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To understand China you need to understand whiteness, yet it's missing from the conversation
ABC News (Australia) ^

Posted on 10/17/2022 7:44:18 AM PDT by TigerClaws

It is not possible to understand China without understanding race and racism. Specifically, without understanding whiteness.

Yet far too often the conversation around the rise of this new superpower is in predominantly geo-political terms, about authoritarianism versus democracy, about human rights — or whether we will go to war.

But race sits at the heart of it all.

We were reminded this week when China described the AUKUS agreement — between Australia, the UK and the US – as a race-based military bloc of white countries.

China's Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, says that's how it appears to people in other countries. What he means are non-white countries.

A man wearing a suit and tie. China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, characterised the AUKUS agreement as a race-based military bloc of white countries.(ABC New: Ian Cutmore) A history of humiliation

The Chinese Communist Party has a deep racial consciousness. It is there in the reminder to its people never to forget the hundred years of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers — of white powers.

Yes, that humiliation was at the hands of the Japanese, too, but the Japanese themselves cannot be separated from the project of whiteness.

In his book, Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking, scholar Michael Keevak traces how the Chinese stopped being white.

He says in early interaction between Europeans and Asians, the Chinese were actually described as white.

This was before racialised thinking was popularised in the 18th century.

It was then that scientists started to divide the world up into groupings of colour. Colour denoted civilisation. At the top were white Europeans, at the bottom black people and all others, graded on a sliding scale.

Keevak says Asians — including the Chinese and Japanese — began to "darken".

They lost their whiteness, he says, "when it became clear they would remain unwilling to participate in European systems of trade, religion and international relations".

The fall of the Qing Empire in the 19th century hastened a racial reckoning for the Chinese.

This was a dark night of the soul; it would tip China into a century of upheaval, revolution, and violence on an industrial scale.

And it also brought China face-to-face with white power. The Qing Empire was humbled by Britain, a tiny island that now occupied Chinese territory.

Nineteenth-century writer Yan Fu was influenced by European liberal thinkers, such as John Stuart Mill and the father of economics Adam Smith, and saw China's future emulating Western liberalism.

Perhaps the most influential thinker of all, Liang Qichao, also looked to the Western idea of history as a march of progress — and progress meant modernisation.

Liang is known as the godfather of Chinese nationalism whose acolytes included the Chinese Communist revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong.

He coined the phrase "the sick man of Asia" to refer to China's fallen state. He said they were awoken from a thousand-year-long dream.

As Liang embraced Western ideas, he also advocated for the unity of the "yellow race". He used the term "minzu" to describe the people of the nation.

Seeds of resentment and 'yellow peril'

World War I was another reckoning. At the Paris peace talks, China felt abandoned. German-occupied Chinese territory was not handed back to China but to Japan.

The seeds of resentment were sown.

Historian Jerome Ch'en writes: "From 1842 to 1942, China had been treated by the West with distrust, ridicule, and disdain…"

Liang Qichao — who had looked to the West — now turned sour. He was an official observer in Paris, but returned believing that following the West would lead China to catastrophe.

At the same time, the world was warning of the "yellow peril".

Australia had its own whites-only policy, excluding non-white races from the country.

Racial politics was also shaping China's great foe, Japan.

The Japanese derided the Chinese as "yellow". As Michael Keevak points out, Japan saw itself on par with Western powers.

Its imperialism mirrored the imperialism of white colonisers.

In the West, the Japanese were still seen as "coloured people", Keevak says, but "maybe not as yellow as the Chinese".

For the past three centuries, power and whiteness have been synonymous. From the British Empire to the American century, white nations have exported violence, committed genocide, stolen land and made it all legal.

China, like so many other non-white nations, has felt the sting of white imperialism.

The end of whiteness?

Chinese leaders have seen their struggle in racial terms. Mao Zedong styled himself as a revolutionary leader of the non-white world.

His military strategies have been adopted by the Viet Cong, the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Deng Xiaoping travelled to Europe as a young man and saw the racial discrimination against Chinese people. His economic revolution was built on beating the West at its own game.

Xi Jinping lectures the West on its own hypocrisy. He is still fighting the Opium Wars against Britain, the fall of the Qing — the great humiliation. His dream is to return China to the apex of global power.

China today is seen as a threat to the West. A threat to the so-called global rules-based order that is itself rooted in a race-based order.

So much of the commentary around China ignores the question of race. So many of the commentators discussing China — predominantly white voices — do not have the racial literacy to begin to understand how race and racism inform China's rise.

In some ways, Xi's China may represent the end of whiteness. Except that the Chinese Communist Party itself mirrors whiteness.

The irony is Xi has also become what he opposes. He is a Han nationalist — his idea of Chinese power is ethnic Han superiority — persecuting non-Han, non-white people in his own country.

If whiteness is power, Xi Jinping is its champion.

The continuation of white power, in darker skin.


TOPICS: Australia/New Zealand; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: 1619project; australia; blackkk; blackliesmanors; blackliesmatter; blacklivesmatter; blm; ccp; china; criticalracetheory; crt; enosis; japan; michaelkeevak; redchina; solomonislands; taiwan; unitedkingdom; whiteness
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To: TigerClaws

China is a “racialized” nation. They care about Chinese, not any minorities. Further, China has no respect for human life, as witnessed by their history and their actions today.


21 posted on 10/17/2022 8:13:17 AM PDT by popdonnelly (All the enormous crimes in history have been committed by governments.)
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To: Tell It Right

Me: “What eugenic theories?”

You: Read Darwin’s Origin of Species (it’d probably be banned if I posted the full title of his book). In it he noted things like that red ants used black ants as slaves and that, in his view, the red ant colony would cease to exist without the black ant slaves.

What eugenic theories


22 posted on 10/17/2022 8:15:27 AM PDT by TexasGator (!!!)
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To: TexasGator
Another poster: “Scientists inspired by Darwin and his eugenics theories.”

You: What eugenic theories?

Me: Read Darwin's Origin of Species (it'd probably be banned if I posted the full title of his book). In it he noted things like that red ants used black ants as slaves and that, in his view, the red ant colony would cease to exist without the black ant slaves.

Also me: For those who couldn't piece together how his natural selection fit into keeping non-whites in their place, Darwin wrote a sequel to his book a decade or so later. In Descent of Man he gets really ugly about how whites evolved in a way superior to non-whites, how life is better off if the whites out-produce the non-whites, and that it can be best achieved by if whites keep non-whites too poor to survive and thrive (the argument being thriving leads to more babies).

You: What eugenic theories

23 posted on 10/17/2022 8:19:08 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: mewzilla

And Nietzsche’s sister was the one to blame?

Darwin’s work led directly to the Final Solution. We even have leftists today saying kill babies up to and after birth.


24 posted on 10/17/2022 8:20:41 AM PDT by TigerClaws
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; Bockscar; BraveMan; cardinal4; ...
China described the AUKUS agreement — between Australia, the UK and the US – as a race-based military bloc of white countries.

25 posted on 10/17/2022 8:25:12 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: Tell It Right

“In Descent of Man he gets really ugly “

How?


26 posted on 10/17/2022 8:25:23 AM PDT by TexasGator (!!!)
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To: TexasGator

In 1881, toward the end of his life, Charles Darwin wrote to a colleague that the “more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world.”1 This was not just some offhand comment unrelated to Darwin’s science. It reflected important elements of his theory of human evolution. Indeed, he articulated this same principle in his scientific study of human evolution, The Descent of Man (1871), where he claimed, “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.”2 Not only racism, but racial extermination was an integral feature of Darwin’s theory from the start.

This is a position that has been articulated by many historians of science.3 Two prominent historians specializing in the history of Darwinism, Adrian Desmond and James Moore, mince no words about the racism inherent in Darwin’s theory. In their magisterial biography of Darwin, they state, “‘Social Darwinism’ is often taken to be something extraneous, an ugly concretion added to the pure Darwinian corpus after the event, tarnishing Darwin’s image. But his notebooks make plain that competition, free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality were written into the equation from the start — ‘Darwinism’ was always intended to explain human society.”4

https://evolutionnews.org/2022/02/the-racism-of-darwin-and-darwinism/

His fans may try to excuse Darwin as a “man of his times” but he clearly was racist and his theories led directly to mass slaughter.

Be use he’s viewed as “anti-Christian” and “anti-God” he’s gotten a free pass by leftists and the academy.


27 posted on 10/17/2022 8:26:24 AM PDT by TigerClaws
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To: nwrep

Exactly.


28 posted on 10/17/2022 8:28:49 AM PDT by dragonblustar (Romans 12:12)
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To: TigerClaws

It’s a real resentment but one sided.


29 posted on 10/17/2022 8:45:57 AM PDT by yldstrk (Bingo! We have a winner!)
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To: TigerClaws

China (India as well, Japan before WWI) was a backwards shiitehole until we gave them acces to TRILLIONS in wealth and entry to the modern world in the last few decades.

“Made in China” was crap.
Regular starvation.
Regular flu epidemics.
No sense of sanitation.
Brutal subjugation.

Any other take is racist revisionist crap.


30 posted on 10/17/2022 8:46:49 AM PDT by Macoozie (Handcuffs and Orange Jumpsuits)
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To: TexasGator
Me: “In Descent of Man he gets really ugly “

You: How?

Here's a quote from Darwin's Descent of Man on how "civilized" society is better off if we don't save the weak through vaccinations.

"With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

31 posted on 10/17/2022 8:48:06 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: Paladin2

“It was then that scientists started to divide the world up into groupings of colour. Colour denoted civilisation”

Scientific?

More like Fauxcy “Science”.
*******
Religion denotes civilization. Judeo/Christian values produce civilization. Color and race are irrelevant.


32 posted on 10/17/2022 8:48:06 AM PDT by yldstrk (Bingo! We have a winner!)
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To: TigerClaws
I note that China's existence as a Culture, Society and Group of Humans is much older than woke Virtue Signaling concerns about the "Evils" of White Racism.

The Chinese are, overall, a creation of the Chinese way of acting as they are the ones most responsible for what Chinese have learned, and how well that Chinese, using that training, have been able to compete with other Johnny Come Lately Groups of Humans on the planet.

33 posted on 10/17/2022 8:54:20 AM PDT by Navy Patriot (Celebrate Decivilization)
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To: TigerClaws

well lets use the proper word as the crux of the entire racism debate... lets choose the simple would “Normal”. As an example i’ll use it it a sentence... ‘If a large percentage of the Black population, at least acted Normal, there would not be much Racism in this era...’

Simple right?? I’m mean now I’m a racist because i said Normal... See how this works?? and I’m sure there are many countries who feel the same way pertaining to “Normal”.

Asia has another little hang up i’m sure due to the “Appendage size” dilema, but that could be argued away i guess...


34 posted on 10/17/2022 8:54:53 AM PDT by sit-rep ( )
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To: TigerClaws

Its clear the CCP will use any tool be it lying or propaganda to try to prevent the formation of alliances which might serve to check its power. The US/Australia/the UK share a common history and culture and language and legal and political and economic systems. its hardly a surprise they would have an affinity for one another. It is also hardly a surprise that they would view an expansionist dictatorial China as a potential threat.

What the CCP did not point out are all the Asian countries that are equally suspicious of them. Of course that would undermine the narrative now wouldn’t it?


35 posted on 10/17/2022 8:55:08 AM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: freeandfreezing

Correct.


36 posted on 10/17/2022 8:59:01 AM PDT by MotorCityBuck ( Keep the change, you filthy animal! )
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To: Tell It Right

” We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. “

VERY ANTI-eugenic!


37 posted on 10/17/2022 9:04:21 AM PDT by TexasGator (!!!)
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To: TigerClaws

R\ace does not sit at the heart of it all, but it obviously does for the unknown author of this article.

He, she, or it is insanely obsessed with race and hatred for Whitey.


38 posted on 10/17/2022 9:06:58 AM PDT by I want the USA back (Kick every last democrat out of office! )
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To: TexasGator
"VERY ANTI-eugenic!"

He was saying that as a critique of civilized men, not as an endorsement. He was saying the unvaccinated populations wind up being stronger because natural selection makes the survivors in an unvaccinated population better, stronger, faster (sorry for the Bionic Man line LOL), while vaccination in a civilized population yields week people having offspring and keeping the gene pool week.

Read the part of the quote right after the portion you're commenting about:

"There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

Basically Darwin said that mankind would be better off if we treated the human race in the same fashion that animal breeders make sure only the best animals make babies without weak genes.

39 posted on 10/17/2022 9:13:08 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: TigerClaws

The people of Taiwan and Singapore (Chinese) throw the idiots whole theory out the window.

The idiot (a Leftist) ignores that the Communist Party of China is merely playing up the recial cannards created by American Lefists, to buttress their own domestic and gepolitical positions, that are actually imperialist agendas.

The Communists of China operate domestically as any imperialist would, making “nationalist” claims for their foreign imperialist ambitions. And now, with the help of the American Left they can add “against whiteness” as another pretense for their motives.


40 posted on 10/17/2022 9:13:54 AM PDT by Wuli (ur)
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