A couple of things:

This is nice thinking, but when you have visible minorities this becomes difficult, especially when these visible minorities as a group have difference behaviour traits that can be noticed by the average person, thus creating this Other.

This applies to black-white performance inequalities. I don’t see how this would apply to Asian-white discrepancies.

In the utopian world, everyone would see themselves as part of one human race and there would be a meritocracy which would ensure the optimum functioning of society, a society that works for all its members.

This is overly hyperbolic. The Asian-White distinction remains unnecessary. For example, I’ve seen Chinese get along better with Russians, than Japanese; that same Russian would be less welcome at a dinner of Frenchmen, than a Japanese. Would you disagree?

This is very well-written.

By my way of thinking, the West’s venal elites seem to be a reflection of the more competitive nature of Europeans both individually and in their nation states…The elite in the West (Wall Street and the corporate/ political nexus (as VP, Biden went there with his son, who got a billion of Chinese money to invest) were benefiting from globalised interdependent hypercapitalism, and those without a college degree were not. So I don’t think the economic disengagement (Huawei, TickTock) and rising military tension between the US and China is a top down thing.

It is mainly a top down thing, precisely for the reason you describe here.

Competitive, individualist elites care about relative, not absolute, status. China’s continuing rise is not threatening the absolute figures in their bank accounts, but it is beginning to threaten their relative status as top dogs on the global stage. Status wise, being a Wall St., Silicon Valley, US government or foreign policy establishment elite has meant being on the top in relative status in the world by virtue of the US being on top in the world.

US elites were and are fine with China being a low cost manufacturing destination for them that increased their absolute wealth and maintained their relative status. But Chinese competition is now threatening their relative status. China’s attempt to move up the value chain and strengthen its state political, diplomatic, military power threatens US elites’ relative status. Wealthy individual Chinese buying desirable property and engaging in luxury consumption in the US threatens their relative status. Wealthy and or ambitious Chinese students compete with US elite children for limited coveted spots at elite US universities and careers. The extreme lengths that US upper middle/upper class elite parents go to in order to get their children spots at elite universities as revealed in the recent college admissions scandals reveal their intense desire and willingness to cling to their relative status and the pressures on it from Chinese competition. Silicon Valley has enjoyed a monopoly on the global tech sector with negligible competition from Europe and Japan. China’s recent and increasing success and competition in this sector through companies like Huawei and TikTok have distressed many Silicon Valley elites.

The working and lower class is inherently wary and hostile to China simply by virtue of it being an alien race and civilization. China’s success or competition does not have much of an effect on these reflexively hostile and jingoistic attitudes. China could be poor, autarkic, with no trade with the US, like North Korea, and the working/lower class would still be hostile to it all the same. Because of adherence to PC and more cosmopolitan norms, contemporary US elites cannot express or frame their attitudes to China in basic racial or civilizational terms.

Another aspect to US elite behavior, besides differences in individualism vs. collectivism, is that the US population is much more heterogeneous, which results in less solidarity and greater spiteful behavior.

Perhaps someone with industry experience can elaborate on this, but I read somewhere that the real reason why old media really started to rot without anyone noticing is that their legacy monetization model become technologically obsolete. No grand conspiracy or anything. They just need to make money to continue to exist and servicing the rich (as opposed to charging for papers) is how they do so.

I’m too young to really know what mainstream publications were like before the internet but the impression I get is that the New York Times and Washington Post were (more) legitimate sources of information 30 years ago. Many Boomers seems oblivious to all this.

What does being a WASP have to do with this?

This is such a terrible comment that I think it’s actually a pro-China bot.

*Gentile whites

You are confusing a general negative perception of China with being a sinophobe. A little bit of nuance is needed here. The former is simply a vague feeling of threat whereas the latter is to be against everything China stands for from the very core of your being.

The average american (and I stress average) is indeed feeling threatened – by the job losses, by the military tensions and mainly by the idea that America is losing her undisputed grip over the world but very few of them are actually against what China IS. Mostly because a) they don’t know and b) even if they do know they simply don’t have the time or energy to care. They may spout this and that about ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’ or ‘authoritarianism’ but it’s very clear they don’t really have a clue of what they’re talking about and are just parroting MSM talking points to sound informed. What they’re actually attacking isn’t China, but a collection of the worst traits of the USA projected onto a mental construct that they have labelled ‘China’ in their mind. So yes, as an outsider seeing others smear your nation with the ills and evils of their own country is unfair and quite franky, frustrating. But it helps to realize they’re simply making the best of a bad situation. It also helps to realize in the end they’re all powerless anyway.

The average Republican, you will find, are actually conditional china haters. If you listen to their complaints and filter out the anti-Obama/Clinton diatribes (which are quite valid btw), you will find that their gripe is almost exclusively due to the fact that their dominance is being challenged. This is very evident where if you push back even a tiny bit they will very quickly turn to material like ‘nuke chyna’, their infantile reverence of their battle carrier groups or try and bring up Japan/WW2, Korea/Vietnam war about how they/Japan shot and killed your countrymen by the thousands. Because to them, they don’t give a flying fig about ‘the rejuvenation of the downtrodden people of China’, because that’s fag talk. Dominance is everything and to them, geopolitics is analogous to two alpha males sizing each other up right before a drunken barfight.
This isn’t sinophobia and will be the same if you swap out China for Guatemala, Chile or Japan. The result will be the same. Of course the whole “Communism” thing seems like a convenient bugbear, but it’s simply schelling point for their base to rally around. Otherwise you will see the exact same hate for countries like Vietnam, or Laos or Cuba, but you just … don’t.

Liberals, however DO HATE what China is/has become/always was. Because in their mind the chinese shared their dream of a homosexual/multicultural paradise due to that ‘communist’ label. That facade that has protected China for decades is quickly slipping and the libs are waking up to china’s ‘betrayal’. They’re discovering for the first time that China always was and will be a reactionary place. For the liberal true believers, this is fundamentally what the Uighurs/HK and the whole nauseating talk about ‘shared values’ is about.
This is why I agreed with Cho’s assessment. The liberals are the real enemy, because they fundamentally want to change what China IS.

Third party independents aka libertarians fall under the money making guys Cho was talking about earlier. All the low hanging fruit has been picked so now they’re sad. Fuck ’em.

Of course, over a long enough period negative perceptions can harden into a sort of a phobia for a percentage of the population, i.e. the Russians or the Arabs, but we have not reached that point yet. 10-5 years from now, that may change. But if you feel that any criticism of China warrants that person being labelled a sinophobe, regardless of whether that stance is taken due to material insecurity or genuine sino-hatred, you are fundamentally doing more harm than good. People need to vent, and talking smack on the internet hurts noone, In fact it helps China in the long run by channeling negative energy away from doing productive things, lessening the competition. Taking away this avenue of expression will in fact hurt you as they will likely channel that energy into actual concrete action.

being Black and Japanese challenges long-held beliefs about Japan as monoethnic.

Only in today’s world could an article come to this conclusion while simultaneously acknowledging that Naomi doesn’t feel quite Japanese. Seriously?

This nonsense persists because there are no real Japanese people in the West and most Westerners will never know the cultural baseline for someone “Japanese” . This is much more the case for Japanese than for Chinese or Koreans. Whenever a hot button issue regarding China comes up (ex. Hong Kong), there is at least an appreciable however marginalized, group of mainland-educated English-speaking Chinese willing to provide a second opinion and anchor the discourse. They ultimately have no voice in public opinion, but you can at least talk to them in private. But there is no such Japanese equivalent. It is simply impossible to find something that resembles an authentic Japanese here because those types wouldn’t come to America right now, much less from a place like Japan.

To observe this phenomenon, try eating Japanese food in the United States (you can’t). Most supposedly Japanese restaurants are owned by Chinese or Koreans intentionally catering to an audience that views all yellow people the same. The reality is that the type of person that could actually make authentic Japanese food couldn’t be bothered to uproot himself to live in what is increasingly a third world-pit. But people here know no better.

being Black and Japanese challenges long-held beliefs about Japan as monoethnic.

Only in today’s world could an article come to this conclusion while simultaneously acknowledging that Naomi doesn’t feel quite Japanese. Seriously?

This nonsense persists because there are no real Japanese people in the West and most Westerners will never know the cultural baseline for someone “Japanese” . Whereas there are plenty of native Chinese and Koreans that migrate to America out of material acquisitiveness, Japanese are not as motivated to do so and given developed Japan have no reason to do so.

To observe this phenomenon, simply try eating Japanese food in the United States (you can’t). Most supposedly Japanese restaurants are owned by Chinese or Koreans who are intentionally catering to an audience that views all yellow people the same. The reality is that the type of person that could actually make authentic Japanese food couldn’t be bothered to uproot himself to live in what is increasingly a third world-pit.

He’s not wrong. The average middle class white citizen has no knowledge of and no desire to know more of the entity known as ‘China’. The idea that the west is filled with back to back sinophobes is just a fantasy, and not a constructive one. They may harbor illusions like it would be better if China were ‘democratic’, but ultimately it is not a pertinent concern to them.

Reddit, twitter and online comment sections are not substitutes for reality. Do not make the same mistake as the haters and fall to projection.

4) You completely leave out white people living in the west. These white people can be liberal or conservative. But they are mainly characterized by the fear that China is getting ahead and the west is declining.

This fall within number #2 and #3 within my post. Other than that, people without a desire to make money off China or wish to see China change don’t really care about the place, frankly.

I hope you’re right.

Comments like these illustrate that many people here seem to not understand how elite institutions work.

There will always be overqualified gentiles or Asians that will want to get into an Ivy League university no matter how debased the actual education becomes. It was never about the education, but the credentialing and the networks.

Group 1: Ivy League and other institutions admit in piecemeal amounts token gentiles or Asians that are legitimately bright and hardworking, if not terribly independently minded. Doing so actually allows for the actual work to be done and allows the institution to maintain the veneer of meritocratic respectability. This is the future upper middle class and whom the public imagines to be running the country.

Group 2: The rest of the population is comprised of merely average or above-average individuals who come from the right social milieu and check the right boxes. This cohort already knows each other in advance and there is no social mobility involved in them entering said institution. On the contrary, they usually take it for granted. This is the future upper class and the public will never be aware that they exist.

In the end, there will always be high-salaried jobs for Group 1 to serve Group 2. You’ll always be paid much more managing wealth for a series of ultra high net worth individuals than working as a doctor for middle America. Of course, the way in which you get said job is proving social compatibility through an elite credential. So, no, demand for elite credentials will never go away.

Thank you for this good comment.

Same guy, just figured out how to comment with a consistent name just now.

2. Pointless to “Learn” Chinese, or any other Asian language, if you don’t learn it as a child. As a rule (and aside from the Chinese being extreme Racist bigots of the worst sort) Asians never hear their language(s) spoken badly, or by a non-native, and have zero ability to cope with understanding their language spoken less than fluently.

I wanted to quickly refute this as this is bad advice, unnecessarily defeatist, and runs the risk of misleading people. While it is very difficult if not impossible to become “native” in a foreign language without having been raised within it, it is possible to become “fluent”. With daily online lessons and a good teacher, someone can be “fluent” in Mandarin within 2-3 years for less than five grand.

Your answer also presupposes a level of linguistic homogeneity within the Chinese population that doesn’t exist. Not only are there a plethora of Chinese dialects, but each region (North v. South) has a different means by which they pronounce the official Putonghua Mandarin. This is not including the fact that certain regions that fall within the imagined space of “China” (Taiwan and Hong Kong) have demonstrably substandard levels of Mandarin. Japan, on the other hand, is a completely different story…

Thanks for writing this. This is an important distinction, so if I may, I’d like to expound upon who is actually “anti-China”. The Anti-China crowd fall into several camps:

The first camp is ethnic Chinese that live outside China; I’m including Chinese-Americans, Taiwanese, and Hong Kongers all in the same group here. They left mainland China for a variety of reasons—fear of persecution; pursuit of wealth and status—but generally did so upon the premise that their lives would be better in the United States. They assumed that they would have the mandate of heaven by now, but do not and are therefore bitter.

The second camp are globalist interests embittered by the fact that the Chinese consumer base doesn’t exist for the sake of Western capitalists. These are really just the modern day equivalent of Opium dealers that view the Chinese masses as sheep to be exploited. There’s no real ideological impetus that drives such individuals—they just hate things that get in the way of their making money.

The third camp is the evangelizing white liberals that work for institutions like the State Department. You find many of these in Taiwan and they’re either usually homosexuals, or beta male white bottom feeders there for the poon tang. Worth noting is that such individuals embody the same pathologies of which they accuse their opponents of having. Whereas a white nationalist likely admires the cultural and racial homogeneity from which East Asian nations benefit, a white liberal believes his values are superior and that there is something morally repugnant about the rest of the world not adopting them. Hu be da supremacist now?

The socioeconomic positioning of these seemingly disparate groups stems from a world order in which China is really just an up-and-coming America. To the extent that China exerts actual agency, their prerogative is to bring an end to the Chinese regime as fast as possible.

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One last thing: it’s important to distinguish between “anti-China or anti-Chinese” and “anti-Chinese-immigration”. If someone was really “pro-China” in the sense of ensuring a preservation of Chinese culture, they would logically be supportive of social configurations that would be conducive to that end (like Chinese remaining in China), and opposed to things that lead to its demise (multiculturalism and immigration). Chinese immigration to America is a nasty process that makes no one happy.