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I would have. English is a frankenstein language, adopting words from all sorts of different languages. Kowtow means what it means in English, it's a perfectly

I would have. English is a frankenstein language, adopting words from all sorts of different languages. Kowtow means what it means in English, it's a perfectly reasonable word to have used there. I tried really hard to see if this wasn't the case, but the consensus across the web seems to align with this SO post: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/314900/does-kowtow-have-racist-connotations https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/314900/does-kowt... IMO, he was being downvoted because this particular instance is just as much a show of kowtowing to the US government as the Chinese government.

jonnycomputer 5y ago
The accepted answer reads, "In light of all this, the fuller answer is that because the term is recognisably ethnic, using kowtow instead of (say) grovel does carry some racist overtones, particularly when applied to someone interacting with a person of a different ethnicity."