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Our struggle with China is racial
There are aspects of human civilization which would, with enough time be understood and adapted by any sexually reproducing species of sufficient intelligence, simply because they are instrumentally valuable with regards to the instincts that all biologically similar animals share. Animal likes food too. Animal likes sex too. Animal plays games too. Animal fights enemies and wages war for resources too. Many animals beat few animals, so animals have incentives to form alliance structures or be outcompeted and exterminated. Yet wouldn't it be surprising if they valued the same things, or felt the same ways, where instrumental necessities didn't require it? Shouldn't we then expect to see, dramatic differences in what are superficially institutions, even amongst intellectually comparable animals?
Consider the family. Every functional civilization has been patriarchal at least until recently; and the physical and cognitive differences explaining this are seen in the animal world as well. Woman needs man, and man must find his mate. It'd be great if she were loyal though. Yes you could punish disloyalty after the fact but that's not exactly foolproof. Hey what if she literally couldn't run away? If every couple breaks the feet of every daughter then she'll make a perfectly suitable mate! The logic here is of course unimpeachable; and yet is there any reason to believe Nero himself wouldn't react with a similar disgust to it as modern (non-anthropologist) man?
Where unimaginable cruelty naturally pervades even the closest family bonds between the strong and the weak; concern for outsiders may be expected to be similarly lacking. A toddler bleeding out in plain view to the complete indifference of most passers by is not at all surprising when you remember what their close genetic ancestors did, nor are the countless similar videos you can find on the Chinese interwebs: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ECeC4R-Gjtc.
I don't need to mention that where humans cannot expect compassion, the fate of man's best friend is not at all uncertain.
Other areas of human life like the ability to be moved by beauty seem similarly lacking in a civilization whose pre-1800s painting and sculpture never approximated that of Ancient Rome, much less Michael Angelo, when portraying human subjects (as opposed to landscapes were they admittedly excelled).
A people with innately different instincts in one field, might also be odd in other ways, like committing mass cannibalism against political enemies in the absence of famine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre .
Their literature might include bizzare scenes, like a inferior man demonstrating his pious hospitality to his superior by secretly killing and cooking his own wife to feed him. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ghmx4v/what_can_romance_of_the_three_kingdoms_liu_an/
Different from birth
Someone covers your nose or lays you face first against the bed. What do you do? Seemingly every non-disabled European American newborn that isn't cognitively impaired has the same reaction; to move, struggle and fight against this horrifying imposition. Nearly every Chinese American baby has a different reaction; complete non-reactivity.
Isn't this precisely the kind of difference common stereotypes, a history of slavish behaviour, and the above section would suggest? Can you think of a more elemental test of innately different instincts than a newborn's reaction when you screw with his breathing? Have you noticed that basically everyone still wearing a mask is Asian?
https://sci-hub.ru/10.1038/2241227a0
** The necessity of racism **
What does it mean to allow members of a high IQ species of alien fundamental moral and aesthetic instincts to increase their power in our institutions?
What does it mean, for an entire nation of them to become the dominant power on the planet?
The lack of empathy you observe in mainland Chinese culture is in large part due to the cultural devastation unleashed by communism over the past century, which has created a far more atomized, materialistic, acquisitive, and sociopathic society than existed previously or that can be seen in ethnic Chinese communities that did not undergo the twin calamities of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. This extends even to minority communities such as the Uyghurs, who used to practice a syncretic form of Islam that had integrated into Chinese society before it was torn up by its roots and replaced in recent years by more extremist forms of Wahhabism.
This is not to say that premodern agricultural societies on the edge of starvation or within living memory of such won't in general be numb to human and animal suffering outside of their immediate circle of care in a way that would horrify any First Worlder, but that applies equally to India and Africa as to China, and ignores the extent to which the displacement of traditional cultures by Western ideologies in certain cases caused immense human suffering (like a virus jumping from a well-adapted host to a naïve individual, so to speak).
As for art, while I can't say it was better than what the Greeks or Renaissance masters accomplished, I don't think Chinese sculpture is quite as bad as you made it out to be.
There's not much to say on the topic of footbinding except to agree that it was one of the most horrific cultural practices ever to exist, though my ancestors would insist I point out to you that certain Chinese communities of which they were a part did not participate.
Lastly, regarding masks, I have pretty much run out of alternative explanations for why the degree of imposition they represent is seen to be so different across different populations, so I'm willing to give that one to you. Whether that means me and mine are all alien bugmen with whom the West can never have mutual understanding, time will tell, but I certainly hope not, as ethnic cleansing is really quite a hassle.
Do we have any reason to believe that this is true? People living with the shame of being part of an inescapably horrible society are not exactly going to be immune to fabricating the idea of a brighter past.
Consider this quote from, Ralph Townsend a US Consular official writing before the war and before the Communist takeover.
"Almost any veteran foreigner who has traveled up and down the rivers of China will be able to recount one or more cases where he has personally observed a man
drown without efforts to save him by other Chinese a few feet away on shore or in a boat. "
His experiences disgusted him so much that he published a book called "ways that are dark, the truth about China", and went around the U.S claiming that the Japanese were actually the good guys (getting arrested and charged with the Manafort offense - acting as an unregistered agent). That, or he was on their payroll from the start and made shit up, I guess we can never know for sure.
Having read it, I can say that the Wikipedia summary in no way understates the allegations he makes:
Through a large number of personal and second-hand anecdotes, Townsend argues that the Chinese may be the only people in the world who are completely unable to comprehend the basic human impulses of sympathy or gratitude toward other people. Because the Chinese feel no empathy toward others, they behave in an unbelievably sadistic and cruel fashion toward one another, and they view altruistic foreigners as targets to be mercilessly taken advantage of.
https://ia802900.us.archive.org/29/items/waysthataredarkthetruthaboutchinabyralph_202003/Ways%20that%20are%20dark%20the%20truth%20about%20China%2C%20by%20Ralph.pdf
My two cents probably means nothing to you, but Townsend should have traveled more. There are things in a large plurality of non-western cultures that would have horrified him. Although I am willing to bet that China does it at greater scale simply on a pure numbers perspective.
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