I want to say that as an East Asian I love whenever Richard has a take on East Asians. He’s one of the few smart writers out there that tries to understand East Asians and from a relatively sympathetic angle.
I think Richard’s right that the whole deal with East Asians is basically that they have high conformity.
Whether it’s due to Confucianism or genetic traits, I think it’s hard to untangle. I think it’s true that East Asians have genetic traits associated with Confucianism culture. For example, I think East Asians genetically are less interpersonally aggressive, have more self-control, and are more self-critical/humble than other races, which makes the restrictions of Confucian culture not chafe so much, i.e. respect your elders, seek collective harmony, focus on self-cultivation, etc. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if the long history of Confucian culture naturally selected for genetic traits that would thrive under such a system. Confucianism has been institutionalized since 500 BC, a very very long time.
I think you also underappreciate the extent to which Confucian culture permeates throughout East Asia. It might sound weird now because Westerners see China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam as separate sovereign states, but East Asia was basically the Sinosphere for most of history rather than individual sovereign states. East Asia was not so evenly broken up into different states as Europe where you might have more of a balance of power. East Asian history was China and then everybody else on the periphery, which is why China called themselves the Middle Kingdom.
To illustrate, the Sinosphere is generally agreed to include China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and Taiwan. To show the magnitude of difference, today China’s population is 1.4B, North Korea is 25M, South Korea is 50M, Japan is 125M, Vietnam is 100M, and Taiwan is 25M. If you combine all the other countries in the Sinosphere, they only total 325M compared to China’s 1,400M, China is still 4x larger than the collective, and completely dwarfs any particular individual country.
Today, Westerners love Japan and think it's superior to China in culture, in its people, etc., but for most of East Asian history, Japan was a backwater that looked to China for high civilization, ideas, culture, etc. There was waxing and waning when Japan was open or closed off to China, but with such a behemoth on its door step, Japan couldn’t help but be heavily influenced by Chinese civilization, ideas, culture, etc. A rough analogy would be Britain (a backwater on the outskirts) during the time of the Roman Empire (the fount of civilization). This relationship only reversed with the Opium Wars in the 1800’s when Japan was shocked to see their elder brother, the great Chinese empire, defeated by European barbarians, and Japan consequently modernized through the Meiji Restoration to avoid the same fate. For other countries in the Sinosphere, the influence of China was even greater. For most of Korea’s history it has been directly ruled by China or as a tributary state. Vietnam was under direct Chinese rule for a 1000 years. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore are obviously majority Chinese and so carry the same Confucian culture with them.
The countries in the Sinosphere were fairly interconnected. The tributary system is relatively well known. But most Westerners aren’t aware that most countries in the Sinosphere also participated in the Chinese Imperial Examinations. As the imperial center of an extended tributary system, China naturally attracted the smartest Koreans, Japanese, and Vietnamese to take part in the Chinese Imperial Examinations and join the Chinese empire as Mandarins. Even during the cyclical waning parts of the Chinese Empire when Korea, Japan, or Vietnam would gain more independence, they adopted the same Imperial Examination system that focused on producing Confucian scholars. To this day, the Koreans believe that they may be smaller than China and Japan, but they are the true inheritors of Confucian culture and are more Confucian than the Chinese or Japanese. This is more speculative, but part of the interconnectedness may also be genetic. The Chinese believe, according to their lore and historical texts, how in the ancient times before time, Korea and Japan were first seeded by Chinese fleeing persecution, wars, etc., and who decided not to return to their homeland.
Obviously, this is all highly inconvenient history to the national stories of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam today. And this might all be written off as Chinese chauvinism or even Chinese propaganda. Furthermore, none of this means that Korea, Japan, and Vietnam are not truly sovereign and independent nation states now. But it shows how deep Confucian culture has been seeded in all the countries in the Sinosphere.
I would argue that modern politics have not changed this. The East Asian democracies of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore may have many of the forms of Western democracies, but they are functionally very different. Most don’t know that South Korea and Taiwan were under military dictatorships long after their liberation after WW2 and only became democracies within the last generation, 1987 (SK) and 1997 (TW) respectively. Singapore is well-known as a one-party democracy with only one party ruling since independence shortly after WW2, but Japan is also essentially a one-party democracy. Since WW2, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (which is associated with Japan’s pre-WW2 right-wing militaristic government) has been in power every year other than a single election they lost from 2009-2012 due to a brief civil war within the LDP. They have since regained power and don’t look to ever lose power in the foreseeable future.
My observation is that East Asian populations continue to be mostly apathetic to politics, trusting their elders/experts/betters to make the important political decisions. This is very Confucian.
Very interesting comment. My impression was that Korea and Vietnam were clearly part of the Sinosphere, but that in the Tokugawa era, Japan saw itself as distinct, with the Imjin War breaking with historical norms and seeing Japan try to bring China under Japanese leadership. I see Japan’s development being to a large extent independent, though I could be mistaken.
You’re right that Japan has always been the most independent from China of all the East Asian countries. Of all the East Asian countries, Japan was the only country that China never conquered, due to the benefits of being an island. Many planned Chinese invasions of Japan were stymied by the challenges of an amphibian invasion of Japan.
As a result, Japan has always been able to voluntarily choose whether to be a part of the Sinosphere or not. In its formative years, it largely chose to be a part of the Sinosphere and it borrowed heavily from Chinese civilization. But you’re right that it’s charted a more independent path after the Imjin War and the Tokugawa Era and ever since. However I have to point out that with regards to Confucianism, it was actually still the ruling ideology of the Tokugawa Era.
Similarly, I still see the practice of Confucian ideals in Japan today, it’s just become such a part of authentic Japanese culture that its not separately identified as Confucian.
"However I have to point out that with regards to Confucianism, it was actually still the ruling ideology of the Tokugawa Era."
Plus, of course, the Tokugawa era is still very recent, when talking about much older than the US nations like China and Japan.
Also you rightly shot down the idea that Taiwan and SK were examples of long standing East Asian democratic tendencies in contrast to China. Both were dictatorships up to the 90s, and haven't been quite pluralistic and vibrant politically aftewards either (same for Japan, and much worse for Singapore).
"Many planned Chinese invasions of Japan" – what are these? To my knowledge there was only one planned invasion of Japan, and it was not Chinese but Mongol.
"They adopted the same Imperial Examination system that focused on producing Confucian scholars" – unlike Korea and Vietnam, Japan never adopted the imperial examinations. Their system of elite production is entirely different. Japan maintained a more-or-less feudal society well into the early modern period that had not existed in China for over 1000 years. This, I assume, matters a great deal when it comes to social structure and norms.
The first and second invasions by the Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty are the most famous because there were actual invasions, but many other Chinese dynasties have contemplated a punishing action against Japan or an invasion to bring Japan more tightly within its sphere, but haven’t gone through with it because of the difficulty of an amphibious invasion, resulting in Japan’s unique development.
That’s not true, there have been intermittent Imperial Examinations in Japan. Furthermore, look at the way Japan currently generates its elites. All students must go through an incredibly intense national examination to determine whether they can go to university and which one. It is the defining moment in each Japanese child’s life, no different from the Suneung in Korea or the Gaokao in China. All traffic and airlines are grounded during the Suneung so there is no distraction to the students. The whole nation cheers on the young students who will one day lead the country to prosperity. Very Confucian.
Similarly in Japan, the civil service carries the highest prestige, with only the best students from the most elite universities accepted. This is the complete opposite of the West where the elite go to the private sector, finance/law/tech and only the dummies and lazy work in government. The elite graduates that staffed the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) basically ran Japan after WW2. This is a very Confucian system.
The West isn't homogeneous. You are mainly talking about the Anglosphere in your last paragraph. France has its highly prestigious École normale supérieure, the most prestigious, most elite university in the country, whose function for the longest time, and to some degree even today, was for the formation of people who would serve in state employment. In the country that Germany was before recent neoliberal "reforms" and cultural changes that partly destroyed the old system, it was pretty standard for people who excelled at university to become upper tier "Beamte", lifelong servers of the state.
Japan and Vietnam had more Indian influence. Before the Meiji era, you would get the death penalty for killing a cow. India losing to Britain was also a thing in the minds of Japanese reformers.
Aside from Bhudism, which spread througout East Asia, and which Vietnamese and Chinese they adapted to their culture, they had very little Indian influence.
I agree that the birth rate is an excellent indicator of a major difference between East Asians and everyone else.
I don’t think the problem is with East Asians needing a life script more than other races. I think everybody follows life scripts, whether they realize it or not. The problem goes back to high conformity. Unlike the West where there are lots of alternative subcultures, East Asian conformity means that you don't really have groups splintering off and creating their own subculture. Everybody just follows the mainstream life script. You don’t really have a "gangsta" subculture so you don’t see high crime or drug use among a subset of the population. You don’t really have a “trad” subculture so you don’t see particular trad or religious groups with a super high birth rate among a subset of the population. You also don’t really have a “start-up” subculture that might be particularly entrepreneurial.
As another tangent, I think the traffic accident stats you provided is an anomaly. Off the top of my head, the high usage of scooters in Asia might be the confounding factor, since that is much more likely to lead to road injury death. Asian-Americans per capita have the lowest traffic accidents and road injury deaths of all races.
It might sound kind of bland and maybe even extremely distasteful to the kind of reader of this blog, but everyone in East Asia just sort of follows the mainstream life script which is generally pro-social, hardworking, pro-establishment, etc. On the flip side, if the mainstream life script were to switch to war, you would have the most patriotic citizens in the world. Which is why you have the phenomenon of kamikaze Japanese, South Koreans answering the call of their government to voluntarily donate their gold to the treasury so the country will not have to suffer the humiliation of asking for a loan from the IMF, China’s zero-Covid policy, etc.
To become a stand-out in anything, you’re probably kind of an oddball (you might even have some psychological issues) and you’ve probably had to make significant sacrifice in some aspect of your life. East Asians generally settle for a more holistic upper-middle class lifestyle. This is not only unique to East Asians though. The Anglo world tends to be particularly individualistic, but not all Westerners are that way. For example, Scandinavian countries have the Law of Jante (i.e. tall poppy syndrome), which seems very familiar to me as an East Asian. I believe this is why you generally don’t see East Asians stand out as CEOs, Noble Prize winners, etc.
So what is causing extraordinarily low East Asian birth rates? I think its because of the hyper-conformism to the mainstream life script. I think in all countries, the mainstream life script is an upper-middle class lifestyle. Go to school and get a good education. Get an upper-middle class job in Medicine/Law/Finance/Tech/Academia etc. Marry a girl from a good family also in the upper-middle class. Have 2.5 children. Send them to good schools with extracurriculars. Encourage them to do well in school, get a good job, marry, give you grandkids, etc. etc. Rinse and repeat. (maybe slight alterations for a more conservative subculture – more likely to want to be a small business owner, pillar of the community, maybe more kids, etc.)
The East Asian hyper-conformism to the mainstream life script means they’re going to grind harder than almost anyone else to do well in school to get the good job. They will work pretty hard to fulfill their job duties, although they might not seek advancement with the same vigor. As you said, they do all the steps in order, they marry first, only then do they have kids, and they divorce at much lower rates. Teen pregnancy is very rare.
The problem is that not everyone can attain this. Not everyone can do well in school or get a good job. But in East Asia, women will not marry a man that does not have a certain level of financial stability. You must have a good job that can support a family. It is very common for women to demand that their boyfriend own a house for them to live in, before she agrees to marry him.
These men who don’t do well in school or get a good job become unmarriageable, they’re incels, and this is a sizeable percentage of the population. Infamously, the bloodiest civil war in the world, the Taiping Rebellion, was started by a young Chinese man who repeatedly failed the Imperial Examination multiple times and became so psychotic afterwards that he thought he was the younger brother of Jesus and that he needed to start a holy crusade.
Even once a young East Asian couple marries, they want to set up their kids for an upper-middle class life. Like today’s strivers in the West who want to get their children into the Ivy League, it means providing an “enriching” childhood from conception. Upper-middle class moms know everything about pre-natal nutrition and baby yoga. After birth, they faithfully hit every milestone. They line up for their child to attend the most exclusive kindergarten which is a feeder to the most exclusive primary school which is a feeder to the most exclusive high school which is a feeder to the most exclusive college. Their child also has to build up their resume along the way with sports, arts, volunteer experiences, etc.
It’s exhausting and an arms race. In East Asia, the whole family, even the grandparents, will sacrifice immense time and money for the children. So maybe you only have 1 kid instead of 2 or more.
In the West, it’s different. Everyone grows up wanting to be successful, but obviously not everybody can be. And for the lower and middle class that’s okay. Most Westerners move on and accept their lot in life. They romanticize the aspects of their life they have to accept. They end up meeting someone, settle down, have kids, and they pick up some hobbies like golf or brewing craft beers, maybe they go to church once in a while. Most glorify their station in life. “We’re salt-of-the-earth, not like those corrupt and evil rich people”, etc.
I would be very curious about birth rates by percentiles of a society if anyone has that date. I believe the biggest contributor to low East Asian birth rates is that the East Asian lower and middle class are not having nearly as many babies as the West’s lower and middle class are having. I wouldn’t be surprised if that accounts for much of the difference in average birth rate, and that there’s not much difference in birth rate at the top-end of society between East and West.
In terms of the future, I also agree that conformity is a double-edged sword and can be used for beneficial ends. I think the only way to change birth rates will be to change the culture and what is valued, not financial incentives. South Korea and Japan have provided large financial incentives without any result. You’re starting to see China just beginning to tackle the challenge of changing culture: banning of sissy men characters in media, encouraging women to become mothers rather than pursue a career, banning private tutoring, banning of pornography, etc. They'll have to take a lot more steps though, since I believe last year's statistics showed that birth rates continue to fall.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if Westerners end up leading the way. I agree that there is a low Asian propensity for ideological entrepreneurship. China reversed the one child policy extremely late (it’s worth noting that China didn’t even come up with the one child policy themselves, they followed Western expert advice from the UN and other organizations). China only started to be concerned about the threat of a low birth rate after the West started to become alarmed about it in the last 10 or so years, despite China being in much worse shape than the West.
On the plus side for East Asia, there is definitely the state capacity to change birth rates once they decide to do so. As you mentioned, Mao initially encouraged birth rates and this campaign was wildly successful, in fact too wildly successfully in the eyes of the CCP, which is why they thereafter reversed course and enacted the one child policy.
Many of the measures taken by the CCP during Mao’s campaign to boost birth rates were directed at culture, and I don’t think the current CCP has forgotten what measures worked back then. Women with many children were given awards and honours. Special privileges were given to women who had many children. Education and media focused on the patriotic duty of women to have children. Promotion within the CCP depended on having a good family life (no divorce, no mistresses) and lots of children with your wife. Etc.
The point about subcultures is a good one. Americans have a thousand different intersecting social status ladders and while some are obviously more widely respected than others, it's all pretty illegible. You can generally find some way to earn social respect and feel good about yourself even if it's pretty far off the beaten path.
I was surprised at the extent to which Chinese I've met just don't seem to have that feature in their culture. The metrics by which social status is judged are pretty widely agreed and the people who don't have what it takes to compete in those specific areas just ... I don't know, feel worthless all their lives? It's hard for an American to understand. Our society couldn't work that way, too many of us would rebel
The idea that East Asians don't have subcultures is absurd, almost as bad as people who say Whites don't have culture. Take Japan for the most obvious example; "otaku" is best associated with anime obsessives but in fact has connotations that can be applied to any kind of geekery, such as train otaku. Japan's music industry has a strong cult following in the West due to its sheer diversity; within just heavy metal (mostly an Anglo/German phenomenon with roots in Hendrix) there are numerous Japanese-specific subtypes like visual kei, J-core derived metal, super-flowery Japanese power metal, and a strain of Japanese alternative metal. Even if you define subculture as "clothes you wear in high school" (better accuse most Catholic countries with school uniforms as lacking subculture as well), they've got gyaru, menhera, yankii, etc.
We aren't talking about subcultures as in music and tv shows. We're talking about the ways people interact with the world around them and the lifestyles they choose. Your understanding of "subculture" is like the people who believe German culture is beer or Indian culture is curry.
The guy I was replying to was talking about "gangsta culture" (which arguably doesn't exist; it's just a type of pathological Black behavior), which is obviously still subculture in music (gangsta rap) and tv shows/movies (Boys n the Hood). Do you think every single Japanese man goes the salaryman route? Do you think the numerous South Korean steelworkers belong to the same culture as hardcore STEM strivers? Try making a falsifiable argument.
I've never been able to find statistics breaking down the fertility rate by income level in Japan. I too would be interested to know what the rates are by income level and how they compare with western countries. I know some working class Japanese with lots of kids, but also upper-income families with lots of kids. The working class families with lots of kids do tend to be more entrepreneurial and their income levels are probably not standard working class level.
This is an excellent comment and the dynamic you're describing (i.e. everyone wanting an upper middle class lifestyle) is not confined to just East Asia. In Poland, an average couple has two kids. But there is a significant and growing portion of population that has no kids because they've never married because the men did not meet the high standards women expect.
Singapore realized in the 1980s that their population control had been too successful, & have been trying & failing to bring birth rates back to up replacement ever since. This is despite the fact that, compared to Japan, South, Korea, & Taiwan, they're especially authoritarian, especially rich, & arguably more open to innovation & outside influence.
Doesn't this mean that Asian countries will end up selecting much more for intelligence and conscientiousness than Western countries?
As the ones that don't make it end up having less or no children. And "making it" requires higher degrees of intelligence and conscientiousness? Yes China Korea etc are far from perfect meritocracies, but still far more than any other time in history.
A declining global population is a profoundly positive trend.
Remember that in 1970, the population was only 3.7 billion, less than half of today's number. Was it a dystopian hellscape back then? I think not. A return to a sane and sustainable population level will have massive benefits in terms of quality of life and resource utilization, among other measures.
The recent hand-wringing about low fertility rates is misplaced. The challenge is not how to increase fertility -- that ship has sailed since developed countries are no longer in traditional survival mode -- but how to manage the decline.
How can developed countries retain their cultures and economies without being overrun by third-world migrants fleeing their overpopulated shitholes? Completely close their borders? Promote birth control and economic development in said shitholes to reduce their fertility rates? How should retirement benefits be reimagined to avoid bankrupting low fertility countries?
Those are the questions we should be asking -- not how to get Korean women to have more babies, which is simply not going to happen.
You are missing the fact that the population pyramid of a precipitously declining population will be an inverse pyramid (an urn) rather than the normal pyramid, so there will be very few young people and a mass of old and geriatric people. Secondly, population decline is geometric, so it will happen really quickly with little time to adjust. Thirdly, the high-TFR subpopulations within a larger population (all ultrareligious afaik like the Haredis, Amish, Mormons to a lesser extent, and many other Christian branches) will become majorities and supermajorities within 5-10 generations if TFR will remain low enough. This makes for a really weird, poor, boring, and unstable world with exponentially growing subpopulations of highly religious, insular, techno-phobic people against a backdrop of exponentially shrinking normies, with the normies ultimately dying out and the outliers becoming predominant. Fourthly, some populations like the whole of East Asia by the way, have no fecund religious denominations/cults/branches at all afaik, so their populations will shrink by 90-99% per century assuming TFR ranges of 0.5-1. The idea of the whole of East Asia with a population density of hunter-gatherers in 200 years is pretty horrifying considering their ultra-high human capital. Fifthly, if you are pro-human, it would be sad if we screwed up so royally as a species that we will collapse in 2-3 centuries with a whimper in a nursing home (with Haredi and Amish nurses) in diapers without becoming a type I-III Kardashev scale civilization.
A plausible (and amusing) but likely hyperbolic scenario.
I'm arguing that since humans in developed countries have moved on from the agricultural necessity to have 10 kids (6 of whom would survive), population decline is inevitable and irreversible.
If the decline is managed correctly -- an unprecedented challenge, of course -- the rewards in terms of quality of life improvements will be massive.
I'm not worried about the Amish -- they are a blip compared to millions of Africans, Indians, Muslims, etc who will make the current migrant crisis look like a picnic.
I believe we can be pro-natal and still worry about migration crisis. I do not freak-out much over the poor Amish, but a geriatric world will definitly be a smaller, poorer and altogether uninteresting one.
Would the enviroment heal? Probably not. Alot of damage has already been done, only proactive care (geo-engineering) and moving forward will allow us to repay our debts to Nature. You cant do that in a new Medieval Age (and trust me thats where the current trends are carrying us into).
>I'm arguing that since humans in developed countries have moved on from the agricultural necessity to have 10 kids (6 of whom would survive), population decline is inevitable and irreversible.
Your argument is disproved by Hasidic Jews. They've gone from 1% of Israel's population in 1960 to becoming a majority by 2050, all through births.
Agriculturalists don't have lots of kids due to "necessity" any more than hunter-gatherers or other species of animals do. Having kids has never been a paying proposition in economic terms.
The Western worlds elites actually desire a continuation of the low birth rates of their currently mostly white populations AND want mass immigration too.Those countries were never going to allow their populations to drop It also suits the millions of childless women like Angela Merkel. It wasn't just treacherous political posturing on her part when she fired the official starting pistol on open borders in Europe back in 2015 with her welcoming of 2 million Muslim males into the EU. The deceit behind the drive for "net zero" emissions in the UK was on display when a further fall in the native birth rate was welcomed as helping that cause, which was soon followed by support for the record level of immigration that was necessary due to the ageing population.
To 0th order it's a negative trend, to the extent that existing as a human has worth. To put it in personal terms, I'm thankful my mother didn't take the Paul Erlichs of the world too seriously back in the late 20th century.
It's still positive now. We're projected to hit 10B before it actually declines. In the US the population is higher every day than it was the day before, it has been that way for over a century, the the rate of growth has merely slowed. These ideas of population "collapse" are pure hysteria.
Didn't have time to comment on this earlier but to briefly do that before it's too late.
(1) Obviously agree on theory of East Asian conformism as something I have written a lot about myself. Incidentally, I think another very good measure is the Nature Index per capita, which adjusts for quality. East Asians infamously game patents - those numbers are meaningless.
(b) Back to my pet topic of breeders, the East Asians emerged out of the Malthusian trap a lot later than most of the Western world. Japan, obviously, quite a lot earlier than Korea (Third World until 1950s) or China. So analogously, it is perhaps no accident that Japan has merely Med fertility stats, as opposed to East Asian ones.
(c) Surveys suggest that in relative terms to Westerners, East Asians value wealth above family, hobbies, finding oneself, new experiences, etc. Children are a luxury good in the modern world and detract from wealth-building. More materialist cultures will have fewer kids on average. East Asians are under greater pressure from parents (who also have higher status) to pursue the safe path in life, e.g. going into some high-paid business job as opposed to doing academic research. This last point is the most strongly tied into the conformism nexus.
(4) A potentially useful control: How low will Indian TFR go? Personally, I think very, very low - it will surprise us all in 10-20 years time. (But that's for another post). In any case, there are multiple paths to ultra-low fertility beyond East Asian conformism.
I, a white Canadian, have lived in South Korea since 2003. I wanted to note some things.
1. Since 1985 you mention the internet. True since 2000 I'd say. But 1985, I'd say movement to cities. And there, they're lost to find a partner, they lack social skills. In the village, it was easier to meet through some existing circle, like school class.
2. I have taught middle school students at a private study insitute. The kids will enter, the boys will sit on one side, the girls on the other. They won't chat each other up.
3. There are unmanned shops, selling ice cream and snacks. Based on honor and CCTV(there's a sign saying, No Masks when you enter). There are forgotten credit cards, and wallets by the kiosk checkout. They'll sit there for weeks. Westerners will think, I could steal this, and evaluate it. Koreans won't even think, "I could steal this," it isn't a normal thought. In the west, I think it's a normal thought, that our consciousness usually says no to.
4. I've started work at a new company. I've been told a rule and asked why a rule exists. The trainer often won't know, but also, won't of even considered the question for themself, they've just memorized the rule, and want you to do so too. Why is irrelevant, but not thought about (like the stealing consideration).
Here's something, maybe you could write about:
5. Korea says, look at evil Japan, what they did to us. They act morally superior for not invading, etc. But really I think it was lack of ability. That if they were the rich advanced country surrounded by poor ones, they would have acted the same. Also Russia pogroms against Jews vs. Germany death factories. How much is really different in their moral character. The Germans were technically advanced and very efficient in a way few countries could be. If they weren't so efficient, would they have been as evil? It seems Russia was just as evil, they just weren't efficient. And inefficient countries say, look at that evil guy, but they would have done the same if they were as efficient/smart as the Germans or Japanese were.
I don't think Russia's tsars were as anti-semitic as Hitler. They acquired a territory with lots of Jews, and just declared Jews could only live there. Hitler seized much of the same territory, and decided to repopulate it with Germans to be served by whatever Slavs hadn't been starved out. Germany had pogroms in the pre-modern era, and Kristallnacht was a state-ordered pogrom intended to resemble a spontaneous one, but the Holocaust was on another scale.
We know what a military matchup between Koreans & non-Koreans is like due to the Korean War. That being said, Korea doesn't seem to have been nearly as badly treated as China by the Japanese.
By middle school, what age range exactly? Where I live it's ages 11-13, and that's the transitional period from the "girls/boys have cooties!" stage and it wasn't unusual for the genders to be pretty segregated because they still weren't interested in each other. By 14+ puberty was in fuller swing and most people were interested in the opposite gender.
I strongly disagree with the description of Singapore as a "dictatorship." If Singapore is a dictatorship, then the word lacks any meaning beyond "not a democracy within the ideal that actually no democracy has ever met, particularly mine." Let's find a different word and stop insulting the noble Roman institution of dictatorship, an emergency position within the law.
Singapore was ruled by one guy for most of its history, and has never been ruled by any other party since independence. Most countries called democracies aren't like that. Admittedly, most democracies also aren't city-states.
No country has as successful a ruling party as PAP. Also, there's no rule saying that democracy requires that parties (how many, two, three, 15?) rotate in power. In fact, Singapore's example tells you that corruption, the most usual reason given against maintaining any given party in power for long, is least likely when the same party stays in office and party faithful know they must not be in hurry to line up their pockets and build up contacts for the time after they leave government.
No, a single example doesn't show corruption is "least likely" in that case, because it's outweighed by the many counter-examples of parties that stayed in power for a long time while being heavily corrupt. Aside from many one-party dictatorships, the PRI in Mexico was not notoriously corrupt because they all anticipated losing power from 2000 to 2012.
Fine with me. Confucian oligarchy, Chinese dirigisme, call it what you want except that which evidently is not, since it's not ruled by a leader with emergency powers (a dictator).
I think it's a bureaucracy, that has voting on the side. The west is taking that model. Dems are the bureaucracy party, they're trying to eliminate dissent from the bureaucracy.
> One can see this as a case of convergent evolution rather than descent from a common cultural source.
Japan didn't converge on a writing system that resembles Chinese. They copied it for their own use. East Asians are also, of course, more related to each other than they are to people outside East Asia. "Convergent evolution" would only make sense if the same pattern was found in an unrelated group and emerging independently. So if one thinks that East Asians resemble Jews, that would be an example of convergent evolution.
> throughout history and cross nationally it tends to be poorer people who have more kids
That's a very limited selection of history. Recall that Cochran & Harpending's theory of the natural history of Ashkenazi IQ is that richer people had more descendants. Something similar is actually seen in Greg Clark's data on disappearing surnames & probate records.
> The guy’s entire philosophy is “Hey just listen to your parents and government, ok guys? Things will go much easier that way.”
There's more to it than that. Legalism was all about getting people to obey the government by imposing harsh punishments. Confucius has a big emphasis on ritual and "the proper naming of things". He's also responsible for the emphasis on studying in order to become a bureaucrat ("Mandarin", now the name of the most common Chinese language) working for the state.
> It’s difficult to imagine such a figure inspiring Westerners at any point in their history.
Do you not recall the Biblical law to obey your parents, for which the punishment is death? The story of the binding of Isaac as a sacrifice for God, and how the ideal parent tries to follow through until God calls it off? Westerners actually did for a larger chunk of history than the demographic transition has taken up!
> bad at things like entrepreneurship
That doesn't sound like the Overseas Chinese.
> forming families in a world without arranged marriages or strong norms bringing young people together
Perhaps not so different from South Asia. Most Indian states now have below replacement TFR. The higher fertility states tend to have more arranged marriages.
> nonetheless have rock bottom rates of crime and dysfunction in peace time
> an immediate about-face after 1945 and became completely pacific, both in terms of geopolitics and how individuals within society interacted with one another
False, unless something that took until 1990 qualifies as "immediate".
> When it comes to conformity, investigate practically any form of dysfunctional behavior, and you will find East Asians at the bottom of world rankings.
> I suppose we can save race science by invoking more race science. Asians are low on non-conforming behavior, but they’re also bad drivers, and maybe the impact of the latter is more important.
> adopt gerontocratic policies for common psychological and public choice reasons.
The problem with "public choice theory" is that it predicts the elderly will be the ones supporting such policies while young people oppose them, but as Bryan Caplan has pointed out young people can be found supporting the gerontocratic welfare state at higher rates than the elderly.
> Russia has become a sort of ideological beacon for nationalists across the world
The dumbest and most online ones.
> One might even note how trendy the Palestinian cause has become on college campuses.
It's been that way for a while.
> there are massive behavioral differences within both Christendom and dar al-Islam
I'd like to see a similar examination of dar al-Islam.
Isn't this a self-solving problem? Ie, currently a small number of Asians are having kids. These Asians are perhaps less conformist. Over time, their kids will be the *only* Asians, and a greater percentage of them will be non-conforming as well, so they'll also have more kids, until non-conformists inherit Asia.
Seems like natural selection means that falling birth rates misunderstand the problem - really it's best understood as "which minorities will inherit the country through birth, and what will things be like when they are a bigger chunk of the pie". As long as *some* groups are still reproducing, then we can expect that over time, they'll become a bigger and bigger part of the demographics of the country, until the problem is solved.
In a tiny country like Israel we saw this quickly with the ultra-Orthodox. In the USA, we see it to a degree with conservative. I suspect east Asia, especially South Korea and Japan, will have ultra-nationalists and ethnic minorities as their equivalent, but idk.
The reason is very simple. Psychological normal people do not reproduce under capitalism, they relied on traditional culture to reproduce in the past. Only White people have started to adapt to the spiritual poison of secular capitalism due to long term exposure.
To my knowledge, when communism died in Eastern Bloc Europe, the TFR took a deep dive everywhere. So these countries were doing better, i.e. had more children and more marriages, under communism.
North Korea is the only modern genuinely Communist country that comes to mind and they do reproduce a whole lot more than South Koreans. Authoritarianism, religiosity, and government control of the economy all correlate with birth rates. Secular neoliberalism destroys it.
Look at the history of communism more broadly and you'll see birth rates declining in most such countries. North Korea has shut itself off from the rest of the world, avoiding economic development and change more generally, but its TFR has still fallen below replacement:
For the traffic accidents, you should normalize for the type of roads people drive on, if possible. Chinese cities have presumably complicated, very crowded, high speed highway systems running through the city.
Also do those stats include people riding bicycles getting hit by cars or pedestrians getting run over? There is a lot more bicycling and foot traffic in most of East Asia.
Overall a good and enjoyable argument. Wife-hunting as entrepreneurialism -- I like it.
On density and fertility: while they're certainly not a primary cause, I've heard a plausible argument that high-rise apartments are uniquely bad for fertility. It's at least worth considering. High-rises are both a more expensive form of construction per SF than low-rises (often translating to smaller units for each family), and they introduce certain inconveniences to family life by way of distance to the outdoors.
For whatever reason, some countries go crazy building high-rises, and the East Asian countries seem to be among them. In my travels, Spain also seems to be one of them, and I notice that it generally ranks poorly in fertility as European countries go (though emigration is surely also a factor). For whatever reason, I noticed that even rural hamlets in Spain seem to have a lot more high-rises than on the other side of the Pyrenees. You can't blame this on Spain's relative poverty vs. France since again, high-rise apartments are a MORE expensive form of construction per SF than low-rise apartments.
On masking: the Japanese (and perhaps other East Asians) adopted masking when sick as a social norm a while ago. Perhaps in the 90s or 00s? Maybe earlier. East Asians have a cleanliness focus that probably has deep roots. You'll also notice Japanese much less likely to eat food with their bare hands while out and about. Greg Clark in "Farewell to Alms" noted that East Asians sustained a higher population density under Malthusian conditions in part due to a lower death rate from disease, which he related to higher cleanliness standards.
Maybe the cleanliness standards are a form of conformity, or maybe they're a separate psychological tendency on their own. Or perhaps some of both.
To me it is clearly the case that in Asia the norm is that if you're going to have kids - you better get them into Harvard or equivalent. In a way growing up in the Netherlands people were fairly hereditarian in a way . That is, when someone struggles in school it is interpreted as they're just not "good at learning" and this is an immutable characteristic. Though nobody would explicitly call it genetic. In East Asia failing to get into a top school is your fault. it is also your parents fault. It is predictable that people are reluctant to procreate if that is the level of parenting they're held to. And if they do have children, they are required to invest so much in each that they cannot have many.
I would also want to warn against overestimating the Confusionism-eradicating effect of Maoism. Eastern Europe is still noticeably culturally and confessionally Christian, despite decades of Communism. These sorts (quasi-)religious cultural institutions take deep roots that are nearly impossible to eradicate.
I don't think it's accurate to characterize Asians as lacking entrepreneurial inclinations when you specifically consider Americans of Taiwanese descent. In Silicon Valley East Asian CEOs and higher-ups are disproportionately of Taiwanese origin, and among women Chinese Americans (mostly Taiwanese) are even more overrepresented in leadership roles at major companies than Indian Americans. Additionally, Japanese companies in the 20th century were some of the most globally competitive, but now they've slumped because their run by geriatric men; I think it's hasty to generalize based on a contemporary sample size.
It always feels arbitrary and ad hoc whenever people say East Asia but then cut out Vietnam. Culturally Vietnam is more East Asian than Southeast Asian (especially the north), as they have a lot of Chinese root words, used to use Chinese characters, celebrate lunar new year, were a Chinese tributary state prior to French colonization, had period of closing off to the West (similar to Tokugawa Bakufu and Joseon dynasty), had a Confucian exam system, and adopted a political system mirroring China's. Razib had a chart on East Asian genetics (I think in his article on Japanese genetics) and included Vietnam on it. Viets were more relatively distant from Koreans and Japanese but didn't seem too far from Chinese. If you were to limit the gene samples to the Red River Delta, which is the country's civilizational core, it would probably become less distant given that the south was originally inhabited by Austronesians.
While social conformity is high in Korea, political conformity is arguably not. Korea's extremely politically polarized, and protests get huge. Pro-democracy riots in the eighties had to be put down by the ROK Army. Syngman Rhee was overthrown in a student revolution in 1960 (and briefly replaced by my great grandfather's cousin). The March 1 Movement in 1919 gathered huge crowds against Japanese colonization, and nationalist terrorists assassinated Japanese officials.
Also, I agree that the Japanese and Koreans are highly conformist, but in my opinion Chinese people are actually extremely individualistic. There's actually an idea that if there's a sign saying something is not allowed they will purposely try defying it (the idea being that if something is prohibited, it must be good stuff that someone else is trying to hoard for themselves). Confucianism has more or less been eradicated by a combination of the Cultural Revolution and then materialism.
I think the better distinction is that East Asian cultures are all "guess cultures", where both sides are expected to anticipate the needs of the other and refrain from making requests that could cause a face-losing denial. That's the reason that Asian men typically do not approach women, because outside of a few specific circumstances, it's very difficult to tell how the approach will be taken. On the other hand, this probably actually increases the match rate of Asian women, as it becomes more difficult to deny approaches directed towards them.
In the UK the drug related death rates are 5 times higher in Scotland than England. No one really has any idea why. In America drug deaths among Whites are concentrated in Scots-Irish areas.
I womder what other figures are impacted by sub groups.
I think most crime in Japan is commtted by Burakumin so the true crime rate of Japanese is much lower than the figures show.
Your understanding of the political histories of the East Asian states as well as the tenets of Confucius’ philosophy could stand to be improved. It’s not that you’re wrong per se, it’s just that you’re applying undergraduate level analysis.
I want to say that as an East Asian I love whenever Richard has a take on East Asians. He’s one of the few smart writers out there that tries to understand East Asians and from a relatively sympathetic angle.
I think Richard’s right that the whole deal with East Asians is basically that they have high conformity.
Whether it’s due to Confucianism or genetic traits, I think it’s hard to untangle. I think it’s true that East Asians have genetic traits associated with Confucianism culture. For example, I think East Asians genetically are less interpersonally aggressive, have more self-control, and are more self-critical/humble than other races, which makes the restrictions of Confucian culture not chafe so much, i.e. respect your elders, seek collective harmony, focus on self-cultivation, etc. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if the long history of Confucian culture naturally selected for genetic traits that would thrive under such a system. Confucianism has been institutionalized since 500 BC, a very very long time.
I think you also underappreciate the extent to which Confucian culture permeates throughout East Asia. It might sound weird now because Westerners see China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam as separate sovereign states, but East Asia was basically the Sinosphere for most of history rather than individual sovereign states. East Asia was not so evenly broken up into different states as Europe where you might have more of a balance of power. East Asian history was China and then everybody else on the periphery, which is why China called themselves the Middle Kingdom.
To illustrate, the Sinosphere is generally agreed to include China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and Taiwan. To show the magnitude of difference, today China’s population is 1.4B, North Korea is 25M, South Korea is 50M, Japan is 125M, Vietnam is 100M, and Taiwan is 25M. If you combine all the other countries in the Sinosphere, they only total 325M compared to China’s 1,400M, China is still 4x larger than the collective, and completely dwarfs any particular individual country.
Today, Westerners love Japan and think it's superior to China in culture, in its people, etc., but for most of East Asian history, Japan was a backwater that looked to China for high civilization, ideas, culture, etc. There was waxing and waning when Japan was open or closed off to China, but with such a behemoth on its door step, Japan couldn’t help but be heavily influenced by Chinese civilization, ideas, culture, etc. A rough analogy would be Britain (a backwater on the outskirts) during the time of the Roman Empire (the fount of civilization). This relationship only reversed with the Opium Wars in the 1800’s when Japan was shocked to see their elder brother, the great Chinese empire, defeated by European barbarians, and Japan consequently modernized through the Meiji Restoration to avoid the same fate. For other countries in the Sinosphere, the influence of China was even greater. For most of Korea’s history it has been directly ruled by China or as a tributary state. Vietnam was under direct Chinese rule for a 1000 years. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore are obviously majority Chinese and so carry the same Confucian culture with them.
The countries in the Sinosphere were fairly interconnected. The tributary system is relatively well known. But most Westerners aren’t aware that most countries in the Sinosphere also participated in the Chinese Imperial Examinations. As the imperial center of an extended tributary system, China naturally attracted the smartest Koreans, Japanese, and Vietnamese to take part in the Chinese Imperial Examinations and join the Chinese empire as Mandarins. Even during the cyclical waning parts of the Chinese Empire when Korea, Japan, or Vietnam would gain more independence, they adopted the same Imperial Examination system that focused on producing Confucian scholars. To this day, the Koreans believe that they may be smaller than China and Japan, but they are the true inheritors of Confucian culture and are more Confucian than the Chinese or Japanese. This is more speculative, but part of the interconnectedness may also be genetic. The Chinese believe, according to their lore and historical texts, how in the ancient times before time, Korea and Japan were first seeded by Chinese fleeing persecution, wars, etc., and who decided not to return to their homeland.
Obviously, this is all highly inconvenient history to the national stories of Korea, Japan, and Vietnam today. And this might all be written off as Chinese chauvinism or even Chinese propaganda. Furthermore, none of this means that Korea, Japan, and Vietnam are not truly sovereign and independent nation states now. But it shows how deep Confucian culture has been seeded in all the countries in the Sinosphere.
I would argue that modern politics have not changed this. The East Asian democracies of South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore may have many of the forms of Western democracies, but they are functionally very different. Most don’t know that South Korea and Taiwan were under military dictatorships long after their liberation after WW2 and only became democracies within the last generation, 1987 (SK) and 1997 (TW) respectively. Singapore is well-known as a one-party democracy with only one party ruling since independence shortly after WW2, but Japan is also essentially a one-party democracy. Since WW2, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (which is associated with Japan’s pre-WW2 right-wing militaristic government) has been in power every year other than a single election they lost from 2009-2012 due to a brief civil war within the LDP. They have since regained power and don’t look to ever lose power in the foreseeable future.
My observation is that East Asian populations continue to be mostly apathetic to politics, trusting their elders/experts/betters to make the important political decisions. This is very Confucian.
Very interesting comment. My impression was that Korea and Vietnam were clearly part of the Sinosphere, but that in the Tokugawa era, Japan saw itself as distinct, with the Imjin War breaking with historical norms and seeing Japan try to bring China under Japanese leadership. I see Japan’s development being to a large extent independent, though I could be mistaken.
You’re right that Japan has always been the most independent from China of all the East Asian countries. Of all the East Asian countries, Japan was the only country that China never conquered, due to the benefits of being an island. Many planned Chinese invasions of Japan were stymied by the challenges of an amphibian invasion of Japan.
As a result, Japan has always been able to voluntarily choose whether to be a part of the Sinosphere or not. In its formative years, it largely chose to be a part of the Sinosphere and it borrowed heavily from Chinese civilization. But you’re right that it’s charted a more independent path after the Imjin War and the Tokugawa Era and ever since. However I have to point out that with regards to Confucianism, it was actually still the ruling ideology of the Tokugawa Era.
Similarly, I still see the practice of Confucian ideals in Japan today, it’s just become such a part of authentic Japanese culture that its not separately identified as Confucian.
"However I have to point out that with regards to Confucianism, it was actually still the ruling ideology of the Tokugawa Era."
Plus, of course, the Tokugawa era is still very recent, when talking about much older than the US nations like China and Japan.
Also you rightly shot down the idea that Taiwan and SK were examples of long standing East Asian democratic tendencies in contrast to China. Both were dictatorships up to the 90s, and haven't been quite pluralistic and vibrant politically aftewards either (same for Japan, and much worse for Singapore).
"Many planned Chinese invasions of Japan" – what are these? To my knowledge there was only one planned invasion of Japan, and it was not Chinese but Mongol.
"They adopted the same Imperial Examination system that focused on producing Confucian scholars" – unlike Korea and Vietnam, Japan never adopted the imperial examinations. Their system of elite production is entirely different. Japan maintained a more-or-less feudal society well into the early modern period that had not existed in China for over 1000 years. This, I assume, matters a great deal when it comes to social structure and norms.
The first and second invasions by the Mongol rulers of the Yuan Dynasty are the most famous because there were actual invasions, but many other Chinese dynasties have contemplated a punishing action against Japan or an invasion to bring Japan more tightly within its sphere, but haven’t gone through with it because of the difficulty of an amphibious invasion, resulting in Japan’s unique development.
That’s not true, there have been intermittent Imperial Examinations in Japan. Furthermore, look at the way Japan currently generates its elites. All students must go through an incredibly intense national examination to determine whether they can go to university and which one. It is the defining moment in each Japanese child’s life, no different from the Suneung in Korea or the Gaokao in China. All traffic and airlines are grounded during the Suneung so there is no distraction to the students. The whole nation cheers on the young students who will one day lead the country to prosperity. Very Confucian.
Similarly in Japan, the civil service carries the highest prestige, with only the best students from the most elite universities accepted. This is the complete opposite of the West where the elite go to the private sector, finance/law/tech and only the dummies and lazy work in government. The elite graduates that staffed the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) basically ran Japan after WW2. This is a very Confucian system.
The West isn't homogeneous. You are mainly talking about the Anglosphere in your last paragraph. France has its highly prestigious École normale supérieure, the most prestigious, most elite university in the country, whose function for the longest time, and to some degree even today, was for the formation of people who would serve in state employment. In the country that Germany was before recent neoliberal "reforms" and cultural changes that partly destroyed the old system, it was pretty standard for people who excelled at university to become upper tier "Beamte", lifelong servers of the state.
Japan and Vietnam had more Indian influence. Before the Meiji era, you would get the death penalty for killing a cow. India losing to Britain was also a thing in the minds of Japanese reformers.
Japanese Edo-era vegetarianism was influenced by Buddhism (not Hinduism). Killing of all animals was banned, other than fish.
Where do you think Buddhism came from, mate?
India, but you focused on cows which Hindus hold particular reverence for, when in Japan all animals (other than fish) were protected.
It came to Japan from Korea.
It was, technically speaking, the eating of meat that was banned -- not cows. This is due to Buddhism, not to Indian influence per se.
Aside from Bhudism, which spread througout East Asia, and which Vietnamese and Chinese they adapted to their culture, they had very little Indian influence.
I agree that the birth rate is an excellent indicator of a major difference between East Asians and everyone else.
I don’t think the problem is with East Asians needing a life script more than other races. I think everybody follows life scripts, whether they realize it or not. The problem goes back to high conformity. Unlike the West where there are lots of alternative subcultures, East Asian conformity means that you don't really have groups splintering off and creating their own subculture. Everybody just follows the mainstream life script. You don’t really have a "gangsta" subculture so you don’t see high crime or drug use among a subset of the population. You don’t really have a “trad” subculture so you don’t see particular trad or religious groups with a super high birth rate among a subset of the population. You also don’t really have a “start-up” subculture that might be particularly entrepreneurial.
As another tangent, I think the traffic accident stats you provided is an anomaly. Off the top of my head, the high usage of scooters in Asia might be the confounding factor, since that is much more likely to lead to road injury death. Asian-Americans per capita have the lowest traffic accidents and road injury deaths of all races.
It might sound kind of bland and maybe even extremely distasteful to the kind of reader of this blog, but everyone in East Asia just sort of follows the mainstream life script which is generally pro-social, hardworking, pro-establishment, etc. On the flip side, if the mainstream life script were to switch to war, you would have the most patriotic citizens in the world. Which is why you have the phenomenon of kamikaze Japanese, South Koreans answering the call of their government to voluntarily donate their gold to the treasury so the country will not have to suffer the humiliation of asking for a loan from the IMF, China’s zero-Covid policy, etc.
To become a stand-out in anything, you’re probably kind of an oddball (you might even have some psychological issues) and you’ve probably had to make significant sacrifice in some aspect of your life. East Asians generally settle for a more holistic upper-middle class lifestyle. This is not only unique to East Asians though. The Anglo world tends to be particularly individualistic, but not all Westerners are that way. For example, Scandinavian countries have the Law of Jante (i.e. tall poppy syndrome), which seems very familiar to me as an East Asian. I believe this is why you generally don’t see East Asians stand out as CEOs, Noble Prize winners, etc.
So what is causing extraordinarily low East Asian birth rates? I think its because of the hyper-conformism to the mainstream life script. I think in all countries, the mainstream life script is an upper-middle class lifestyle. Go to school and get a good education. Get an upper-middle class job in Medicine/Law/Finance/Tech/Academia etc. Marry a girl from a good family also in the upper-middle class. Have 2.5 children. Send them to good schools with extracurriculars. Encourage them to do well in school, get a good job, marry, give you grandkids, etc. etc. Rinse and repeat. (maybe slight alterations for a more conservative subculture – more likely to want to be a small business owner, pillar of the community, maybe more kids, etc.)
The East Asian hyper-conformism to the mainstream life script means they’re going to grind harder than almost anyone else to do well in school to get the good job. They will work pretty hard to fulfill their job duties, although they might not seek advancement with the same vigor. As you said, they do all the steps in order, they marry first, only then do they have kids, and they divorce at much lower rates. Teen pregnancy is very rare.
The problem is that not everyone can attain this. Not everyone can do well in school or get a good job. But in East Asia, women will not marry a man that does not have a certain level of financial stability. You must have a good job that can support a family. It is very common for women to demand that their boyfriend own a house for them to live in, before she agrees to marry him.
These men who don’t do well in school or get a good job become unmarriageable, they’re incels, and this is a sizeable percentage of the population. Infamously, the bloodiest civil war in the world, the Taiping Rebellion, was started by a young Chinese man who repeatedly failed the Imperial Examination multiple times and became so psychotic afterwards that he thought he was the younger brother of Jesus and that he needed to start a holy crusade.
Even once a young East Asian couple marries, they want to set up their kids for an upper-middle class life. Like today’s strivers in the West who want to get their children into the Ivy League, it means providing an “enriching” childhood from conception. Upper-middle class moms know everything about pre-natal nutrition and baby yoga. After birth, they faithfully hit every milestone. They line up for their child to attend the most exclusive kindergarten which is a feeder to the most exclusive primary school which is a feeder to the most exclusive high school which is a feeder to the most exclusive college. Their child also has to build up their resume along the way with sports, arts, volunteer experiences, etc.
It’s exhausting and an arms race. In East Asia, the whole family, even the grandparents, will sacrifice immense time and money for the children. So maybe you only have 1 kid instead of 2 or more.
In the West, it’s different. Everyone grows up wanting to be successful, but obviously not everybody can be. And for the lower and middle class that’s okay. Most Westerners move on and accept their lot in life. They romanticize the aspects of their life they have to accept. They end up meeting someone, settle down, have kids, and they pick up some hobbies like golf or brewing craft beers, maybe they go to church once in a while. Most glorify their station in life. “We’re salt-of-the-earth, not like those corrupt and evil rich people”, etc.
I would be very curious about birth rates by percentiles of a society if anyone has that date. I believe the biggest contributor to low East Asian birth rates is that the East Asian lower and middle class are not having nearly as many babies as the West’s lower and middle class are having. I wouldn’t be surprised if that accounts for much of the difference in average birth rate, and that there’s not much difference in birth rate at the top-end of society between East and West.
In terms of the future, I also agree that conformity is a double-edged sword and can be used for beneficial ends. I think the only way to change birth rates will be to change the culture and what is valued, not financial incentives. South Korea and Japan have provided large financial incentives without any result. You’re starting to see China just beginning to tackle the challenge of changing culture: banning of sissy men characters in media, encouraging women to become mothers rather than pursue a career, banning private tutoring, banning of pornography, etc. They'll have to take a lot more steps though, since I believe last year's statistics showed that birth rates continue to fall.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if Westerners end up leading the way. I agree that there is a low Asian propensity for ideological entrepreneurship. China reversed the one child policy extremely late (it’s worth noting that China didn’t even come up with the one child policy themselves, they followed Western expert advice from the UN and other organizations). China only started to be concerned about the threat of a low birth rate after the West started to become alarmed about it in the last 10 or so years, despite China being in much worse shape than the West.
On the plus side for East Asia, there is definitely the state capacity to change birth rates once they decide to do so. As you mentioned, Mao initially encouraged birth rates and this campaign was wildly successful, in fact too wildly successfully in the eyes of the CCP, which is why they thereafter reversed course and enacted the one child policy.
Many of the measures taken by the CCP during Mao’s campaign to boost birth rates were directed at culture, and I don’t think the current CCP has forgotten what measures worked back then. Women with many children were given awards and honours. Special privileges were given to women who had many children. Education and media focused on the patriotic duty of women to have children. Promotion within the CCP depended on having a good family life (no divorce, no mistresses) and lots of children with your wife. Etc.
The point about subcultures is a good one. Americans have a thousand different intersecting social status ladders and while some are obviously more widely respected than others, it's all pretty illegible. You can generally find some way to earn social respect and feel good about yourself even if it's pretty far off the beaten path.
I was surprised at the extent to which Chinese I've met just don't seem to have that feature in their culture. The metrics by which social status is judged are pretty widely agreed and the people who don't have what it takes to compete in those specific areas just ... I don't know, feel worthless all their lives? It's hard for an American to understand. Our society couldn't work that way, too many of us would rebel
The idea that East Asians don't have subcultures is absurd, almost as bad as people who say Whites don't have culture. Take Japan for the most obvious example; "otaku" is best associated with anime obsessives but in fact has connotations that can be applied to any kind of geekery, such as train otaku. Japan's music industry has a strong cult following in the West due to its sheer diversity; within just heavy metal (mostly an Anglo/German phenomenon with roots in Hendrix) there are numerous Japanese-specific subtypes like visual kei, J-core derived metal, super-flowery Japanese power metal, and a strain of Japanese alternative metal. Even if you define subculture as "clothes you wear in high school" (better accuse most Catholic countries with school uniforms as lacking subculture as well), they've got gyaru, menhera, yankii, etc.
We aren't talking about subcultures as in music and tv shows. We're talking about the ways people interact with the world around them and the lifestyles they choose. Your understanding of "subculture" is like the people who believe German culture is beer or Indian culture is curry.
The guy I was replying to was talking about "gangsta culture" (which arguably doesn't exist; it's just a type of pathological Black behavior), which is obviously still subculture in music (gangsta rap) and tv shows/movies (Boys n the Hood). Do you think every single Japanese man goes the salaryman route? Do you think the numerous South Korean steelworkers belong to the same culture as hardcore STEM strivers? Try making a falsifiable argument.
The biggest division in Japan is Okinawa and everyone else. It's not that big though.
I've never been able to find statistics breaking down the fertility rate by income level in Japan. I too would be interested to know what the rates are by income level and how they compare with western countries. I know some working class Japanese with lots of kids, but also upper-income families with lots of kids. The working class families with lots of kids do tend to be more entrepreneurial and their income levels are probably not standard working class level.
This is an excellent comment and the dynamic you're describing (i.e. everyone wanting an upper middle class lifestyle) is not confined to just East Asia. In Poland, an average couple has two kids. But there is a significant and growing portion of population that has no kids because they've never married because the men did not meet the high standards women expect.
Singapore realized in the 1980s that their population control had been too successful, & have been trying & failing to bring birth rates back to up replacement ever since. This is despite the fact that, compared to Japan, South, Korea, & Taiwan, they're especially authoritarian, especially rich, & arguably more open to innovation & outside influence.
Doesn't this mean that Asian countries will end up selecting much more for intelligence and conscientiousness than Western countries?
As the ones that don't make it end up having less or no children. And "making it" requires higher degrees of intelligence and conscientiousness? Yes China Korea etc are far from perfect meritocracies, but still far more than any other time in history.
A declining global population is a profoundly positive trend.
Remember that in 1970, the population was only 3.7 billion, less than half of today's number. Was it a dystopian hellscape back then? I think not. A return to a sane and sustainable population level will have massive benefits in terms of quality of life and resource utilization, among other measures.
The recent hand-wringing about low fertility rates is misplaced. The challenge is not how to increase fertility -- that ship has sailed since developed countries are no longer in traditional survival mode -- but how to manage the decline.
How can developed countries retain their cultures and economies without being overrun by third-world migrants fleeing their overpopulated shitholes? Completely close their borders? Promote birth control and economic development in said shitholes to reduce their fertility rates? How should retirement benefits be reimagined to avoid bankrupting low fertility countries?
Those are the questions we should be asking -- not how to get Korean women to have more babies, which is simply not going to happen.
You are missing the fact that the population pyramid of a precipitously declining population will be an inverse pyramid (an urn) rather than the normal pyramid, so there will be very few young people and a mass of old and geriatric people. Secondly, population decline is geometric, so it will happen really quickly with little time to adjust. Thirdly, the high-TFR subpopulations within a larger population (all ultrareligious afaik like the Haredis, Amish, Mormons to a lesser extent, and many other Christian branches) will become majorities and supermajorities within 5-10 generations if TFR will remain low enough. This makes for a really weird, poor, boring, and unstable world with exponentially growing subpopulations of highly religious, insular, techno-phobic people against a backdrop of exponentially shrinking normies, with the normies ultimately dying out and the outliers becoming predominant. Fourthly, some populations like the whole of East Asia by the way, have no fecund religious denominations/cults/branches at all afaik, so their populations will shrink by 90-99% per century assuming TFR ranges of 0.5-1. The idea of the whole of East Asia with a population density of hunter-gatherers in 200 years is pretty horrifying considering their ultra-high human capital. Fifthly, if you are pro-human, it would be sad if we screwed up so royally as a species that we will collapse in 2-3 centuries with a whimper in a nursing home (with Haredi and Amish nurses) in diapers without becoming a type I-III Kardashev scale civilization.
A plausible (and amusing) but likely hyperbolic scenario.
I'm arguing that since humans in developed countries have moved on from the agricultural necessity to have 10 kids (6 of whom would survive), population decline is inevitable and irreversible.
If the decline is managed correctly -- an unprecedented challenge, of course -- the rewards in terms of quality of life improvements will be massive.
I'm not worried about the Amish -- they are a blip compared to millions of Africans, Indians, Muslims, etc who will make the current migrant crisis look like a picnic.
I believe we can be pro-natal and still worry about migration crisis. I do not freak-out much over the poor Amish, but a geriatric world will definitly be a smaller, poorer and altogether uninteresting one.
Would the enviroment heal? Probably not. Alot of damage has already been done, only proactive care (geo-engineering) and moving forward will allow us to repay our debts to Nature. You cant do that in a new Medieval Age (and trust me thats where the current trends are carrying us into).
>I'm arguing that since humans in developed countries have moved on from the agricultural necessity to have 10 kids (6 of whom would survive), population decline is inevitable and irreversible.
Your argument is disproved by Hasidic Jews. They've gone from 1% of Israel's population in 1960 to becoming a majority by 2050, all through births.
Agriculturalists don't have lots of kids due to "necessity" any more than hunter-gatherers or other species of animals do. Having kids has never been a paying proposition in economic terms.
Are you content with "managing the decline" as a civilizational mission statement?
The Western worlds elites actually desire a continuation of the low birth rates of their currently mostly white populations AND want mass immigration too.Those countries were never going to allow their populations to drop It also suits the millions of childless women like Angela Merkel. It wasn't just treacherous political posturing on her part when she fired the official starting pistol on open borders in Europe back in 2015 with her welcoming of 2 million Muslim males into the EU. The deceit behind the drive for "net zero" emissions in the UK was on display when a further fall in the native birth rate was welcomed as helping that cause, which was soon followed by support for the record level of immigration that was necessary due to the ageing population.
To 0th order it's a negative trend, to the extent that existing as a human has worth. To put it in personal terms, I'm thankful my mother didn't take the Paul Erlichs of the world too seriously back in the late 20th century.
Just think of what a paradise it was when there only about 10K humans.
I'd advise you to read Robin Hanson on the economic consequences of declining population growth. Recall that in the 70s it was still positive.
It's still positive now. We're projected to hit 10B before it actually declines. In the US the population is higher every day than it was the day before, it has been that way for over a century, the the rate of growth has merely slowed. These ideas of population "collapse" are pure hysteria.
The US kept growing because of immigration.
One way would be to enforce our southern border. Not an impossible task. Try deporting the recent illegals to send the message. They will stop coming.
Didn't have time to comment on this earlier but to briefly do that before it's too late.
(1) Obviously agree on theory of East Asian conformism as something I have written a lot about myself. Incidentally, I think another very good measure is the Nature Index per capita, which adjusts for quality. East Asians infamously game patents - those numbers are meaningless.
(2) North Korea *does* have low fertility rates for its state of development actually! https://x.com/powerfultakes/status/1741560833274974324
(3) Conformism is probably part of the explanation for low East Asian fertility but mechanisms are a bit more nuanced.
(a) Most important one IMO is the "Red Queen" dynamic (running to stay still) which results in runaway investments into children, esp. in education/tuition. https://x.com/powerfultakes/status/1399467305252306946
(b) Back to my pet topic of breeders, the East Asians emerged out of the Malthusian trap a lot later than most of the Western world. Japan, obviously, quite a lot earlier than Korea (Third World until 1950s) or China. So analogously, it is perhaps no accident that Japan has merely Med fertility stats, as opposed to East Asian ones.
(c) Surveys suggest that in relative terms to Westerners, East Asians value wealth above family, hobbies, finding oneself, new experiences, etc. Children are a luxury good in the modern world and detract from wealth-building. More materialist cultures will have fewer kids on average. East Asians are under greater pressure from parents (who also have higher status) to pursue the safe path in life, e.g. going into some high-paid business job as opposed to doing academic research. This last point is the most strongly tied into the conformism nexus.
(4) A potentially useful control: How low will Indian TFR go? Personally, I think very, very low - it will surprise us all in 10-20 years time. (But that's for another post). In any case, there are multiple paths to ultra-low fertility beyond East Asian conformism.
Excellent Sir!
I, a white Canadian, have lived in South Korea since 2003. I wanted to note some things.
1. Since 1985 you mention the internet. True since 2000 I'd say. But 1985, I'd say movement to cities. And there, they're lost to find a partner, they lack social skills. In the village, it was easier to meet through some existing circle, like school class.
2. I have taught middle school students at a private study insitute. The kids will enter, the boys will sit on one side, the girls on the other. They won't chat each other up.
3. There are unmanned shops, selling ice cream and snacks. Based on honor and CCTV(there's a sign saying, No Masks when you enter). There are forgotten credit cards, and wallets by the kiosk checkout. They'll sit there for weeks. Westerners will think, I could steal this, and evaluate it. Koreans won't even think, "I could steal this," it isn't a normal thought. In the west, I think it's a normal thought, that our consciousness usually says no to.
4. I've started work at a new company. I've been told a rule and asked why a rule exists. The trainer often won't know, but also, won't of even considered the question for themself, they've just memorized the rule, and want you to do so too. Why is irrelevant, but not thought about (like the stealing consideration).
Here's something, maybe you could write about:
5. Korea says, look at evil Japan, what they did to us. They act morally superior for not invading, etc. But really I think it was lack of ability. That if they were the rich advanced country surrounded by poor ones, they would have acted the same. Also Russia pogroms against Jews vs. Germany death factories. How much is really different in their moral character. The Germans were technically advanced and very efficient in a way few countries could be. If they weren't so efficient, would they have been as evil? It seems Russia was just as evil, they just weren't efficient. And inefficient countries say, look at that evil guy, but they would have done the same if they were as efficient/smart as the Germans or Japanese were.
I don't think Russia's tsars were as anti-semitic as Hitler. They acquired a territory with lots of Jews, and just declared Jews could only live there. Hitler seized much of the same territory, and decided to repopulate it with Germans to be served by whatever Slavs hadn't been starved out. Germany had pogroms in the pre-modern era, and Kristallnacht was a state-ordered pogrom intended to resemble a spontaneous one, but the Holocaust was on another scale.
We know what a military matchup between Koreans & non-Koreans is like due to the Korean War. That being said, Korea doesn't seem to have been nearly as badly treated as China by the Japanese.
By middle school, what age range exactly? Where I live it's ages 11-13, and that's the transitional period from the "girls/boys have cooties!" stage and it wasn't unusual for the genders to be pretty segregated because they still weren't interested in each other. By 14+ puberty was in fuller swing and most people were interested in the opposite gender.
I strongly disagree with the description of Singapore as a "dictatorship." If Singapore is a dictatorship, then the word lacks any meaning beyond "not a democracy within the ideal that actually no democracy has ever met, particularly mine." Let's find a different word and stop insulting the noble Roman institution of dictatorship, an emergency position within the law.
Singapore was ruled by one guy for most of its history, and has never been ruled by any other party since independence. Most countries called democracies aren't like that. Admittedly, most democracies also aren't city-states.
No country has as successful a ruling party as PAP. Also, there's no rule saying that democracy requires that parties (how many, two, three, 15?) rotate in power. In fact, Singapore's example tells you that corruption, the most usual reason given against maintaining any given party in power for long, is least likely when the same party stays in office and party faithful know they must not be in hurry to line up their pockets and build up contacts for the time after they leave government.
No, a single example doesn't show corruption is "least likely" in that case, because it's outweighed by the many counter-examples of parties that stayed in power for a long time while being heavily corrupt. Aside from many one-party dictatorships, the PRI in Mexico was not notoriously corrupt because they all anticipated losing power from 2000 to 2012.
See also: ANC, INC.
The technical term scholars use is hybrid regime. Do you prefer that?
Fine with me. Confucian oligarchy, Chinese dirigisme, call it what you want except that which evidently is not, since it's not ruled by a leader with emergency powers (a dictator).
I think it's a bureaucracy, that has voting on the side. The west is taking that model. Dems are the bureaucracy party, they're trying to eliminate dissent from the bureaucracy.
> One can see this as a case of convergent evolution rather than descent from a common cultural source.
Japan didn't converge on a writing system that resembles Chinese. They copied it for their own use. East Asians are also, of course, more related to each other than they are to people outside East Asia. "Convergent evolution" would only make sense if the same pattern was found in an unrelated group and emerging independently. So if one thinks that East Asians resemble Jews, that would be an example of convergent evolution.
> throughout history and cross nationally it tends to be poorer people who have more kids
That's a very limited selection of history. Recall that Cochran & Harpending's theory of the natural history of Ashkenazi IQ is that richer people had more descendants. Something similar is actually seen in Greg Clark's data on disappearing surnames & probate records.
> The guy’s entire philosophy is “Hey just listen to your parents and government, ok guys? Things will go much easier that way.”
There's more to it than that. Legalism was all about getting people to obey the government by imposing harsh punishments. Confucius has a big emphasis on ritual and "the proper naming of things". He's also responsible for the emphasis on studying in order to become a bureaucrat ("Mandarin", now the name of the most common Chinese language) working for the state.
> It’s difficult to imagine such a figure inspiring Westerners at any point in their history.
Do you not recall the Biblical law to obey your parents, for which the punishment is death? The story of the binding of Isaac as a sacrifice for God, and how the ideal parent tries to follow through until God calls it off? Westerners actually did for a larger chunk of history than the demographic transition has taken up!
> bad at things like entrepreneurship
That doesn't sound like the Overseas Chinese.
> forming families in a world without arranged marriages or strong norms bringing young people together
Perhaps not so different from South Asia. Most Indian states now have below replacement TFR. The higher fertility states tend to have more arranged marriages.
> nonetheless have rock bottom rates of crime and dysfunction in peace time
Japan had a higher homicide rate than the US in the immediate aftermath of WW2. But it fell 70% over 50 years (mostly between 1955 & 1990) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1088767907310854
> an immediate about-face after 1945 and became completely pacific, both in terms of geopolitics and how individuals within society interacted with one another
False, unless something that took until 1990 qualifies as "immediate".
> When it comes to conformity, investigate practically any form of dysfunctional behavior, and you will find East Asians at the bottom of world rankings.
To those you can add AIDS deaths. https://x.com/gcochran99/status/1742027998553854288 1000 times less than the US, roughly 300 times less per capita.
> I suppose we can save race science by invoking more race science. Asians are low on non-conforming behavior, but they’re also bad drivers, and maybe the impact of the latter is more important.
Not if we look at Asian-American vehicular deaths. https://x.com/TeaGeeGeePea/status/1794143468161237473
> adopt gerontocratic policies for common psychological and public choice reasons.
The problem with "public choice theory" is that it predicts the elderly will be the ones supporting such policies while young people oppose them, but as Bryan Caplan has pointed out young people can be found supporting the gerontocratic welfare state at higher rates than the elderly.
> Russia has become a sort of ideological beacon for nationalists across the world
The dumbest and most online ones.
> One might even note how trendy the Palestinian cause has become on college campuses.
It's been that way for a while.
> there are massive behavioral differences within both Christendom and dar al-Islam
I'd like to see a similar examination of dar al-Islam.
Isn't this a self-solving problem? Ie, currently a small number of Asians are having kids. These Asians are perhaps less conformist. Over time, their kids will be the *only* Asians, and a greater percentage of them will be non-conforming as well, so they'll also have more kids, until non-conformists inherit Asia.
Seems like natural selection means that falling birth rates misunderstand the problem - really it's best understood as "which minorities will inherit the country through birth, and what will things be like when they are a bigger chunk of the pie". As long as *some* groups are still reproducing, then we can expect that over time, they'll become a bigger and bigger part of the demographics of the country, until the problem is solved.
In a tiny country like Israel we saw this quickly with the ultra-Orthodox. In the USA, we see it to a degree with conservative. I suspect east Asia, especially South Korea and Japan, will have ultra-nationalists and ethnic minorities as their equivalent, but idk.
The reason is very simple. Psychological normal people do not reproduce under capitalism, they relied on traditional culture to reproduce in the past. Only White people have started to adapt to the spiritual poison of secular capitalism due to long term exposure.
Are there communist countries doing significantly better?
To my knowledge, when communism died in Eastern Bloc Europe, the TFR took a deep dive everywhere. So these countries were doing better, i.e. had more children and more marriages, under communism.
North Korea is the only modern genuinely Communist country that comes to mind and they do reproduce a whole lot more than South Koreans. Authoritarianism, religiosity, and government control of the economy all correlate with birth rates. Secular neoliberalism destroys it.
Look at the history of communism more broadly and you'll see birth rates declining in most such countries. North Korea has shut itself off from the rest of the world, avoiding economic development and change more generally, but its TFR has still fallen below replacement:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1069665/total-fertility-rate-north-korea-historical/
South Korea has just fallen further.
It's barely below replacement. South Korea is facing a full on extinction event. Even Juche has ended up be less damaging than liberalism.
For the traffic accidents, you should normalize for the type of roads people drive on, if possible. Chinese cities have presumably complicated, very crowded, high speed highway systems running through the city.
Also do those stats include people riding bicycles getting hit by cars or pedestrians getting run over? There is a lot more bicycling and foot traffic in most of East Asia.
Overall a good and enjoyable argument. Wife-hunting as entrepreneurialism -- I like it.
On density and fertility: while they're certainly not a primary cause, I've heard a plausible argument that high-rise apartments are uniquely bad for fertility. It's at least worth considering. High-rises are both a more expensive form of construction per SF than low-rises (often translating to smaller units for each family), and they introduce certain inconveniences to family life by way of distance to the outdoors.
For whatever reason, some countries go crazy building high-rises, and the East Asian countries seem to be among them. In my travels, Spain also seems to be one of them, and I notice that it generally ranks poorly in fertility as European countries go (though emigration is surely also a factor). For whatever reason, I noticed that even rural hamlets in Spain seem to have a lot more high-rises than on the other side of the Pyrenees. You can't blame this on Spain's relative poverty vs. France since again, high-rise apartments are a MORE expensive form of construction per SF than low-rise apartments.
On masking: the Japanese (and perhaps other East Asians) adopted masking when sick as a social norm a while ago. Perhaps in the 90s or 00s? Maybe earlier. East Asians have a cleanliness focus that probably has deep roots. You'll also notice Japanese much less likely to eat food with their bare hands while out and about. Greg Clark in "Farewell to Alms" noted that East Asians sustained a higher population density under Malthusian conditions in part due to a lower death rate from disease, which he related to higher cleanliness standards.
Maybe the cleanliness standards are a form of conformity, or maybe they're a separate psychological tendency on their own. Or perhaps some of both.
To me it is clearly the case that in Asia the norm is that if you're going to have kids - you better get them into Harvard or equivalent. In a way growing up in the Netherlands people were fairly hereditarian in a way . That is, when someone struggles in school it is interpreted as they're just not "good at learning" and this is an immutable characteristic. Though nobody would explicitly call it genetic. In East Asia failing to get into a top school is your fault. it is also your parents fault. It is predictable that people are reluctant to procreate if that is the level of parenting they're held to. And if they do have children, they are required to invest so much in each that they cannot have many.
I would also want to warn against overestimating the Confusionism-eradicating effect of Maoism. Eastern Europe is still noticeably culturally and confessionally Christian, despite decades of Communism. These sorts (quasi-)religious cultural institutions take deep roots that are nearly impossible to eradicate.
I don't think it's accurate to characterize Asians as lacking entrepreneurial inclinations when you specifically consider Americans of Taiwanese descent. In Silicon Valley East Asian CEOs and higher-ups are disproportionately of Taiwanese origin, and among women Chinese Americans (mostly Taiwanese) are even more overrepresented in leadership roles at major companies than Indian Americans. Additionally, Japanese companies in the 20th century were some of the most globally competitive, but now they've slumped because their run by geriatric men; I think it's hasty to generalize based on a contemporary sample size.
It always feels arbitrary and ad hoc whenever people say East Asia but then cut out Vietnam. Culturally Vietnam is more East Asian than Southeast Asian (especially the north), as they have a lot of Chinese root words, used to use Chinese characters, celebrate lunar new year, were a Chinese tributary state prior to French colonization, had period of closing off to the West (similar to Tokugawa Bakufu and Joseon dynasty), had a Confucian exam system, and adopted a political system mirroring China's. Razib had a chart on East Asian genetics (I think in his article on Japanese genetics) and included Vietnam on it. Viets were more relatively distant from Koreans and Japanese but didn't seem too far from Chinese. If you were to limit the gene samples to the Red River Delta, which is the country's civilizational core, it would probably become less distant given that the south was originally inhabited by Austronesians.
While social conformity is high in Korea, political conformity is arguably not. Korea's extremely politically polarized, and protests get huge. Pro-democracy riots in the eighties had to be put down by the ROK Army. Syngman Rhee was overthrown in a student revolution in 1960 (and briefly replaced by my great grandfather's cousin). The March 1 Movement in 1919 gathered huge crowds against Japanese colonization, and nationalist terrorists assassinated Japanese officials.
Interestingly, I recently read a blog article from Taiwan about how parliamentary brawls are really about showing group solidarity, which could be read as performative conformity: https://frozengarlic.wordpress.com/2024/05/22/last-weeks-legislative-brawl-and-our-new-book/
Also, I agree that the Japanese and Koreans are highly conformist, but in my opinion Chinese people are actually extremely individualistic. There's actually an idea that if there's a sign saying something is not allowed they will purposely try defying it (the idea being that if something is prohibited, it must be good stuff that someone else is trying to hoard for themselves). Confucianism has more or less been eradicated by a combination of the Cultural Revolution and then materialism.
I think the better distinction is that East Asian cultures are all "guess cultures", where both sides are expected to anticipate the needs of the other and refrain from making requests that could cause a face-losing denial. That's the reason that Asian men typically do not approach women, because outside of a few specific circumstances, it's very difficult to tell how the approach will be taken. On the other hand, this probably actually increases the match rate of Asian women, as it becomes more difficult to deny approaches directed towards them.
In the UK the drug related death rates are 5 times higher in Scotland than England. No one really has any idea why. In America drug deaths among Whites are concentrated in Scots-Irish areas.
I womder what other figures are impacted by sub groups.
I think most crime in Japan is commtted by Burakumin so the true crime rate of Japanese is much lower than the figures show.
Source https://x.com/spectator/status/1552655907166638080?t=D9RhRfYtMuOybBb-Z2q0lg&s=19
Your understanding of the political histories of the East Asian states as well as the tenets of Confucius’ philosophy could stand to be improved. It’s not that you’re wrong per se, it’s just that you’re applying undergraduate level analysis.