Strategic Consequences of Chinese Racism: Strategic Asymmetry for the USA (2013) [pdf]

It is not obvious to me that the American approach of racial quotas in high education (which incidentally penalizes Asians very heavily today, perhaps more than any other group) is particularly different from the Soviet approach of racial quotas in high education (which to some degree penalized ethnic Russians by reserving spots for people from the other "republics", and heavily penalized students from "overrepresented" minorities, quite similarly to penalizing whites somewhat and Asians more heavily in today's US.) It doesn't seem different from Israel's affirmative action where Arabs get preferential treatment at the expense of Jews, either. Perhaps it seems reasonable to some to blame Chinese for not having racial quotas which supposedly "address" racism, but especially since Asian Americans get heavily penalized in the scheme, it's hard to respond to an argument from a Chinese person that the scheme doesn't address racism but institutionalizes it.

Nor is it obvious to me whether the average Westerner of any particular group is more or less racist than a citizen of Russia, including both ethnic Russians and those who are not. It's fairly obvious that the Westerner might be more reserved in expressing racist views, fearing repercussions, although at other times the Westerner will actually be very loudly racist if it is currently in vogue to be racist against this particular race (right now anti-white sentiment is celebrated, which, whatever its reasons, will surely produce terrible results; the broader point is that it's not obvious that being racist against one race at one time is fundamentally different than being racist against another at another time, and even if we agree that it's done for very different reasons, it does not follow that it will produce very different results.)

I'm not saying that Russian attitudes toward race are the same as Western attitudes, just that the report's claims about the Russian society and the Western societies which I kinda sorta know things about (though it's hard to summarize millions of people very precisely or to inform oneself about them fully in the first place) make me suspicious with respect to its main topics, Chinese attitudes to race. It would be interesting (though not necessarily representative of the entire Chinese population) to hear Chinese people weigh in on this.

I'm probably biased since I'm Chinese. I agree with most part of this report. The author did a lot of good homework. But I think his thoughts to work out those strategies need some update to better fit in the world today and tomorrow. There are similar parts and there are different parts.

What really stuck out to me was this line that explains how racism benefits the Chinese government: "First, the Han Chinese possess a strong in group identity with a polarized and tightly defined out group. This allows the Chinese government to expect sacrifice and as well as support from the considerable majority of the Chinese people."

Perhaps a lot of these attitudes come from how in many Chinese people's eyes, their golden years were when they had very little outside influence and were able to invent some of the most useful inventions in human history (compass, paper, gunpowder). From the time that they have mixed with the West, they have had some very negative experiences, (as the report brings up, the Opium wars, burning of the palace). Perhaps their attitudes will change slowly now. In my experiences, racism is something that is slowly taught/instilled, and so I don't expect any easy reversal.