Thread by @elfair

You don’t have to imagine this rhetoric. It’s already in circulation, rehearsing itself in media, politics, and everyday speech.

Asian American Education & Labor Domestically

“Too many Asians in STEM”

(Harvard admissions lawsuits, elite school quotas):
The line goes “Yes,

https://twitter.com/threadreaderapp/status/1959744623670153462

they’re hardworking, but they’re taking up too much space, they’re not diverse, they’re not leaders.”

Reframes achievement as overrepresentation and weaponizes diversity rhetoric against Asians.

“Tiger parents / robotic kids” trope.

High achievement is explained away as

cultural pathology.

“They’re pushed too hard, they lack creativity, they’re machines.” This delegitimizes success as rote labor rather than authentic brilliance.

Glass ceiling in corporate America. Even with equal qualifications, Asians are told they lack “soft skills” or

“leadership presence.”

Parity in credentials is neutralized by moving the goalposts to personality and charisma.

2. China on the Global Stage

AI, Tech, Infrastructure

Western coverage often says: “China can scale AI, but it’s surveillance-oriented, authoritarian, not ethical

innovation.” The rhetorical move is that achievements are framed as powerful but illegitimate.

Belt and Road Initiative.

Western think tanks describe it as “debt-trap diplomacy,” even though Western institutions (IMF, World Bank) pioneered debt leverage as a control tool.

Parity in global finance is punished as predatory.

COVID Response.

Early on, China was mocked as draconian. Later, when lockdowns slowed spread, coverage pivoted to “unsustainable authoritarianism.”

Parity in health outcomes still gets cast as suspect.

India’s Rise in IT, STEM, and Pharma

IT outsourcing

Indian engineers are essential to global tech, but the rhetoric is: “Code monkeys, good for back-office support, not innovation.”

Achievement reduced to service labor.

STEM talent in the U.S.

Indians dominate graduate

programs and Silicon Valley, yet discourse frames them as “overrepresented” or “H-1B threats.”

Success reframed as unfair competition

Pharmaceutical achievements (e.g., vaccines)

Western headlines often emphasized “quality control concerns” or “copycat generics,” not the

scale and affordability India achieved.

Equal or better capability dismissed as derivative or unreliable.

Japan and Korea (Earlier Parity Examples)

Japan in the 1980s

U.S. media portrayed Japan as a “rising threat” with economic might but dismissed Japanese innovation as

copying American ideas.

Success reframed as mimicry

Korean cultural exports (K-pop, K-drama). Enormously successful globally, but Western coverage frames them as “manufactured, plastic, engineered”, while celebrating Western pop stars with entire PR machines behind them.

Parity in creativity denied by invoking authenticity.

The Meta-Pattern

Whenever East/South Asian labor or achievement approaches parity:

Move 1: Call it mechanical, rote, derivative.

Move 2: Say it’s unethical, authoritarian, or destabilizing.

Move 3: Shift superiority to

intangibles (creativity, charisma, originality, moral leadership).

Move 4: Invoke diversity or fairness arguments selectively. “Too many of them”, even while White overrepresentation is normalized.

The rhetoric of superiority doesn’t go away when material dominance is

challenged. It mutates.

It reclassifies Asian achievement domestically and internationally into categories that can never quite touch Western uniqueness. Authenticity, creativity, leadership, morality.

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