese emperors by name, but knows nothing about American, European, even Japanese history (except WW2, of course). One thing I found interesting was that my dad is totally fine describing the brutality of ancient and medieval Chinese rulers, but as we get closer to the present, the spotlight turns to Japan and then things get quieter. Even today he watches media pretty much exclusively on Chinese apps - no Youtube, etc. I can tell there's so much there for him, he has no incentive to look elsewhere.
And then these students tell me that in China what they did wouldn't be considered cheating. And then they come to work as graduate students and visiting scholars, and tell me that what they did wouldn't be considered violations of academic integrity.
You are so wrong. I am a hong king "chinese". I would say your way of thinking is what causing a lot of trouble.
You says chinese is one race. You mean Hans. If not we are not of one race. You cannot have your culture hans and fighting Mongolian, tibetian, manuchuain ... all your thousand of years literally. Then suddenly they are chinese because in the last 100 years someone decided to occupy these people's land then they are chinese.
What is china? Heard of Great Wall. Why is there a Great Wall. Has the Qing emperor thought the Hans are not enemy to be killed and contained.
We may say you are European. But let us not kid ourselves when thing boiled down you are english, French, ...
We may say we are Soviet Union. Brotherhood ...
And these we are chinese under communism is shameful.
There are more than politics. But killing culture, suppressing people, ... I am ashame to be associated with this gang.
I know more than you, I love my poems from tong down to mao. I share my many dreams that one day we will kick this communist ass out and we will ....
But who are we. That is a question.
As to chinese minge with their own. Do you know all chinese education now has a foregein language and also most top guys descendent run. They do not feel comfortable with each other over there. Or here.
Btw, Korea and japan may get a bit from us. But like china people copy apple to make little rice does not mean they are American. A lot of our vocabulary is coming from japan. Chinese do not have the word for society.
We are all human. At least for now (well we are in the hacker group). We do not deny our heritage. But not recognise who you are ... you love nazi because you are germany, do you?
Let us be human first. And do not look at a black face and then say he is africn American. He is human first. He may come from a part of Africa you do not know. But do not think first he is an African.
> You says chinese is one race. You mean Hans. If not we are not of one race. You cannot have your culture hans and fighting Mongolian, tibetian, manuchuain ... all your thousand of years literally. Then suddenly they are chinese because in the last 100 years someone decided to occupy these people's land then they are chinese.
That's pretty close to what happened in most European countries too. French, Italian and German only became unified cultures 100-200 years ago, based on the dominant culture of the rulers, I wouldn't expect China to be any different.
Agreed. China is imho very diverse. Not as diverse as India, but certainly more than neighbouring nations. The government just don't like to admit it, instead promoting an image of unity in all things.
About your last point, I think that is slowly improving, with more black athletes and business people living in China, racism against black people is probably subsiding, especially in bigger cities and among sports fans.
Hopefully, as more Chinese traveling overseas, and China attracting more foreigners into the country, local populace are exposed to more diversity, and start to form their own opinions based on personal experiences instead of biased media reporting and hollywood.
I think your comment is somewhat removing agency – and therefore responsibility – from your fellow Chinese. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but you seems to imply that China's attitude toward black people is white people's fault. However China's history is not devoid of ethnic and cultural issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_issues_in_China But I appreciate reading an 'insider' point of view.
> Chinese are racist because we have very limited experience with other, non-East Asian cultures.
I disagree with the assertion that Chinese are racist. You will never see a restaurant in China that says "No ---- and dogs" except in early 20th century Shanghai. I agree that Chinese are usually less sensitive about racial topics. They will carelessly call a foreigner "洋鬼子", but that's as bad as "Yankee" goes IMHO.
I've heard that in US Chinese guys usually date Chinese girls. But really can we blame that they are racists?
> When it comes to history, Chinese people again suffer from the box-syndrome - many are proud and fervently study Chinese history, and thus barely scrape the surface of world history.
Disagree again. If you really study Chinese history, you won't find much pride there.
> Very poorly chosen example, because "No Japanese and dogs" signs are incredibly common across China
Funny you should mention that. The relation between two people is actually quite friendly except political occasions. Also the Japanese hate is due to the world war 2, not racial. In fact we are one race.
> "洋鬼子" literally means "foreign devil".
'devil' is a strong word. It's more like 'foreign strange men'.
not really. Translation doesn't work that way. I think you can translate that into "foreign foxy man". Probably from the time westerns did business in China. I don't know for sure. But translation doesn't work that way. Sometimes you just cannot translate a word from one language to another. Especially names. It is a culture thing.
I know very little about China, but the report mentions in passing that racism is pervasive in Russia where I was born, whereas Western societies have done a remarkable job addressing racism.
It is not obvious to me that the American approach of racial quotas in high education (which incidentally penalizes Asians very heavily today, perhaps more than any other group) is particularly different from the Soviet approach of racial quotas in high education (which to some degree penalized ethnic Russians by reserving spots for people from the other "republics", and heavily penalized students from "overrepresented" minorities, quite similarly to penalizing whites somewhat and Asians more heavily in today's US.) It doesn't seem different from Israel's affirmative action where Arabs get preferential treatment at the expense of Jews, either. Perhaps it seems reasonable to some to blame Chinese for not having racial quotas which supposedly "address" racism, but especially since Asian Americans get heavily penalized in the scheme, it's hard to respond to an argument from a Chinese person that the scheme doesn't address racism but institutionalizes it.
Nor is it obvious to me whether the average Westerner of any particular group is more or less racist than a citizen of Russia, including both ethnic Russians and those who are not. It's fairly obvious that the Westerner might be more reserved in expressing racist views, fearing repercussions, although at other times the Westerner will actually be very loudly racist if it is currently in vogue to be racist against this particular race (right now anti-white sentiment is celebrated, which, whatever its reasons, will surely produce terrible results; the broader point is that it's not obvious that being racist against one race at one time is fundamentally different than being racist against another at another time, and even if we agree that it's done for very different reasons, it does not follow that it will produce very different results.)
I'm not saying that Russian attitudes toward race are the same as Western attitudes, just that the report's claims about the Russian society and the Western societies which I kinda sorta know things about (though it's hard to summarize millions of people very precisely or to inform oneself about them fully in the first place) make me suspicious with respect to its main topics, Chinese attitudes to race. It would be interesting (though not necessarily representative of the entire Chinese population) to hear Chinese people weigh in on this.
> I know very little about China, but the report mentions in passing that racism is pervasive in Russia where I was born,
whereas Western societies have done a remarkable job addressing racism.
I don't think that the report is saying "China is racist and we aren't." It's saying that the difference between the US and China is that the US struggles with its racism whereas China doesn't. Or, at the very least, that this is a defensible enough narrative that it could form the basis for US messaging on the issue of racism in international diplomacy.
> It is not obvious to me that the American approach of racial quotas in high education...
I think you may've missed the author's main point wrt Affirmative Action.
The only reason that Affirmative Action is even discussed in this report is because this is one of China's lines of offense.
The party will point to affirmative action and immigration quotas on Chinese as examples that prove the US is a racist society.
But the author's thesis is that the party's actual interest is in turning Chinese citizens against the US, not in proving their moral superiority to the US, and especially not in beating out the US on the racial equality front (witness: fucking eugenics...).
In other words, they have no qualms with racism -- only with racism against Han Chinese. And their focus on affirmative action (as opposed to Jim Crow or the highly racialized impacts of the WoD) betray this fact.
There are still people alive who fucking lived through Jim Crow.
The implementation of the War on Drugs is multi-decade all-but-overtly racist monstrosity.
So the US is far from guiltless, especially today. But Affirmative Action is somewhere near the mid-bottom, not the top, of a long list of very serious problems deeply rooted in racism.
Focusing on it to the exclusion of these other issues -- while at the same time embracing fucking eugenics -- belies a disinterest in actual anti-racism.
That is the author's point.
> It doesn't seem different from Israel's affirmative action where Arabs get preferential treatment at the expense of Jews, either.
On a similar note... Yes, clearly the exemplar of racism in Israeli politicsis preferential treatment afforded to Arabs at the expense of jews in college admissions processes! /s
I get that you're just discussing affirmative action. But if China wanted to truly critique western racism via Israel, affirmative action for Arabs would be a truly mind-boggling place from which to mount that critique.
Unless they didn't actually give a shit about racism and just wanted to demonize the US on the basis of a policy that happens to harm Han Chinese, that is...
> Perhaps it seems reasonable to some to blame Chinese for not having racial quotas which supposedly "address" racism
Again, the Affirmative Action stuff is really about how China frames its critique of the US to appeal to contemporary Han Chinese.
Not an actual discussion of the prevelance of racism in either society.
By contrast, it seems entirely reasonable for the author to point out stuff like ongoing 50's style racially-driven eugenics programs that were started in the mid-90's as evidence of ongoing racism in Chinese policy-making.
> Nor is it obvious to me whether the average Westerner of any particular group is more or less racist than a citizen of Russia, including both ethnic Russians and those who are not.
Indeed. Which is why the author identifies legal protections and cultural norms, and devotes an entire section to rejecting any hypotheses about differences in underlying psychology.
> They have no qualms with racism -- only with racism against Han Chinese.
> Affirmative Action is somewhere near the mid-bottom, not the top, of a long list of very serious problems deeply rooted in racism.
To you the fact that there are still black people who lived through Jim Crow matters more than the fact that there are Asians today who are turned down by high education institutions because of their race. Why can't a Chinese person tell you that you have no qualms with racism - only with racism against black people?
It seems to be a common viewpoint in the West that the response to racism is a hierarchy of grievances, and that for example a white person who supports preferential treatment of black people at the expense of Asians is not a racist, either because "racism" is defined to mean "disagreeing with the hierarchy of grievances", or simply because it's only "racism" when you're trying to get preferential treatment for your own race, but it's not "racism" if it's for another race. This is not however the only possible definition of racism, nor the original definition, nor the definition used in the report.
BTW I'm not sure whether a 100% color blind policy is always the best thing or not, and perhaps it depends on context. I'm just saying that I think it's a much thornier subject than people with (many different) strong positions seem to believe.
> To you the fact that there are still black people who lived through Jim Crow matters more than the fact that there are Asians today who are turned down by high education institutions because of their race.
Yes. Absolutely.
The structural effects of 200 years of overtly racialized legal frameworks did not magically disappear with Brown v. Board. To claim that Jim Crow doesn't reverberate today in very concrete ways for millions of minorities in the US is ignorant beyond reason. And I even mentioned one concrete way that they reverberate today that is unimaginably worse than Affirmative Action (WoD).
> Why can't a Chinese person tell you that you have no qualms with racism - only with racism against black people?
Well first they'd have to determine if I support Affirmative Action...
> ...hierarchy of grievances... This is not however the only possible definition of racism, nor the original definition, nor the definition used in the report.
This discussion is about what the Chinese government chooses to emphasize. So context and degree both matter, because if China were truly critiquing racism then they'd choose the strongest argument available.
More than 3,000 Chinese-Americans showed up at
New York City Hall in March 2015 to support Liang.
Thousands walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to
Manhattan's Chinatown in April, feeling that Liang
was being used as a scapegoat, and demanded the
charges to be dropped, as other, white police officers
were previously not charged.
And earlier today I read the following excerpt from the press conference of Sunayana Dumala, the widow of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, the Indian man shot dead at Kansas.
"I was told that that guy very proudly went to another bar
and told that he shot two Muslim guys. How did he decide
that by the color of a person? Does the color of the person
state that he is a Muslim, a Hindu or a Christian? No. So
how did that guy decide that?"
Apparently, the grievance seems to be that Srinivas Kuchibhotla is not Muslim, but was mistook to be one unfairly based on his complexion.
The "mention" is one sentence: "Racism is common at every
level of Russian society and is at times explicitly voiced in Russia." This is true. How can this possibly make you suspicious about the article's main topics? You wrote a lot about nothing.
In itself, this single sentence is true about every country on Earth; what gives it meaning is the context where it's followed by heaps of praise of Western racial policies, the positive example against Russia's and others' negative examples. I think it is relevant that this contrast does not quite make sense. If you allow yourself to smear a society of 140 million people in a single sentence, perhaps your hundreds of pages summarizing a society 10x as large is also a bit of a smear.
BTW, from a brief glance at your comment history, most appear to have a strong anti-Chinese sentiment. I think that if you want to argue that the report is largely correct, it will be more interesting if you elaborate on that instead of talking about whatever I said in the grandparent comment.
Those hundreds of pages have examples, references and sources. The section with this sentence doesn't single out Russia, the previous sentence is about South Asia, and the next one talks about Latin America. These are the things which are contrasted, and not Russia and "the West". I can see how, as a Russian, this sentence might have hurt your feelings and prevented you from understanding the article objectively, but it looks like you're seeing an issue where there's none.
The accusation of racism in another nation or culture is often a symptom of racism and ignorance in the accuser.
I.e. A western person claiming Russia or China to be racist and sexist (based on nothing else than that "everyone knows that") shows that this western is themself a racist because they hold prejudice views against hundreds of millions, or billions, of people of a certain ethnic background.
Very long read. TBH I only read the beginning and end carefully, and skimmed through the middle...200? pages.
What really stuck out to me was this line that explains how racism benefits the Chinese government:
"First, the Han Chinese possess a strong in group
identity with a polarized and tightly defined out group. This allows the Chinese government to expect sacrifice and as well as support from the considerable majority of the Chinese people."
Perhaps a lot of these attitudes come from how in many Chinese people's eyes, their golden years were when they had very little outside influence and were able to invent some of the most useful inventions in human history (compass, paper, gunpowder). From the time that they have mixed with the West, they have had some very negative experiences, (as the report brings up, the Opium wars, burning of the palace). Perhaps their attitudes will change slowly now. In my experiences, racism is something that is slowly taught/instilled, and so I don't expect any easy reversal.
These attitudes are a direct consequence of government propaganda, and what you've described as "golden years" and "negative experiences" are pretty much the de facto spin on history spread by the Chinese state media and education system.
The ironic thing is that the exact opposite situation happened as recently as in the last 50 years. China closed itself again to have "little outside influences" and started the Cultural Revolution, which destroyed millions of lives, irreparably damaged Chinese society, and set the country back in cognitive and cultural development for several centuries. And it was foreign investment that lifted China out of severe chaos and poverty after Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening Up.
Those are valid points, and I admit that having close Chinese friends have probably biased my thinking on this a bit. I still believe in my main point of the Chinese needing some time/exposure to the West in order to truly change their mindset towards the West.
As a person who has lived in China for nearly a decade, I have experienced racism first hand there. But actually it was, 99% of the time, racism that favored my white skin. Wherever I (or any other white foreigner I know) went, I had instant respect and was admired, without having to do anything to earn that respect. Why does the article, which seems well-researched, not mention this phenomenon at all?
(Or maybe I've missed it, I've only read the summary and a few paragraphs that contained the term "white")
You were admired the same way people admire iphones or European supercars. Great to have a token white guy for random photo op, but dont count on getting real job or any kind of power/control (like being able to create a company etc.)
There is a Chinese diaspora that fled famines and wars to many parts of the world, and the current generations no longer identify with the mainland Chinese. In fact there is a strong resentment for mainland Chinese in many parts of the world where there are significant overseas Chinese precisely because of the qualities laid out in the paper (i.e. racist attitudes, overbearing smugness from the nouveau rich etc)
I don't think group conflict is a very well solved problem. I don't think we are able to achieve that, either. What I can see is when there is a group conflict, after the extra energy is vented, and the groups involved are still there, they look for mutual interests and fall back to that base and go from there. Race issue is one big example of this. We do have some system works better than others. But putting it into a bottle with absolute right mark on it may not be the best way to go under current situation.
I'm probably biased since I'm Chinese. I agree with most part of this report. The author did a lot of good homework. But I think his thoughts to work out those strategies need some update to better fit in the world today and tomorrow. There are similar parts and there are different parts.
Interesting how often the perceived racial equality of the USA comes up as an advantage over China in terms of their perception in the developing world - I wonder if the policies of the Trump administration are in the process of tipping that balance the other way.
Agreed. Trump and America in recent years are doing major damage to USA's soft-power advantages over China with respects to racism and racial equality:
> Fourth, the message of the United States should be: We are better than the Chinese for Africa. We will assist you with economic aid to offset what you receive from China. In sum, culturally, socially, and politically, the United States is better, citizens are equal, racial equality, and civil rights are recognized.
The message of the Chinese government to third world governments is "we're not going to try to change your government". They get along with the Islamic world and various oppressive regimes in Africa that way. The US is always nagging about human rights and corruption.
Meanwhile, China is building railroads from China to Europe.[1]
I find it odd to that this document is on the frontpage of HN.
200+ pages, no clear summary, unclear what it is it? Other than appearantly it is confidential who has written it, seemingly academic and it is about Chinese and/or China being racists.
Where is this document from? And why was it written?
"Racist" is probably the most damning word that one can use in politics (here international politics) and can be used justify a great deal of wrong doing.
I upvoted you because you're raising some important points.
To play advocate for keeping it unflagged:
- domain of gwern.net is a respected source here; even his zanier points get the benefit of the doubt
- China's future is hugely significant for the future of tech.
- The document is not in any way a fluff piece, a "submarine", or pure anecdote.
- ism's are discussed almost daily here in a domestic context.
Also surprising to many westerners is the extent to which Chine encourages and provides the opportunity for folks to volunteer for a eugenics programs: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838
Miller overstates his case. Aside from the total failure of the mentioned BGI project and it being beaten to the punch by the first IQ GWAS hits being released by the Western SSGAC consortium that very year (Rietveld et al 2013), Westerners practice a good deal of that 'Chinese eugenics' (look at Down rates, assortative mating, fertility rates by education level, and the practices of sperm & egg banks), and his (and Lynn's) estimate of the benefits of embryo selection of being 5-15 IQ points is considerably off because the upper bound set by heritability & average number of embryos in IVF is ~9 points and then half of them are lost to various steps, so even universal use of IVF would not deliver more than maybe 4.5 IQ points (see https://www.gwern.net/Embryo%20selection for my more detailed analysis of limits). I don't expect Chinese women to use IVF much more than Western women - there are limits to the tiger mother thing. (CRISPR, likewise, is greatly overrated.) The real discontinuous changes would come from technologies further down the pipeline: induced pluripotency to allow creation of hundreds of embryos to select from, iterated embryo selection, and genome synthesis.
Sure (I include a table of the consequences on the tail for various scenarios), but consider that the Chinese population is already more than twice the size of the US population and available measurements suggest it may have a higher starting mean as well, but that has not had a huge impact. Why would another doubling be expected to? (The US could probably easily double its 130+ numbers if it wanted to just by changing immigration policies.) At the very least, it can't be expected to have the impact of anything like an IES/synthesis scenario where the gains would be anywhere upwards of +100 points.
Oh yeah, a gain of +100 points is just insane and it would be difficult to predict what that society would even be like. I was just trying to suggest that +4.5 to the mean might also have potentially big effects.
As for why China isn't farther ahead - IQ isn't everything. They modernized pretty late in the game, and operated under a profoundly stupid economic system for a good part of the 20th century. I believe that their current government is pretty corrupt, but I'm far from an expert.
If one substitutes United States for China and fixes geographical references, there still seems to be some truth in those statements, at least as far as I can tell from my outside perspective. One could probably also substitute still other countries or sometimes the West in general and still get some true statements.
In Chinese history and contemporary culture, the Chinese are seen to be unique and superior to the rest of the world. Other peoples and groups are seen to be inferior, with a sliding scale of inferiority.
The Chinese commonly believe that they are cleverer than others, and so may shape events in an oblique manner or through shi [势], the strategic manipulation of events. This conceit among the Chinese that they can manipulate others is supremely dangerous for Asian stability.
An overconfident China will continue to make the mistakes it is presently in the South China or East China Sea disputes. That is, making threats, issuing demands, heavy-handed shows of force, are generated by China’s overconfidence.
Analysts do have insight into how China will behave in the future based on its behavior in the past, when it was the hegemon of Asia, the known world as far as China was concerned. China sees itself as the center of the universe, all others are inferior, with varying degrees of inferiority. That is not an attractive model
of winning allies and influence.
In contrast, China portrays itself as an apolitical rising superpower that does business in your country, pays a fair price for your commodities, and builds your infrastructure with no string attached.
There often is considerable resentment toward the Chinese due to their ruthless business practices, which undercut and destroy African businesses.
My controversial 2 cents, which might be very wrong:
There is a major difference between the two countries: China sees itself as a single "people", in the sense that there is a clear dominating national identity linked to a certain culture and ethnicity, similar to other old world countries in the past century (some of which are still like that).
The US in this sense is closer to other "new world" countries, with a national identity not clearly tied to an ethnicity. Sure, there are groups who try to make the US a more homogeneous country (and not by intermixing to oblivion), but the US identity is largely multi-cultural and multi-ethnic.
So the Chinese who move to the US eventually become Americans, but Americans who move to China will never become Chinese. For China there's no cultural assimilation, no integration, no coexistence. There's not even "separate but equal", because there's no "equal".
I was not so much aiming at the racism point, there I would - if the paper correctly characterizes China - side with the author and say that the West is on a much better path to deal with the issue.
But you still have American exceptionalism, the desire to spread western values like democracy, individual freedom and capitalism, being the world police, interference with other countries and so.
I mean it is somewhat understandable, if you believe in something, then you have to almost by definition assume that it is true and better than the alternatives. On the other hand you can also be more restrained r modest, you can believe in something but still avoid trying to force it onto everyone else.
Not sure I would call it racism. Ethnocentrism, as others have said, born of centuries of relative isolation and periods of significant cultural and technological advances.
Not sure if USA can exploit negative perceptions of China, given our history and the histories of other white-dominated nations (e.g. GB and France) in Africa and Latin America.
For all we know, the Third World might not mind at all seeing the West taken down a peg, especially if they see no change in their status. But even if things go worse for the TW because of China, what can they do about it?
Although I mostly agree with your comment, I find the subtext of it (and especially the fact that you had to put "racism" in quotes, as if Chinese prejudice towards other races isn't actually racism) quite distasteful. Racism is racism, and "limited experience with other cultures" isn't an excuse for it.
Update: I see you've reworded your post and removed the quotation marks, I appreciate it.
I agree that racism is racism, but there is a clear distinction for me between having certain preconceptions about people you've never met before versus having heavy bias against people that you encounter on an every day basis (thus heavily supporting a confirmation bias). Is one better than the other? I'm not going to try to argue that but I think it's necessary to distinguish between the two in order to better understand who you are dealing with.
What is racism? Would you consider a shy person's attitude towards others racism? Would you consider a cat's attitude to a dog racism? Would you consider people from a remote village who never saw any other people in their life staring at new person racism? Would you consider a tribe in amazon shooting darts to intruders racism? People are naturally insecure, and these insecurity will lead them to behave un-socially in many ways. We are all born racists, that's how our instincts keep us alive. We feel safe towards "familiar" faces.
Empires need a reason for expanding. If the inside is the same as the outside, there is absolutely no reason at all for the empire to expand or to exist at all. Most imperialistic nations also come with a nationalistic sense of exceptionalism.
While the Chinese might have a sense of exceptionalism, Americans also do, as well as many other countries.
The Chinese have objectively received many humiliations historically and it is understandable if they do not feel good about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
Chinese people have been discriminated against for so many years since 1840s, yes, we Chinese people are racists, please keep a distance with China. Do not let China be infected by political correctness and "holy war". When extremists attack your noble Westerners, they are terrorists, but when they attack the Chinese people they become "freedom fighters". interesting, lol
From my comments earlier in the thread it's pretty clear that I understand why many Chinese have the viewpoint that outside influence is bad. However, I think your viewpoint is way too extreme. China isn't some passive country now that is just sitting around being attacked by extremists/freedom fighters, but China is actively making aggressive moves towards many other countries. For example, China has threatened Taiwan many times, which is completely unacceptable in my eyes.
You need to understand that situation is changing rapidly. Many Taiwanese live happily on mainland China, and have a lot of mainland friends. They even enjoy a lot of privileges that ordinary Chinese people can't have, simply because of they are Tai-Relatives.
yes, my viewpoint is way too extreme, I just comment about Westerners' hypocrisy as the way some of Westerners did to China people. Threantened Taiwan? lol, Please find out the economic data of China-Taiwan trade, China maintains trade deficit with Taiwan, but maintains trade surplus for most countries, including the United States, Japan, and EU. And I hope you can figure out how the Taiwanese are treated in mainland(China). By the way, Taiwan is the part of China(ROC), Taiwan is part of China, which is recognized by the UN. It's a matter of internal affairs.
Taiwan (The Republic of China) is an independent country with its own government, currency and international relations. Any deals between Mainland China and Taiwan are international affairs.
I'm not sure how you define threaten, but I think that firing missiles over the island during election season (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Taiwan_Strait_Crisis) definitely counts as a threatening act. China has made so many threats about taking back Taiwan by force that I don't know how anybody could miss it. It's one thing to think that ROC is part of PRC (it's not), but it's another level of stubbornness to think that Taiwan is not threatened by Mainland China.
lol, You think the missiles are aimed at Taiwan, so it is. Interesting. Have mainland boarded the island of Taiwan？ NO.
Have the North invade The South? Yes.
Exactly -- any claim that mainland China (PRC) has over Taiwan (ROC), Taiwan could make that same claim over China. We don't see the US making a claim that UK is part of the US, it's simply ridiculous.
I have a friend who was raised in Vietnam of pure mainland Chinese parents (from the diaspora). Educated in Chinese schools (there was a huge Chinese community in Saigon where the Chinese dominated business), he spoke primarily Chinese until the age of 14. In his 14th year, Chinese schools were forced by the Vietnamese government to use the Vietnamese language in all classes, so he had to learn formal Vietnamese, and to read, write and speak Vietnamese in, say, geography class.
In summary we have an individual who
- culturally is classical Chinese,
- was born in Vietnam,
- is a naturalized US citizen,
- whose Chinese cultural habits and language date from the time of his parents' migration (circa 1920's) and are classical (non-Mandarin) Chinese,
- whose Vietnamese language and cultural skills are weaker, dating from middle school on,
- who also took English as a foreign language beginning in middle school,
- who also learned Mandarin so he could speak to his brother's new wife, a mainland Chinese woman.
Anyway, he worked in an office in the USA with mainland Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, and the usual mishmash of other Americans. Astonishingly, each of the Chinese groups, and the Vietnamese group, treated him as an outsider. With the exception of the Vietnamese, these groups tended to promote from within and to prefer their own group in inter-office politics. He went so far as, at one point, to specifically inquire into people's beliefs and was surprised to find that there was _no_ group that accepted him as a member, except the Americans! This despite the fact that everyone liked him.
Recently, for reasons unknown to me, he has become a flaming pro-mainland Chinese proponent vis-a-vis the USA, despite having no direct ties to the current Chinese culture or government. Many times I've had to point out to him that the only thing he truly is, and the only culture that truly accepts him, is "American".
I really got his goat by pointing out that he has little in common with mainland Chinese, certainly neither language nor culture, and that he is to them, culturally the equivalent of their grandfather or even great-grandfather.