2/Some of the people who say that criticism of China = racism are just trolls...Cold Warriors who are on the anti-American side and want an excuse to defend a rival of America.
But for many, the worry is real and legitimate.
3/There is no denying that there's a wave of racist hate against Asian Americans right now. And there's no denying that attitudes toward China (esp. about coronavirus) have something to do with it.
4/But it's also true that U.S.-China tensions can't be banished just by some lefties yelling that criticism of China is racist.
5/If Cold War 2 is going to happen, then it's going to happen. China has a lot of agency here; it's not just Mike Pompeo deciding to stir the pot, or whatever. China is in the driver's seat.
So we need to accept this fact, and roll with it.
6/@mattyglesias is right when he says that criticism of China is not racist by nature.
We can and should criticize governments without criticizing whole groups of people.
7/But that's a MORAL argument. In PRACTICAL terms, the threat of anti-Asian racism is real, and we need to take steps to minimize it. So here are some steps we can take...
8/First, we need to remember that RHETORIC MATTERS.
Here was what George W. Bush said about Muslims, directly after the 9/11 attacks.
9/And although there was a burst of anti-Muslim violence right after the attacks, it quickly (mostly) subsided. In fact, the big wave of anti-Muslim attacks came not in 2001-2002, but in 2015-2016!
10/In the five years after 9/11 there were two deadly attacks on Muslims (or perceived Muslims) in America.
In 2014-17, there were EIGHT such attacks.
11/Why?
Compare Bush's rhetoric above with the rhetoric of Donald Trump.
12/RHETORIC MATTERS, and Republicans need to start explicitly denouncing violence against Asians, loudly and repeatedly.
13/What can the rest of us do?
One thing we can do is to focus on our Asian allies and on Chinese dissidents.
The people actually under threat from Xi Jinping's government are not White people in America, but ASIAN PEOPLE, IN ASIA.
14/China's neighbors are under threat. China's minorities are under threat. China's dissidents are under threat.
15/Centering these people will remind Americans that U.S.-China tensions are not a "clash of civilizations", but a clash of governments and values.
16/And finally, the most important thing we can do to sever the link between U.S.-China tensions and anti-Asian racism is ASIAN REPRESENTATION.
We need to write a story of America in which Asian Americans play a more central role.
17/In fact, we actually tried to do this in World War 2.
Here is an excerpt from @ellendwu's "The Color of Success" -- a book you should definitely read.
About 8% of students have participated in the protests on one side or the other. That's a substantial number, but less than the 21% who joined BLM protests in May/June 2020 (and the latter were pretty much all on one side of the issue).
The Palestine protesters have created a dream Palestine that is almost entirely disconnected from the real place, in which all of their fantasies of a perfect society are realized.
Most weebs don't actually want to live in Japan. They want to live in a local subculture of their own creation, whose values are based on gentleness and romance -- the ideals that attracted them to Japanese fantasies and made those fantasies resonate.
Comparisons between the Cultural Revolution and the Woke Era get laughed at. The Woke Era didn't use violence, of course. But the *motivation* of people wanting to overturn social hierarchies, especially students wanting to overturn academic hierarchies, is recognizably similar.
In 2010s America, there was a widespread desire to overturn local social hierarchies -- the classroom authority of teachers and professors, the cultural power of entertainment stars, the authority of nonprofit execs and heads of civic organizations.
In 1960s China, overturning local hierarchies happened via physical mob violence. In 2010, it happened through online mobs destroying people's reputations on social media. Obviously, the second is far preferable to the first. This is why economic development is good!
1. They engender material equality more efficiently than any other economic intervention, and
2. They create an equality of respect, through the habit of mutual use.
Although rich people may pay more for a train or a park, when they ride the train or walk in the park, they are equal in social status to everyone else on the train or in the park.
This creates a feeling of equality throughout society.
1/Here's a thread in which the Economist's Mike Bird tries to rebut my recent post about decoupling. I think this thread is useful for understanding why the doubters are making the mistakes that they're making.