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KL's avatar

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.

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KL's avatar

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.

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