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Strategic Consequences of Chinese Racism: Strategic Asymmetry for the USA (2013) [pdf]

85 points by gwern 10y ago

yosefk 10y ago
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.
- idra 10y ago
  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.
  - _yosefk 10y ago
    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.
    - idra 10y ago
      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.
  - dang 10y ago
    You've repeatedly been rude in the comments you've posted to HN. We ban accounts that do this, so please stop doing it. _yosefk's thoughtful, reflective comment based on personal experience is the kind we welcome here.
- dilemma 10y ago
  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.
Untit1ed 10y ago
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.
- faitswulff 10y ago
  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.
  - Animats 10y ago
    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] [1] http://www.xinhuanet.com/world/newsilkway/index.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/world/newsilkway/index.htm
andreyf 10y ago
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 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838
- gwern 10y ago
  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 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.
  - defen 10y ago
    > even universal use of IVF would not deliver more than maybe 4.5 IQ points That still doubles the number of people in your population with a 130+ IQ. Assuming baseline 100 mean and 15 std dev.
    - gwern 10y ago
      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.
brisance 10y ago
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)
LiweiZ 10y ago
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.
Redditshill 10y ago
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.
- idra 10y ago
  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.
  - Redditshill 10y ago
    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.
danbruc 10y ago
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.
- deleted 10y ago
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- ucaetano 10y ago
  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".
partycoder 10y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
hneans 10y ago
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
- Redditshill 10y ago
  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.
  - chj 10y ago
    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.
  - hneans 10y ago
    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.
    - idra 10y ago
      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.
vtange 10y ago
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.
- analyst74 10y ago
  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.
idra 10y ago
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.
- Redditshill 10y ago
  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.
- vtange 10y ago
  Agreed and edited to remove the quotes. Compared to the U.S. and Europe, China is very behind when it comes to racism.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- powerapple 10y ago
  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.
- dang 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13751036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13751036 and marked it off-topic.
giardini 10y ago
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.
padde 10y ago
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")
- blusterXY 10y ago
  spotted the english lackey! try starting a real business and see how it goes.
  - dang 10y ago
    That reads like a personal attack. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't post like this.
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  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.)
chvid 10y ago
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.
- stillsut 10y ago
  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.
- SudoNhim 10y ago
  It's from the Department of Defense litigation release a few months back. Have a look here: http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/ http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/ Most of these are anthropology reports commissioned by the DoD. A lot of them are super interesting. Examples: 2st Century Cultures of War http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20Release%20-%2021st%20Century%20Cultures%20of%20War.pdf http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20... Axis of Troubles: Male Youth and Factional Politics http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20Release%20-%20Axis%20of%20Troubles%20Male%20Youth%20Factional%20Politics%20and%20Religion%20%20200509.pdf http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20... The Future of Europe http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20Release%20-%20The%20Future%20of%20Europe-Final%20Report%20%20201304.pdf http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20... The Future of Africa and the Future of China in Africa http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20Release%20-%20The%20Future%20of%20Africa%20The%20Future%20of%20China%20in%20Africa%202035%20201406.pdf http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20...
  - 10y ago
kirashogun 10y ago
Lol oh the cultural Marxists and SJWs are out in force today. Interesting how the paper says racial solidarity is a strength of China without recognising the current divisive identity politics played out in the US as a weakness. Add some racial IQ data to this and then we will have real fireworks :)
squozzer 10y ago
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?

85 points by gwern 10y ago

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.

idra 10y ago
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.
- _yosefk 10y ago
  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.
  - idra 10y ago
    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.
- dang 10y ago
  You've repeatedly been rude in the comments you've posted to HN. We ban accounts that do this, so please stop doing it. _yosefk's thoughtful, reflective comment based on personal experience is the kind we welcome here.
dilemma 10y ago
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.

Untit1ed 10y ago

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.

faitswulff 10y ago
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.
- Animats 10y ago
  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] [1] http://www.xinhuanet.com/world/newsilkway/index.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/world/newsilkway/index.htm

andreyf 10y ago

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 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838

gwern 10y ago
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 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.
- defen 10y ago
  > even universal use of IVF would not deliver more than maybe 4.5 IQ points That still doubles the number of people in your population with a 130+ IQ. Assuming baseline 100 mean and 15 std dev.
  - gwern 10y ago
    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.

brisance 10y ago

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)

LiweiZ 10y ago

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.

Redditshill 10y ago

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.

idra 10y ago
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.
- Redditshill 10y ago
  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.

danbruc 10y ago

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.

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ucaetano 10y ago
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".

partycoder 10y ago

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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation

hneans 10y ago

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

Redditshill 10y ago
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.
- chj 10y ago
  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.
- hneans 10y ago
  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.
  - idra 10y ago
    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.

vtange 10y ago

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.

analyst74 10y ago
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.

idra 10y ago

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.

Redditshill 10y ago
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.
vtange 10y ago
Agreed and edited to remove the quotes. Compared to the U.S. and Europe, China is very behind when it comes to racism.
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powerapple 10y ago
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.
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13751036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13751036 and marked it off-topic.

giardini 10y ago

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.

padde 10y ago

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")

blusterXY 10y ago
spotted the english lackey! try starting a real business and see how it goes.
- dang 10y ago
  That reads like a personal attack. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't post like this.
rasz_pl 10y ago
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.)

chvid 10y ago

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.

stillsut 10y ago
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.
SudoNhim 10y ago
It's from the Department of Defense litigation release a few months back. Have a look here: http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/ http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/ Most of these are anthropology reports commissioned by the DoD. A lot of them are super interesting. Examples: 2st Century Cultures of War http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20Release%20-%2021st%20Century%20Cultures%20of%20War.pdf http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20... Axis of Troubles: Male Youth and Factional Politics http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20Release%20-%20Axis%20of%20Troubles%20Male%20Youth%20Factional%20Politics%20and%20Religion%20%20200509.pdf http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20... The Future of Europe http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20Release%20-%20The%20Future%20of%20Europe-Final%20Report%20%20201304.pdf http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20... The Future of Africa and the Future of China in Africa http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20Release%20-%20The%20Future%20of%20Africa%20The%20Future%20of%20China%20in%20Africa%202035%20201406.pdf http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Reading_Room/Other/Litigation%20...
- 10y ago

kirashogun 10y ago

Lol oh the cultural Marxists and SJWs are out in force today. Interesting how the paper says racial solidarity is a strength of China without recognising the current divisive identity politics played out in the US as a weakness. Add some racial IQ data to this and then we will have real fireworks :)

squozzer 10y ago

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?