ndclavier
14hr ago
Yes, the Chinese diaspora has spread all across the world, and that is great. And evidently they are quite adaptable and enjoy a wide variety of biomes!
Indeed, there is no denying that the Chinese people have contributed a ton to any society they have decided to join. I'm glad for the Chinese people we have in the United States, and I'd personally like more of them. Many more! But this is distinct from what I am talking about, which is again a general Chinese civilizational indifference to the welfare of others. I'd love to be wrong on this for what it's worth, and I as I said I look for signs of change, but I've yet to see much of anything. China has incredible biomedical abilities. Where is its version of pepfar? China is now full of billionaires. How many have signed the giving pledge? Where is the Chinese Bill Gates? Where is the Chinese Will MacAskill?
To be fair, I probably could have phrased things more clearly. Ultimately, my objection isn't that China isn't interested in Lithium deposits in Cameroon, or even that Chinese people aren't interested in running a electronics store in Yaoundé. My objection is that the Chinese don't seem to care about Cameroonians.
Is the Chinese approach of just doing business and not actually caring about anyone but yourself better for others than the Western schizo approach of caring so much you try to invade a country like Afghanistan to set up pride parades? I don't think so. Both approaches have serious issues, and as I said, I think both approaches could benefit from incorporating elements from the other. You don't need to convince me that the West has seriously screwed up at times: that is obvious. But I don't think you can convince me that the Chinese approach is morally better. In fact, I think it is pretty clearly morally worse. I find the good samaritan who accidentally botches an attempt to help a wounded child better, morally speaking, than the person who just doesn't give a shit about the wounded child because the child doesn't own the rights to any critical mineral mines. And I worry particularly that as we approach advanced AI and robotics capabilities, the Chinese attitude of indifference beyond the point where self-interest is in effect is potentially disastrous for our stupider human relations in the Third World. If China obtained post-scarcity abundance for itself, would it selflessly share it with the billions of not very useful brown people that occupy Africa and South America? Would it go through the trouble of making sure that abundance was equitably distributed in those societies, if that turned out to be necessary? I hope so, but I can't say I've yet seen anything that has put my mind at ease.
See my response to Resolute Raven. The most important point:
As to your comment on the abstract ideal of "Democracy", I think you are missing the larger point, which is that this is not about caring about systems of government, but about caring about the people that live in them. I recognize many non-Westerners (and even many Westerners) find it hard to believe that the West genuinely cares about the welfare of non-Westerners, since we have such a... mixed record... when it comes to helping them. But I think the moral concern is genuine, and I think a great deal of meaningful help (more than most critics of the West would admit) has been delivered.
In the end, even our most rapacious acts have probably largely redounded to the benefit of our victims or their descendants (there are, as always, exceptions). Take the institution of slavery in America. It was undoubtedly surpassingly cruel, but also your average African American now earns a higher income than many white Europeans. When you compare this state of affairs to what they might be experiencing if they'd been left to fend for themselves in Africa, this seems vastly better.
Is it deranged to credit ourselves for seeing to the welfare of the descendants of people we kidnapped and enslaved? I don't actually think so. Yes, we were bad enough to enslave Africans. But we also were good enough, eventually, to free them, on our own initiative and at great cost to ourselves. And not only that, but to allow them to remain here, and to include them in our society, and to later give them equal rights, and after that to even make great sacrifices and endless efforts to try to promote their flourishing. The act of enslaving, and all the acts of kindness that came after it, both say something true about how the West is, and I think both of these things are very different than anything you could say about China. I doubt China would have ever taken African slaves at scale because I think it would have been obvious to them African slaves can't be good Chinese. And this is very good, because I also doubt, if China had a large population of the descendants of Africans it had enslaved, it would be nearly so indulgent as the West. I don't know what the Chinese solution would be to a population that committed 6-7 times as much murder as American whites on a per capita basis (I don't even want to know what the ratio would be relative to Han Chinese) but I can promise you it would not be Black Lives Matter. And as shitty as BLM was (both for us and for our black population—see the huge spike in murders with black victims) I think it is to our credit, morally, that we responded that way as opposed to in the way the CPC might have responded. Our kindness may yet be the death of us, but I can't bring myself to wish it away. My preferred solution is for us to become more practical and realistic, not less kind. In short, like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, we need a brain.
Meanwhile, I think China needs a heart: my most ardent wish is that China develops a genuine feeling of moral responsibility for its less accomplished relations in the Global South, ideally while still retaining the pragmatism and effectiveness it possesses today. Maybe this will happen naturally as it gets richer—I have to remind myself that there is still a lot of serious poverty in China, for all the incredible progress they've made on that front. The good news is I don't think the Chinese are genetically incapable of changing: this isn't like asking Somalians to start winning more Fields medals. The issue is largely cultural.
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