Anyhow, this discussion of China and racism got me thinking about how American companies talked about how only jobs that Americans didn’t want would be getting outsourced to China, and that it was nothing to worry about.

Which, like, implicit racism.  China isn’t going to climb the ladder of production and become a fierce competitor because?  What, are they just not cool enough?

Now of course one can then respond “now hey wait a minute, don’t they have a strong central government which is pretty clearly arranging for development and technology transfer, including with things like their company ownership requirements and handling of intellectual property laws?”

But suppose we’re still being implicitly racist or something along those lines in the response.  One might say, “now wait a minute, China was a highly advanced and organized country for significant periods of its history - clearly it is capable of supporting innovative and highly productive civilzations.  If it did that before, and fairly recently, too, what’s going to stop it from doing so now?”

Anyhow, that reminded me that that viewpoint has been around for a long time.  Longer than Hitler and his “honorary aryan” thing with regard to East Asians.

In 1873, a man wrote a letter to a newspaper in England, in which he suggested that Africa be given to the Chinese.  [Link is Very Racist]  Some of it may seem weirdly modern to you.  Included is a rebuttal.  The Discourse and blog posts of the old world.