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The East Asian racism was always from lower class whites, who were angry at them merely because of labour competition. The smart people have been predicting the ascent of East Asia and the possible surpassing of the West almost since first post-Renaissance contact.
India, on the other hand... the early Western explorers were like "They literally just stand there in the parade and let themselves get trampled by elephants. What the hell lmao"
There was and still is resentment toward East Asians among upper class whites, for providing a robust source of competition in knowledge work and the education credentialist system, and/or making more fashionable minority groups like blacks look bad.
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The ascendancy of East Asia was a problem with the timeline, not the above ground factual observations people were making of them, Japan developed after WW2. Yeah, they didn’t overtake the US as everyone was prophesying with the “yenification” of the world economy back in the 70’s-90’s. China has also “ascended today,” whether that translates into a “triumph” over the west remains to be seen. Kishore Mahbubani is probably the most eminent scholar to date that makes this case but he’s been heavily assailed too.
The west doesn’t see India as a particular threat except maybe insofar as they have competing economic interests, although why the US aids Pakistan against India isn’t something I know about in great detail, except only to say we see it in our strategic interests.
US aids Pakistan because Pakistan surrendered oversight of CIA activities in the Hindu Kush listening posts entirely in exchange for having its own free hand to do its own dastardly shit, and from there the Pakistanis leveraged their place as 'useful assholes' for many players globally, a role India never managed because India saw itself too important to aid foreigners at all and so was bypassed by major powers. The Pakistanis asked for US help and offered something in return, India always said it could chart its own course while begging for aid whenever shit hit the fan (request for US carriers in 1962 war, request for USSR submarine support against the US carrier group in 1971, requests for SU30 technology transfers, requests for IMF bailouts, requests for waiver for purchasing Russian/Iranian oil, etc etc etc)
Kishores own reputation within the international commentariat is a byproduct of market demand for a non-Chinese articulate ostensibly neutral heavyweight that isn't bogged down by domestic political considerations polluting the discussion: Kishores commentary and analysis is hardly more breathtaking than informed western China observers that seem similarly dispassionate about capability convergence inevitability like basically the entire US Chamber of Commerce circa 1998-2013, or Jeffrey Sachs and Joseph Nye if you want to be intellectual about things.
However, Kishores own media ascendancy is also a byproduct of a deliberate internal tension within the Singapore foreign policy establishment where a pro-US advocate is always raised up at the same pace as an anti-US advocate, and the two actually switch positions depending on the needs of the moment. Kishores antithesis is Kausikan Bilahari, who himself enjoys some time on the media circuits when a counter to the China ascendancy is also sought. You can see the same pattern in others, there is also Chan Heng Chee and Tommy Koh, but that gets too deep into the weeds of Singapores arcane adversarial-cooption civil service modality.
Also, and lets be fucking frank here, Kishores pro-China anti-US sentiment comes from what looks like a fairly obvious chip on his shoulder. His first book was 'Can Asians Think', a direct rejoinder to a presumed racial contempt that supposedly existed in the western policy establishment which denigrated asian (specifically southeast Asian (singapore) at time of writing, but later extended to China and the subcontinent) intellectual ability and execution capacity. Thing is, even at that time of writing the US policy establishment and broadly the west as a whole recognized asian capability and its necessity to be actively managed. Kishores voluminious presence on the media circuit is downstream of what looks like obvious status reassertion, and that there is an especially receptive audience because US domestic political considerations make people cast about for an ostensible 'neutral' just happens to direct that gravy train straight to Kishores lap.
Huh. Thanks for the analysis on that one.
Kishore’s analysis seemed too idealistic and off the beaten path to me. I’ve read his books but he seems to constantly pull out the wrong tools and metrics of analysis to bear on the discussion. You could see it also on Samir Saran’s face whenever Kishore got the mike and seemed to be droning on. His “Civilizationalism” doesn’t seem to be an analytically powerful concept to apply in strategic circles. Insofar as he contributes to the influencing the discussion, he’s worth taking seriously.
I’m curious to know what your background is if you don’t mind sharing. You seem pretty knowledgeable about this topic.
Kishore is definitely smart, dont let my conveyed irritation at his playing the pop geopolitics circuit distract from the strength of his simplistic reductive concepts. If anything Kishore is an aberration to the Singaporean institutional resistance to highfalutin grand theory, their operational modality is see the world as it is not as you wish it to be and maintain internal red teaming to avoid blinkers.
My own experience is unimportant. On the internet I could be Kishores disciple or a disgruntled taxi driver or anything in between, what matters is verifiability. Kishores own books give the necessary info and in the professional sphere if you encounter a single Singaporean in any eliteish profession like finance or tech anywhere globally you're two kevin bacons away from knowing someone with deep insider knowledge of the Singaporean civil service operational modalities which really aren't that opaque anyways. That contact could be any one of us. It could be you! It could be me! It could even be - ok its me I know these dudes directly.
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