“Sinophobia?”

These notes on evolutionary psychology and linguistics are offered as an alternative to prevailing ideas about “racism” and the recent term “Sinophobia”

The first issue is the “mammalian” level of brain processing. Dogs on meeting each other for the first time go through various tests of smell and dominance, but behavioural mirroring may be the most important. If one dog initiates running in a circle, the other follows. Occasionally mirroring fails and dogs descend into a fight, to the perplexity of the owners. Chimpanzees bare their teeth, which is seen as a sign of submission. Although a row of dangerous ape teeth does not look friendly to us, we still see a smile as friendly.

Humans share this midbrain processing with other social mammals, but we share hindbrain processing with reptiles and many other solitary animals. At the reptilian level fight/ flight, food and mating are the only behavioural responses and social position is not important. Occasionally humans process a minor challenge at hindbrain level, for example when a dispute about a car parking place turns to murderous violence. A more frequent event is initial processing at a mammalian level is overtaken within a few tenths of a second by forebrain processing. Schadenfreude (‘delight at another’s misery’) can occur when we see a car accident. The initial response may be “I’m glad it was them and not me” or “probably drunk”. On most occasions we process to “that’s not nice! I must call for an ambulance”.

Hostility to others probably happens mostly at a midbrain, preconscious, level. While there are theories at a conscious, forebrain level about “racial” inferiority and threat, they are generally quite feeble when it comes to evidence.  Such theories include “the Jews betraying Jesus” and physiognomy (features of the skull) and the supporting evidence after forebrain processing is generally poor. The approach offered here is to allow the initial emotional response a few seconds to run rather than slamming it down, then examining the evidence. 

Processing of threats at a midbrain level does have some legitimate evolutionary benefit, particularly in relation to avoiding infectious disease. Facial lesions until quite recently could signify smallpox. Careful mothers would warn their children not to play in the same water as their poorer neighbours because of polio risk. The theory that blacks in the U.S. south were “lazy” was unexpectedly rebutted by the banker Rockefeller’s attempt to increase productivity in his enterprises in Dixie. He employed medical researchers who found that hookworm was endemic and debilitating, and it was spread through bare feet around latrines. Hey presto, southern blacks with better toilets and worm tablets suddenly stopped being “lazy”.  Bubonic plague was rightly feared, but people managed to achieve a civilised response to infection control.  The vinegar stone in the village of Ombersley was where food could be left for the quarantined villagers, who left coins in payment. In London some brave physicians would wear a long cloak and beak stuffed with sweet-smelling flowers, the best PPE of the day, to approach plague sufferers. This vinegar asepsis theory has some validity, though the sweet air theory is more doubtful. The Mississippi civilisation was hospitable to a solitary shipwrecked Spanish sailor in 1539. The whole civilisation of a million people died within a generation from his diseases. Other native Americans learned to more suspicious of Europeans. Most still died, but a few survived the mass epidemics. Turn fear of infection into intelligent hygiene.

Facial lesions are not now a significant issue in terms of smallpox, syphilis etc. and some disfiguring conditions such as acne are quite trivial medically. Beauty is something of a puzzle. Why do women aspire to flawless complexion? It is clearly important in mate attractiveness, which may also signify the future health of babies.

Skin pigmentation is much the strongest visual cue for ethnic hostility. Low melatonin density is a relatively recent evolutionary adaptation among north Germanic tribes for Vitamin D production in low sunlight areas. Pigmentation of the iris and head hair accompany it. The genes that give rise to this adaptation are few. “Black” skins include a huge genetic range: there is more ethnic variation in small area of Nigeria than in the whole of Europe.  The preference for “white” skin, straight blond hair and blue eyes are the main marker of racial discrimination in European peoples, including their descendants in Americas and Australasia. These values extend to many peoples. Many “brown Arabs” also perceive blondeness as of high status. Japanese women avoid sunshine. Why? In the last case it is probably to avoid looking like lower status farmers who work in the sun. The north Germanic ideal is also associated with tallness, which might indicate good nutrition. Tall fair Scandinavians were very successful militarily: a few hundred conquered England in 1066 and Scotland after 1155.  Curly hair is another marker, which black women often conceal by wearing wigs. It was said of Michele Obama that the USA could cope with a black president, but not a first lady with frizzy air. 

Ethnic hostility within south Asia is well illustrated by the Pakistan-Bangladesh conflict of 1971.  The new state chose to call itself “the pure land” (paki- stan) and an Urdu-speaking educated elite imposed that language, although only 4% of the population spoke it. The inferiority of Bengalis was voiced straight away although most Bengalis were also sunni Muslims. The inferiority was in terms of language, skin tone, agricultural work and height. One Pakistani general spoke of Bengal as “a low-lying land of low, lying people” and “blacks”.   

The language used to counter ethnic hostility involves assigning a pejorative (e.g “racist”) to the hostile person. “Antisemitism” was coined in the late 19th C to describe hostility to a presumed religious group. It hardly applies now that most people who report themselves as Jewish, and nearly all Israeli PMs, are non-believers. Netenyahu, who is not a believer, describes Iran as “the Great antisemite”, by which he just means “the enemy”. Logically “Semite” “of the tribe of Shem” applies equally to speakers of Arabic, Aramaic and some Ethiopian languages.  “Islamophobia” borrowed from “xenophobia” via “homophobia” and was seized on by the British Council of Muslims, which neglects to mention its genocidal war and publicly- approved rape of Bengalis. This neologism misapplies the Greek for “fear”, when it should be “misos” (‘hatred’). Fear of radical Islam, which promises paradise for killing infidels, seems to be a reasonable emotion.  “Sinophobia” mixes Latin and Greek, and uses fear to mean hostility.

Chinese can rarely be used as a lingua franca in any other part of the world and it is difficult to learn for most foreigners. Languages associated with economic and military success became “high”. The imposition of Urdu as the high language of Muslim south Asia favoured Urdu-speaking Bihari Muslims, but the independence of Bangla Desh reduced that. English is high, despite its quirky grammar, while the status of German fell after 1945. Arabic has remained high because it was prescribed for the Quran. Chinese script made it a very high language in imperial times.  Although there is persisting influence of the Chinese script in Japan, it was discontinued in Vietnam and Korea.

Ethnolinguistic identity is partly about appearance and culture. Ethnic appearance generally includes pale skin, black hair, epicanthic fold and flatter faces. These features are not strongly associated with suspicion or hostility for Europeans. The relatively flat face may be perceived by Europeans as neotenic, (childlike).   One disliked character, Fu Manchu, who is given an atypical tall Manchu appearance and Tungusic language. The greater height of Europeans can be associated with feelings of superiority, especially as Chinese are associated with low-status food industry work in the UK. 

Although the PRC talks of “92 % Han and 55 minorities”, Chinese linguistically encompasses mutually unintelligible language groups. Some of these such as Hakka were refugees from Han rule. Some, such as Cantonese, identify with other imperial periods. Would it be safe to call those were once part of the empire and speak English, such as Irish or Jamaican, as “English”?

The way forward, combatting prejudices  

Germs

The strongest recent prejudice against Chinese is probably because a belief was promoted by Trump et al that COVID was made in a PRC lab, and still persists. Fear can be countered thus:

1. show that the PRC’s public hygiene was impressive, notably by continuing to feed 14 million people in Wuhan during the most massive quarantine in history.
2. Virologists published the DNA sequence immediately allowing worldwide vaccine design to start
3. Evolution of SARS and a species jump from bats had been predicted by Chinese virologists years beforehand, while Europe and America were ignoring it.
4. The USA was paying Chinese labs to do virological research which would not be tolerated by US public opinion

Language

“Inscrutability” of Chinese is certainly an issue. The spoken language contains no recognisable words of European origin, the script takes many years to learn, and some non verbal communication is unfamiliar. Only 2% of Chinese speak “good” (B” or better) English. This contrast with Japan, where the script is even more difficult, but thousands of English words are in use and instant translation is widely available.

The quickest way through this is Google Translate or Babelfish. A smartphone camera can turn Chinese script into spoken English with a high degree of accuracy in seconds. Alexa can speak phrases in Mandarin on demand. Unfortunately the great Chinese firewall blocks Google Translate, so I got very disoriented trying to travel by train from Hong Kong to Guilin. Experienced visitors had VPNs on their phones and could access Facebook and Google – not strictly sanctioned but informally tolerated and widespread.    

Spying?

Fearful beliefs about industrial espionage, if true, are historical. It is clearly the case that PRC industries did not recognised intellectual property rights and avoided patent payments. The UK has very few industrial secrets now. Graphene may have been the last. The PRC is far ahead. Other reason for data gathering are partly audience research. We are constantly under scrutiny by Cambridge Analytica, the Pentagon, UK counter-terrorism and car parks with number plate recognition. It is quite likely that that Huawei phones and Tiktok can be used for audience information, as can Apple phones, Microsoft operating systems and South Korean televisions. Is Chinese commercial scrutiny any more dangerous?

Militarism

PRC militarism is a reaction, not a first cause. The PRC has semicircle of US bases around it. Congress passed in one year (2020) bills on Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong and Uyghurs, exploring in a very obvious way any weaknesses in the PRC – and not really finding many. Senator Rubio should have discovered the Kunming knife attack on train passengers, which he might consider needed “a war on terror” but instead radical Islam“ a pretext”.  There is open discussion of a possible first nuclear strike on China, for example by the Rand Corporation. The Chinese SF novelist Liu Cixin often has plots about conflict with the USA. They are not at all gung ho: his stories invariably result in Chinese defeat because it is massively out-gunned by the USA. An offer of balanced force reduction by AUKUS and acceptance of a multipolar world are the remedy.  The Taiwan issue would probably then return to quiet co-existence.  Bring back “panda diplomacy”.  China once loaned to Taiwan the mated pair tuántuán (团团, ‘reunion’) and yuán yuan (圆圆, ’round’).  Taken together they mean 团圆 tuányuán (eventual reunion).  Is that brilliant, or what?