This podcast is brought to you by the Albany public library main branch and the generosity of listeners like you. What is a podcast? God Daddy these people talk as much as you do! Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning
Hey, everybody. This is Razib Khan with the Unsupervised Learning Podcast, I am here with my friend Colin, and we're here to talk about China .Colin, can you introduce yourself to the listeners out there? And just tell us? I don't know, your general. The reason why I'm talking to you about China as opposed to just some random person or some guy who studies Chinese history?
Yeah, sure. Um, thank you Razib, it's good to be on the show, um, you know, longtime fan of yours. So the reason I guess, you would want to talk to me is I have, unlike a lot of academics, I have real world experience living and working in the Greater China region, which includes mainland China, and Taiwan, or the Republic of China. And I've also spent time with other ethnic Chinese populations in East and Southeast Asia, such as in Singapore, um, that has to do a lot with my, my job. I'm a technologist, I'm a technology manager. So I've worked as an expat in the region. Not just in the Chinese space, but also in Japan. So I, you know, and also, all my inlaws are Chinese I speak Mandarin at an intermediate level. That includes reading and writing at an intermediate level. So I think I have a lot to bring to the table as far as practical real world knowledge as compared to just theoretical.
Well, I mean, what give us some, some dates, give me give us some time, because, you know, that matters so much and understanding China with that, that that part of the world is just changing so fast.
Yeah, so the first time actually I lived in mainland China was in 1999. As an undergraduate, I studied that in Shanghai, um, at that time, it was called the foreign language University, Shànghǎi Wàiguóyŭ Dàxué. And I was an exchange student studying Mandarin. In Shanghai, which was quite a bit different from what it is today. Um, China had been opening up for almost 20 years. However, they hadn't joined the World Trade Organization yet. Or well, they had at that point, it was under Clinton, but they they had just joined a few years before. Um, there were hardly any foreigners on the street at that time. In fact, most of the people in Shanghai were not even from outside the province as they are now - Wàidi rén - they were locals, [Dāngdì rén], and you could hear Shanghainese on the street everywhere, unlike today, where you only hear in some local neighborhoods spoken mostly purely by older people.
So you're talking 22 years ago and 22 years, there's been a total demographic shift in Shanghai.
Oh, absolutely. When I went back to Shanghai, well, I went back to Shanghai a few times. But I moved back to work full time for about a year and a half. In the early 2010s. I worked for an a medium sized American multinational. My office was all Chinese. It was a completely different place. I barely recognize Shanghai at that point. Um, it - you know, this is this is unlike I mean, I spend some time in Europe too. But when I go back there, everything looks pretty much the same. It doesn't matter if it's been a decade or two decades, I can navigate it very easily by - based on memory. Shanghai was not like that, radically changed - you hardly hear Shanghainese anywhere. You heard all kinds of dialects of Chinese northern accented Mandarin. Um, you new buildings, new construction, all over the place. I lived in Pudong, which was at that time, just it was a lot of factories over there in 1999. And they were just building up the financial district. Now, the Financial District completely built out. Not many factories are filled anymore. Um, it's it's it looks like - almost like an American suburb. So you have Pǔxī, which is the main part of Shanghai. Pudong, which is across the river, across the Yangzi and then on that side, that's where the financial capital is. That's where you see the Pearl Tower, those pictures of Shanghai that's actually in Pudong. So this is completely Pudong. I mean, Pudong and the Pearl Tower existed in 1999, too, but there wasn't much Beyond that, now it's it's Maglev... MagLev trains to the New International Airport. All types of infrastructure has been built.
Well, so I was just checking checking the references. And it seems like it's official population and went from 16 million to 24 million in the 20 years that you're talking about. Well, now to that from from then. And so that's 8 million people, that's probably an underestimate. 8 million people is a I mean, that's gonna be a huge I mean, that's New York City.
Yeah, well, 8 million. Yeah, you're exactly right. It is an underestimate. Because there are many people who live and work in Shanghai every day, who are not legally allowed to be there. Um, internally in China, you need a Hukou which is basically like a housing permit to, to live somewhere. And it's not easy to get a Hukou to live in large cities, if you're from a rural area, especially if you're not educated on work for a company, a formal company. And so, but those people are the people who are really building this new China, they come from rural areas, they they work construction, they work, um, you know, as cooks, waiters, any type of low level service job, they they cut hair, etc. They build modern China. And usually what happens is they they come from these places to surrounding provinces by themselves, because without a Hukou their children, it varies by city, but in most cities, it's very hard for them to get their children educated or registered any type of school, they don't have health care in the local area, etc. So they come alone, they leave their children with relatives back home.
Well, let me let me ask you, how did you when you were there in 99, did you feel Shanghai was a third world city? Or could you already feel that it was a modern city? I know that there was a lot of development, but just tell me about what it felt like? Were there people with bicycles still, I just want to get a general sense of the feel because we see a lot of images of urban China now. And obviously, there's no bicycles.
Yeah, no, there's no bicycles, not many. It's very, very, even in rural areas, there's not many bicycles anymore. Um, at that time, in Shanghai, I would say the transition was just starting to where you, you saw bicycles, but not like the images you would see from Tiananmen Square type time period. '89. You know, that time period you did, you saw a lot of bicycles, etc, that's that was fading out. What you saw then in Shanghai was it seemed that everybody had the same model Volkswagen, and I can't recall the model off the top of my head, but it seemed that it was everywhere, it was almost ubiquitous. Um, and you would see, um, I would say was still developing country, a lot of the tributaries, creeks, etc, running through the river, we're running through the city, we're very dirty, you can smell the pollution chemicals in them. There's there's historic flooding in Shanghai during the rainy season. There's still flooding now. But back then it was far worse. Like I'm talking about water up to your ankles. Um, this might be more reminiscent of something you would think of in, you know, a stereotype that you would see in South Asia. This was very common in China as well at the time. Yeah, so people walk around in their pajamas. That was a during the rainy season. That was a tradition in Shanghai, which the government banned because they said it was basically backward and not becoming of a modern city. So this image of people walking around their pajamas with their pants rolled up and wearing sandals walking through dirty water, that is not something you see anymore. And that was not something I saw in the early 2010s at all. But 1999 That was everywhere.
And when was that? When was the last time you went back to China?
Um, the last time I went back was in 2017.
Yeah, yeah. So I'm just getting a kind of a sense, you know, for the science listeners, it's like, if you got these time points in the late 90s, early 2000s, you got like, the early teens, then you've been back in 2017. I'm asking this because, you know, you know, we've talked before call it we know each other. I feel like you it's like, you know, in ecology or, you know, [uninteligable] that you have a temporal transect a huge sample of China. I just spent developing over the last generation, basically, and you've seen the changes, right?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
So I want to know, like in terms of the Chinese sense of the foreigner of the outsider, you know, can you tell us so I have some intuitions on how am I have changed. But tell us tell us your impressions of how it changed.
Um, I think, you know, okay, so when I first went there in 1999, um, I'll give you, I'll give you this will give you a good sample as far as being a student. Most of the foreign students at my university were Japanese. And then second largest populations Korean, third were German, then French. Americans are three of us two, the other two are typical white Americans. One was from the Midwest, I remember. And myself the only African American the only black person that I knew of as a foreign student on the campus at that time. Um, and so the stereotype when Chinese people usually said foreign or Laowai they were talking about white people, and most of those Laowai were foreign business people, sometime English teachers. Now, it's changed. So I think in a major in international institutions, there's far more Western people, there's far more Africans as well, there's theres South Asians Laowai doesn't necessarily mean a white person anymore. Chinese or get much more specific, they will say the person is black or white, etc. Um, I think that the prestige of being a foreigner has declined quite a bit. Chinese used to be... in Shanghai used to be very curious, I could go out to a bar nightclub as a student, and people just pay for my drink, they just be happy to sit with a foreigner who could chat in just a little like, you know, we're talking about elementary school level Chinese at that time, and they just be happy to sit with them and talk itwas that rare, and it was, you know, unusual. And sometimes we're even talking about officials, or children of officials, Communist Party officials, or military who would do this, you know, um, that doesn't happen anymore. Now, I feel that in the last few years, being a Western in China, people got more sophisticated. So if your English teacher, and you don't really have much prestige at all, a lot of times people will say, you know, they'll, they'll make negative remarks about this person, not be able to make it in their own society, just coming to China to be lazy, or to chase women, etc, get drunk. Um, they really pay attention to what your job is, and what you're doing there, what you're bringing to China, what you're adding, besides just a foreign face. It used to be that in China, you could get a job, especially as a white person, where we call them white monkey jobs where you like literally, yeah, literally, white monkey jobs where you would, um, the company, a smaller Chinese company, that wanted to export to a Western Western countries would hire a white person, often an English teacher, and just have them sit in the boardroom to look more international, like they had a Western consultant. These things are not very common anymore, either. I'm not saying they don't happen. But it's it's far less than it used to be even in, in cities, like Chung do out in Sichuan, which I spent about six months out there, even out there people, although they see less foreigners, they're not. When I say foreigners, they see less Westerners. They are, they are not as enamored with them as they used to be. I think that China has caught up and is becoming equal.
When were you in Chengdu again,
and ChengduI was so the company I worked for I was sent out to Chengdu because we had a office out there a small one. Um, and so that was around 2012 2013. Yeah. So I was going back and forth between Shanghai and Chengdu at that time.
Okay, so already already in I mean, cuz 2012 I mean, you know, in China years, yeah. That's kind of a while ago, right, you know, yeah. And so already, you're getting a sense. You know, we've talked about this before, but you know, I want I want you to kind of address it real quickly. You know, like racism in China, you know, you don't need to belabor the point like you have your own opinions, your own perceptions. I can you talk about that really quickly, because you know, some of us hear a little bit about it.
Sure. I would say the briefest way I can stated is that, um, there is definitely racism in China. However, let's put it this way compared to the west. Um, this is a good comparison. When I lived in Europe I was warned living in Switzerland not to go west of ... not to go east of East Germany, by myself in Europe, Eastern Germany, Poland, etc. Don't go these places by myself because skinheads hang out at train stations etc. You might be harassed or physically attacked. In some countries if you don't know where you are, and China, um, the idea of attacking or physically or Any kind of hostility, physical hostility toward foreigners is not common at all. I didn't meet any foreign people who felt a threat to their safety. When I was there, including myself, I walked everywhere poor neighborhoods to the wealthiest areas, I never had issues. The difference is this. I think race in China's relate to classism and classism does definitely exist even among Chinese people. Communism did not erase that it's still very much exists. And what Chinese people tend to think, in general, at least in my impression, from my inlaws, my friends, etc, is that Western people, on average, white people, typically are better educated and wealthier and built nice countries, darker people tend to be less educated, maybe more wild, maybe more disorganized, or as peoples would say, chaotic. Um, and so and don't build nice countries. And so I would say that's where the stereotypes lie. It's somewhat based in thier... in classism. And in China, it's somewhat similar, where if you're from a rural area, you're not educated, you're you're darker, because you work outside, you're seen as lower class. So they take these stereotypes that they have and expand it out to the world, because most Chinese people don't have a strong association with foreign people. There's just not that many foreign people in China as a whole. Chinese people now and city see foreigners, but that doesn't mean they necessarily talk to them or have any interaction with them. Any deep interaction. So so so that, so the difference, I think is, is that, um, if you can show that you are educated, and you are, I'm coming to China for good reasons. Most Chinese people will get over whatever racial hangups they have, or you can negotiate, it is not deep seated hatred, as you would see in a lot of Western countries. Hmm, yeah, that's the difference.
Okay. So, um, I want to explore this issue with race and class a little bit, because, you know, we're American. Yeah. And so, you know, this is the time. So, you're saying class is a very, very persistent thing in China. So, you know, we read about the cultural revolution, and the communism and all this stuff. But I know from Greg Clark's work, that there's actually a fair amount of evidence that, you know, bureaucratic elite families in late Imperial China are well over represented in the Communist Party in the elites, do you? You know, do you... Do you have any sense any intuition from talking to people? Like, how if this is still working in terms of you know, the people come from really well educated backgrounds? And I guess, like, you know, there's a certain way of talking, that indicates that you are professional, managerial class in the United States. How does that work in Mandarin? I'm assuming that the way that I mean, it's aside from regional accents aside, can you just tell that someone's from, you know, proletariat, or peasant background, just by the way they're speaking?
Well, sure. I mean, you know, do you have the accent thing, usually, the worse your Mandarin is, the less standard it is, um, and standard, meaning the less it sounds like people on television, which is almost always standard Mandarin, in China, um, that's, that's something but that says a lot. However, more so Chinese use a lot of four character phrases called Chengyu you and the Chengyu you know, these are sayings, um, that, that we use, like, let sleeping dogs lie, like in English would be one, for example, example. And Chinese, um, they have many. And so I think the more complex the Chengyu is, at least that's been my impression. I think that's the impression of talk, when I've talked to Chinese people about this, the more complex it is, the more they quote this, the more that quote - quote, the Chinese classics, the more educated they they are, and that's a that's a telltale sign that someone is closer to an elite. Um, I'm not sure that translates as well, to a lot of the younger generation. I'm thinking when I say that I'm thinking about people over 50 I think that's very true. Younger people, I think it it almost seems to me that a lot of younger people face is a big important thing. So you can tell if somebody's status by what they're showing you like their, their, their car, their watch their clothes, how they carry themselves, their manners at the dinner table, etc. Um, face is very important in East Asian culture in general, especially, you know, originated probably in Chinese culture. Um, and So, what people think about you matters. And unlike in the US, I would say where you might not be able to tell. I know some people have multiples of millions of dollars in assets. And I can think of a couple of them, you wouldn't be able to tell that until you saw where they lived. Um, you can even tell that by their car - In China, that is not the case. That's very rarely ever the case you will know. Um, yeah.
Well so, the irony of what you're telling me is America, the capitalist paradise. We, under emphasize, which is true, we under emphasize in some ways, so one of the reasons Donald J. Trump was not very popular among the intelligentsia was because he was blingy and crass.
Yes.
There was a there was a there was a an aspect to him. That was garish and our cultural elites. They're not garish. You know, they have beautiful marble countertops. That, you know, they got from their local stonemason. Who himself went to Wesleyan.
Yes. Right. Right.
You know, he has his own, he has his trust fund, but you know, he's really gotten into masonry, and that's his bliss. So in China, it's not like that, like in China, this communist, quote unquote, "communist" country, you are saying that class is extremely important to now and it's visible, and it's surfaced at people? Yeah, they kind of show it?
Yeah. Oh, no, they definitely show it. And actually, in the last, I would say, in the last decade, the Communist Party has done a lot to try to stop people from showing this on social media because the gap between rich and poor the Gini coefficient in China is getting really bad. And the party is aware of this they pay careful attention to social opinion. And, um, you know, people showing you know, you have pictures on social media like a decade ago, people setting money on fire that so that they could just do it that they have so much money, they don't have to care. People taking saying that they are so and so's son from the party, a high ranking party official driving/ taking pictures with Porsches, you don't see that as much anymore, that stuff has been clamped down on because it's causing class animosity. Right. Um, and you can see that online. So yeah, I think Americans, um, Americans like money. Clearly, this is a very capitalist society. Um, from Western perspective, we're definitely skewed to the tail, as far as our level of capitalism, but, um, the thing about Americans is, like you said, we don't like to overtly show it, we actually don't like to even talk about money that much. In China, people are always talking about how to make money, how to invest, what houses to buy, what properties, um, stocks, etc. This is a this isn't just for mainland China. This is Chinese culture. I believe, every place I've been with ethnic Chinese people, it's pretty much the same. You know, communism took over in 1949. I don't think that's enough to change the previous several 1000 years of history. I, there's just not enough time.
Mm hmm. Okay, so, so class is a really big thing. Your contention, Colin is that Chinese racism is actually rooted in class. So, you know, I'm actually curious. So I've actually done a little bit of readings of the ideas of, of race in late Imperial, early Republican China. And, you know, the more bioogistic, shall I say, understandings of race were actually, you know, pretty much imported. I mean, you know, people have some folk intuitions of biology and race, but, you know, modern scientific understandings of race and racism, scientific racism was actually imported, well, frankly, by progressive intellectuals in a republic, early Republican China in the early 20th century, and it was actually opposed by Confucian traditionalists for whom biology was under emphasized. I mean, you could almost say that they're blank slates, but I mean, this is this is reducing, you know, ancient categories into modern, well, modern systems. But I mean, what do you what do you do you think that that still holds in some ways in China? That sort of sounds like to me,
I think that I think there is something to that and you know, when you when you just said that about Confucianism and blank slates, I thought about the Soviet man for I'm not comparing Confucian - Confucianist thinking to Marxism, but I think it's a similar vein to where most Chinese people that I know, like I said, including my inlaws, they believe if you weren't work hard enough, you can accomplish great things they don't believe so much. I think you know, a lot of a lot of times as far as biological, um, you know, we talk about nature, nurture, debate and, and nature and you know, you see these things in the in, in America around... Of course, you know this very well that around issues such as IQ etc, this is very sensitive in the US and the American Dream part of that is if you come here work hard enough, you can do what you want, you can accomplish things, you know, you can accomplish the American dream. But I honestly believe that Chinese people believe this even more than Americans do. They don't talk much about aptitude for things, they just think you're not if you're not accomplishing something, then you need to work harder. And I think this comes from Confucianism that anybody can be molded into an ideal citizen, educated person, by hard work, and the correct moral attitude. So I think most Chinese people still kind of believe that. And so, you know, I'm a black guy, right? Um, and I'm obviously black in China, most people think, on the street, I'm definitely African. Okay. Um, and so, I was a manager at a company in China, where all my oldest staff, all the junior staff were Chinese, I never had any issue with any of them. And as far as rates that I could tell, and I think a lot of this was I came in, I was known as an American, I showed myself as capable. My superiors showed confidence in me. And so people are like, Okay, well, maybe they have some stereotypes about black people, or Africans, etc. But in their mind is like, Okay, well, this guy clearly has demonstrated something. I don't know about all black people. But as far as him, he seems to be a person that we can respect, you know? Mm hm. Um, yeah.
And so, you have experience again, like, let's go to like you have experience interacting with people. I mean, especially obviously, in the early teens, but you know, in the late 90s, and then also, more recently, and is this an invariant in your perception? Or do you think things have changed a little bit at all in China, as they become more open to the outside and more worldly, it sounds like,
I - Well, the only thing I will say this changed is it's hard to gauge this because like I said, I haven't been back to China. For for a little while now, actually, we're talking about going next year. If the COVID stuff clears up in China actually opens up again to foreign travel. Right now it's closed, pretty much it's if he didn't have a residency permit he can get in. But uh, think it's, I think the only thing that's changed is now there is more nationalism. And maybe there is more just general anti foreign sentiment or suspicion in the general society, um, that I'm seeing, but this is mostly online. So it's very hard to gauge. If that is representative of anything in the street, usually what I see online is much more. It's much more extreme than what you will find on the street. Most people are apolitical in China, for obvious reasons, they really don't have control over their government. So they focus on things and they're pragmatic people, they focus on things that they can do, like improve their standard of living by working, or educating themselves, etc. So a lot of people don't necessarily have firm political opinions, per se, are in are not expected to, unlike in the US, or you have people spouting off various opinions that it's very clear they'd never had any deep thought about. In China, it's more that they really don't have a lot of thought about it, and most people don't want to talk about it either. So so I don't know. I am seeing more nationalism online, in the Chinese social media space and Waibo, for example. And this is mainly directed toward Western people. But I've also seen some toward Africans and that people are saying that they get too much funding from China, development funding, as well as educational benefits, scholarships, etc. And that could go to Chinese people, for example. Things like this things that you these are things that I didn't really see or hear much when I was living in China, or a decade ago. But yeah,
it sounds like it sounds like China's becoming a modern developed country with the complaints that they have now.
Yeah Rrght? No, that's, I think that's true. I think that they are people are getting comfortable now there's a pretty stable Middle Class. And, um, even in the rural areas where, you know, there's still a lot of poverty there standard of living increased quite a bit. Um, since 1979, when China looked a lot more like North Korea. Well, probably better than North Korea at that time, even but still, it looks much more like that than it does like, middle income country now. So I think people are getting a, you know, as they have their basic needs met, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, they're, they're now starting to look at other things. Why are we spending so much money on space, for example, like space travel, etc, when we have, you know, places where, you know, I have flooding, for example, I saw that complaint online, which was removed pretty quickly.
So you're talking about like on WeChat, or like, what social
Weibo which is more like a Chinese Twitter, I guess?
Okay. Chinese Twitter Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, let me let me ask you, um, just a question about linguistics. So I know there's standard Mandarin Chinese, the common tongue or whatever they call it. So let me just be clear for the listener. Chinese is a unified written language. Well, I mean, their standard... Well, there's like, there's the one in Taiwan and then you know, the classical and whatnot. But let's just let's just go with idea that Chinese is a unified language, with the characters, whatever your dialect, then there's like dialects like Cantonese, which are unintelligible just standard Mandarin. And then within, within, or within Mandarin itself, there are local Mandarin dialect, so Sichuan. They speak Sichuan, Mandarin dialect, and then, you know, northern China, like, you know, Hoonah, or Hainan, they speak that dialect. And then there's the standard Chinese, which, you know, traditionally has been, I think, based now for a couple of centuries of the Beijing dialect, or at least a century on the Beijing dialect.
Roughly yeah, roughly...
Let's just say what emerged in Beijing, because Beijing itself can be a microcosm of China as a whole. So it's not really necessarily representative of the rest of the North China very far north China. So I think like, I've seen estimates that 70% of Chinese are fluent in standard Mandarin, and they want to get that up to so this is just like speaking, because literacy is supposedly higher. They want to get that up to like, 90-95%, within a generation, maybe within like, 2030 actually, because some of the some of the articles that I'm seeing are from, like, 2011. How realistic do you think it is? How realistic are numbers like 75% know standard Mandarin? Just your impression? Because, you know, look, I mean, statistics out of China, you gotta be careful.
Yeah, I I don't have a particularly great read on this. But I would say this 75% Doesn't seem shocking to me. When I think about the fact that I've been in rural areas, where people were telling me they were speaking Mandarin, and could barely, I could barely understand anything they were saying. And even the Chinese people with me had a hard time understanding anything they were saying. And these rural Chinese people were telling me, I spoke better Mandarin than them. And they weren't saying that to give me face, it was literally true. So, um, I think that, so I think that, basically, it works like this, um, before the Communists took over, um, well, a large percentage of Chinese population didn't have formal education. And when they did start formal education, some just a few years later, they basically standardized Mandarin as the language that they want to use, because most people spoke something that was a dialect of specifically Mandarin, like a sub dialect. In the greater Chinese plain, it's pretty flat. That's where Mandarin comes from. And so the majority of the population or a large percentage of the population lived there and to speak something like Mandarin. And so that's what they decided on. And so I think people who are 50 to 60 years old and younger, usually speak Mandarin fairly well. I'm not saying they sound like they're highly educated, but they can speak at a, let's say, maybe a 10th grade level, something like this ninth grade level. Um, and so you have regions in China where you have the border regions especially have a lot of minority groups, and until recently, they couldn't - they could* - learn on their own local language. If that was Korean, if that was Tibetan, if that was Uighur, if whatever that was, they could learn that in elementary school, and they learn Mandarin later. And so their Mandarin is stereotypically usually poor and heavily accented. And I've met people like this. Um, and then you have people like in my wife's family who are from Guangdong, which borders Hong Kong where they speak Cantonese. Um, there are other dialects in Guangdong as well, but Cantonese is the main one. And, you know, some of the my mother in law, who's in her 70s now speaks fluent Mandarin, but her older brother is in his 80s doesn't speak Mandarin? Well, for example. Um, and so, you know, I think it is true that I think it is true that maybe it could be as high as 75% Don't speak Mandarin fluently, especially in rural areas, especially older people, especially minorities. Keep in mind that they're China's 1.4 billion people a little over 100 million are minorities. And I think what the Chinese government has done, and it's got a lot complaints, even from within China is that they made it very difficult to use dialect. In the mass media, it's very limited the amount you can use on the radio or to television. Um, almost everything if an actor even has a an odd accent, even if they're understandable, like actors from Taiwan, they have - they speak Mandarin, but they speak it what the Taiwanese accent when they show those movies in mainland China, they will dub it over in like a Beijing style generic Mandarin accent. So they do this. And then schools, all schools, they're supposed to be speaking Mandarin, not dialect, and then minority schools just recently, um, now and this has caused some issues in Inner Mongolia, and Tibet, etc. Where now what they're saying is that you will, they will learn Mandarin as the primary language and their native language will be more secondary.
I see
So, this has been a push for decades to get everybody speaking fluent Mandarin, reading and writing Mandarin because the reality is, it's, it's it, it makes a society, it functions more smoothly, it's cheaper, it's easier if everybody can speak and read and write the same language. I know Western people tend to like the diversity of language and feel that this is like almost a type of cultural genocide. But um, most Chinese people point to me and they look at places like India, and they say that this is not optimum either. So where do you have large areas of the population that, for example, in Southern India, I work with many people in Southern India who don't speak Hindi and have no interest in learning Hindi.
For example, in China, they think that this type of thing is just for society it causes fractures in society, and cost the government it's just not worth it.
Well, let me let me talk about another fracture. So actually, I do want to mention, my understanding is one of the issues with Uighur nationalism, and we are separatism is the push for Mandarin on Uighur children because it alienates them from Uighur cultural identity. Because they don't have access to the weaker language anymore besides like, as a kitchen language. Right?
Right. Right. So that means that they won't be able to understand more complex poetry, um, which is really a big thing in Uighur culture my as my understanding, I've met Uighur people, several actually, in Shanghai. And I've talked to I've had the opportunity, the privilege to talk to a couple of them about these issues. But this was years ago, this is before the most recent crackdowns which were, you know, even back then people were complaining. And I think, from the Chinese perspective, um, and especially since Xi came into power, there has been, you know, like the Communist Party, they have academics, right, who proposed policies, and write policies and influence the party's thinking. Um, there are academics in China who have been for a while pushing this idea that this Soviet idea of having different Soviets for different ethnicities, and, you know, having different... and those Soviets have their own kind of autonomy within the larger country. They're thinking that this is, this is bad. And it basically what they're looking at what happened with the Soviet Union in 89, and how it broke apart because of that. So and I think this is basically like a fifth column that these ethnic groups can be potentially used against the central government by foreign intelligence agencies, etc. or terrorist groups, organizations, transnational terrorist organizations, so their attitude now is since Xi came into power, Xi Jinping came into power is that um They want one China - one... I won't say one ethnicity because they would never say that. But what they're saying is basically one cultural norm. So that means in this situation what they're what they want at, least my interpretation is they want there to be Tibetans and Uighurs, who are Tibetans and Uighurs in name only. And there's a good example of this in China with ethnic Koreans. Most of them because their culture is ,,, the cultural distance is much less to Han Chinese. A lot of the Koreans now are just becoming completely assimilated into Chinese culture. A lot of young people don't speak Korean much anymore, or very well, this wasn't forced by the government. This is a natural process. But I think the government wants to speed this along or you know, incentivize other minority groups to be just like that. Mm hmm.
Well, um, so I guess like, I'm curious, then I and I know that the Manchus have pretty much disappeared in that way. I mean, they still exist on paper, but they've been totally synthesized. Well, there's no distinction, right? You get some privileges and benefits if you're a minority. So some people have rediscovered that they are, they are Manchu princesses in China. So. Yeah. So I let me ask you, um, I read last year, a year and a half ago now, during the beginning of COVID. I read "The Souls of China; the return of religion after Mao" and it just talks about, you know, various attempts to liberalization and here and there, and that like in the 2000s, the regime was seemed to be like more pro Christian, but now it's not as Pro Christian and maybe it's more pro Buddhist. Obviously, China is still a communist state takes a dim view of religion. But do you have any impressions on religion in China and what people think and how they're practicing or experimenting with it?
Yeah, I'm a little bit I'm ... just for your just for your listeners real quick. Um, when I was talking about the policies around minorities, they might want to look into academics at like Tsinghua University like, Huan Gong and also another who who was not related Hu Lian Hua. These are the people pushing these policies in the Communist Party. But getting back to your question, um, as far as religion I think I my impression of religion in China is always like this officially, the party being officially communist, although pretty much in name only. I mean, I feel that they're pretty much a nationalist party, almost fascist, not fascist as a Nazi, fascist - fascist in the traditional sense, but we can talk about that later. But because they're still claiming to be communists, they, um, they religion, you know, is bad, it's taboo for a party member. However, for the general public, what it would seem to have happened is that, um, we can debate all we can debate if Confucianism is really a religion or not, although it doesn't have like a Godhead. Many people in China treat it as almost like another religion, where they go to Confucius temples and pray, to Confucius to their ancestors, etc. These type of traditional what they're calling traditional Chinese religions are, if you're going to be religious, then the government wants you to do those things. Um, but the government's idea of Confucianism is basically the part about obeying your superiors and being moralistic, um, and being like patriotic, that's what they tend to focus on. Taoism. Buddhism, although Buddhism was clearly an import from India, these things seem to also be fairly acceptable and get very little pushback. Christianity and Islam have gotten a lot of pushback in recent years. Um, and I think - that means destruction moss. I'm not just in Xinjiang, but in areas where there are Muslim other Muslim groups like the Hui and they're getting they're seeing their mosque destroyed, or at least any visible representation of Islam. So if there's a minaret, if there's Arabic script that's getting removed, churches, churches with big crosses getting removed, those crosses are getting removed, even if the church is still allowed to be there. Um, I think there is this idea in the party, at least in some factions of the party, that these type of religions are not good for China and probably not good for the party. I also think that - so they're being discouraged. I've heard many stories about Uighur people being arrested, because they have Arabic prayers on their phones. You know, Arabic is the language of Islam, clearly. And, and so there have been people getting arrested just for that, and getting put in camps. Um, So and I think this all goes back to the fact that in Chinese history, religion was also controlled and moderated by the state, as it was in many European countries, um, until quite - until the 19th century. So this is, this is something where the Chinese feel that the government should have the right to control the religion and as long as you're, you're like, following the type of Islam that is approved by the state, which has edits in the Quran from by the Communist Party, um, then that's acceptable. But if you are trying to practice outside of that, Christianity, or Islam, that's a problem, you can see your place of worship gets shut down, you can see your minister arrested, etc. And I guess this all goes back to the fact in China, that you can't have another center of power outside of the party. And as we know, from Western tradition, religious organizations have long been a center of power outside of the political centers of power. And the Chinese government will not accept that. Just like the Imperial governments would never accept that either. There's only one center of power in Chinese society. And that comes from well, now the party, before it was the emperor.
Yeah. So let me ask you, before we move on from the religion, we'll close out with some just big picture foreign policy perceptions from Colin who, you know, you, you know, I'm not like being I mean, you have a lot of experiences this is why I'm talking to you, because it's one thing to I mean, I looked at the aggregate numbers, like I read the articles, but I've never... well, I've never - I've been to Hong Kong a little bit. But that's that doesn't count. So, you know, it doesn't count. Right? Yeah. In terms of like religion in the common Chinese, you know, when Chinese come to the west, I mean, you know, they often convert to Christianity, or they go to church, it's not a big thing. And, you know, I've been reading, I've been reading the evangelical press, about, like, you know, the coming Christian China and all this stuff. What do people in China think about this? Do they even know about it? I know, there's a substantial number of Christians in China too. I mean, what is the on the ground feel? I mean, you were there in the early teens, which is kind of at the tail end of what "Souls of China" saying was kind of a, not a renaissance, but kind of a thaw for Christianity that I think Hu Jintao was it? Hu Jintao the previous person? He was pretty chill towards Christians? Yeah, even more chill towards Christians...
Yeah,, he was pretty much just laid back in general. I think yeah. Um, I... Well, I can tell you this for a fact that I'm all the time I've been in China, all the Chinese people I've met in China. I have literally, and I'll expand this to like Taiwan - even to Hong Kong. I've met more people who, who were let's say, non religious, or who were practicing things like Buddhism, etc. than Christianity, I can count on one hand how many Christians I've met. And keep in mind, even when you see the statistics, there's 20 million Christians in China, 30 million Christians. Chinese people in China do not proselytize openly, usually, especially to foreigners. So in the bubble, I would, you know, I think we all live in a bubble and our bubbles as big as our experience is. My bubble is a little broader because I do speak some Mandarin but at the same time, most Christian Chinese are not going to try to come up and convert me or anything like this.
Well I mean, they probably assume you're American, you're black American, you probably Christian. Right?
Right. Right. So, um, I would say I've met more Falun Gong people in Taiwan, which is a banned sect in the mainland, then I met Christians. Um, the reason you have so many Christians converting when they come to the US is because, um, and my wife had this experience as well - She came here as an undergraduate and the Christian church people would you know, um, pick you up from the airport, they would provide food etc. on Chinese holidays have dumpling making sessions etc, as a part of trying to get the people to convert to Christianity, and so they will provide all these services, teach them English, ESL, etc. Um, so this was, this is something that these churches actively do to try to recruit Chinese, especially students who are coming to a very foreign country and culture alone who might need some assistance. And then it becomes a community thing. And Chinese people, of course, are very group oriented and communal. So, I would say, most of my inlaws who migrated to Canada, in the US, they're almost all Christian. But the ones who stayed in China, mainland China and Hong Kong, none of them are Christian. None of them. Um, they're mostly like, practice some mix of Taoism and Buddhism, if they only became Christian, because they came here.
Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, so I mean, the type of Christianity they practice, are they evangelical? Or is it just like, kind of like, nominal? I mean, you know, because there's some people that are like, Yeah, I'm Christian, but they're not like, entirely super religious. But I mean, are they really fervent? Is that what you're seeing in the Chinese diaspora? Like I know, statistically, many of many of them do not convert. But people like Jeremy Lin, the ones who are Christian, tend to seem to be pretty serious about it.
Well, yeah, I think if you it's the same in Islam, right? Most, most black Americans that you might see in America who convert to Islam are more serious about it than the average person on the street in Lebanon, for example, or Palestine, right. So I think that if you convert to a religion, especially as an adult, you probably take it more seriously. I, I would, I would just say this, most of them, it seems to be some type of evangelical or at least Protestant denomination. I know, there are Catholics in China. You know, the Pope has had many discussions and negotiations with the Chinese government around placing Cardinals or priests in China, etc. So there is a Catholic population, but the very vast majority are Protestant sects, which makes it harder to control because, you know, Protestant sects spring up all the time, and branch out, and some of these are really nondenominational. They're just in somebody's house, you know, where they they hold they hold, prayer groups or Bible study. You know, this is, this is kind of what the take I've seen or what I've been told by people, but I haven't experienced this myself. I am - I will say, I usually tell people I'm agnostic, but I'm functionally an atheist. So I don't tend to go looking for religious communities. Typically, but that's been my that's been my impression and my coincidental....
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm asking this because partly that you're right. Like, I mean, I think a lot of people encounter Chinese, you know, in America, you know, Chinese in America, and a lot of them are Christian, and some of them are evangelical. And you get, you know, there's frankly, like, I'm going to be honest, a propaganda for the evangelical Protestant press that's been going on for a century about how China is gonna be Christian in 20 or 30 years, or there's gonna be hundreds and hundreds of millions of Christians, but I actually looked back, they've been they've been writing this since the early 1980s. In the US, like, yeah, they were writing in the 19th century, too.
I think if you I think if you can use Taiwan, as a - or even Singapore - but I would say Taiwan as a, as a good example, like a microcosm of Chinese society. They've been exposed heavily. They're a small island, not even 25 million people. I don't believe, or around that. And they have been heavily influenced by the United States, um, and Japan, but especially the United States after World War Two. Um, I believe Christians, they're about 20% of the population, maybe, like, right now.
Well Taiwan is... Well, Taiwan is 5.86 or 6%.
Oh, 6%. Okay, so there are the most Christians you have in east and southeast..
In Singapore it's closer to - In Singapore It's closer to 20. I think it's 18
I'm sorry., Yeah, I think I'm think I'm I think I'm flipping it because yeah,
I think you flipped it, yeah,
Yeah. And so you know, you have places like, like in South Korea, where it's probably 40 to 50%, or the Philippines, which was controlled by the Spanish for hundreds of years. But in East Asia, specifically, in Chinese culture, I have a very hard time believing that Christianity is ever going to be like a majority population in mainland China, at least in our lifetime. I don't I can't see it. I just I, I can't see it. I think that there. I just feel like this type of monotheist belief structure. There's something about it that I think is not appealing to the majority of Chinese people. That's just my impression. I just think it seems too structured for them. Um,
yeah. Well, so I let's close, I want to close out with some big picture. So, you know, you mentioned this Your wife is your wife is Chinese, she's an she's an immigrant, right? She was She grew up in Guangdong, or, you know, her family's there. You know, you're connected to China in a very concrete way. But I mean, she's connect to the United States, obviously, she lives in the United States. China, say like in 2010, we still had I mean, I think a lot of people including me, had an idealism about Chi-America, and the future was just focused on trade and capitalism and all this great power crap from the 19th century and early you know, people didn't talk too much about the Thucydides trap, right, which is like the rise of a great power and the decline of the other other power. Let's just say I got woke to the China issue during COVID-19. Partly because, you know, I am not happy with the way Chinese government controlled it, I'm glad that they've controlled it for themselves. I'm glad that.... I'm, you know, as a human being, I'm glad that they have a system of control, whatever ethical issues I have with some of the harshness, I mean, again, they've clamped down on the Delta wave, they do have widespread vaccination, even though the Chinese vaccine isn't entirely efficacious. It's better than nothing. And I think that that's really helped them clamp down on COVID, combined with their social controls. But, you know, they also control the information coming out the issues of like, whether it was leaked from the lab, or whether it's from a natural spillover, all these things are extremely difficult, because of the way the Chinese government behaved. I can tell you, I have friends in India who are like, enraged at China. Because, you know, they're like you, you know, you unleash this on the world, and you're not really taking any responsibility. So there's a lot of stuff going on there. And I think over the last couple of years, like Trump really changed the perception. And Biden's not going back to the old ways of you know, you know, China, USA brothers or whatever the whatever we're suposed to be, you know, now it's, you know, they are, they are the great rival now, and I think that's how they view themselves. What is your expectation in the next generation, I don't personally expect, for example, a new Cold War in the way that we had with the Soviets, because I don't think that they want a hot war, what I think is they want access and control of the resources. And they're going to set up the political social arrangements in the rest of the world, to the best of their abilities to make sure that they have resources - access to food, access to mineral resources for their manufacturing, and they're not going to play on America's terms all the time. I think that's a fundamental issue. The game is not set up by our rules anymore. It's up in the air, depending on which country you are, and whether you want to tilt to the US and the Western bloc, or to China. I mean, that's, that's what it seems like it's gonna be
I, I agree with most of that, as far as well, as far as going back to COVID. Um, I think that the fundamental issue that that you're going that anyone will have, including the WHO is that China's default, why say China, let's just say specifically, the Communist Party's default is not to be transparent, especially when something bad happens. Okay? So because a party cannot be wrong, and so don't don't think that there aren't people being punished over the COVID situation. Um, but you will... that won't be televised, necessarily. Because the party can't be can't be wrong, if they can't pin it on one person in public, then you probably won't hear a lot about it, and they will try to change the topic. Because it goes to the party's legitimacy and their power. And their thinking specifically not about the... I mean, they they do think about their international image, but the most important thing is the is that domestic image, because without the domestic support, they won't be there. Right. Um, as far as like, where we're going, right, where I think we're going um, I think you're I think we're pretty close to being on the same page. However, I would just say this, I think that China has some fundamental problems and one of them - aging population, okay, we can use wishful thinking and say, maybe they won't need so many people because of coming AI revolution, robotics, etc. Um, but that hasn't come to pass yet necessarily. And so they have a water issue. So you said resources are very important. Um, China can have a lot of water, but it's been used, squandered, in a very bad way with their push to, to industrialize and Central China, northern China is running out of water. Um, There's pollution issues, clearly - global warming, which will make the water issues worse. Um, and so there are a lot of things going on. Right. And so what I see is, I think that the government is aware of all these things. And I do think you're right, they want access to resources as part of the Belt and Road. They also want to place too, they have over produced in a lot of areas of their economy, and they want a place to be able to dump those goods, that's also the Belt and Road. They also want markets to be able to sell their stuff to because they won't have a lot of young people buying that stuff in the next 20 years. So they're taking a gamble here, and they're looking at places like Africa, South Asia, um, you know, as places of potential markets, where there's going to be a lot of young people who are going to be consumers. And so if they can, if they can, if they can corner these markets, that will that will benefit them greatly when they're having such a when they have such an aged population. Um,...
Yeah, let me I just want to mention, China's workforce is dropping, like it's working age population is dropping by millions every year, right? by millions, every years,
Yes millions. Yeah.
Which in a the nation of 1.4 billion again, we have to keep it in context. On the other hand, you know, excuse me, one child policy, a total fertility rate of 1.2 1.3, whatever, if they don't have the one child policy anymore, but people still are having more children, at least not that many. So there are these structural demographic headwinds that China is gonna have to deal with. You cannot avoid it. This is an iron law of demographics. Right?
Right. Right. And so, so that's what you're seeing a lot of, you know, you just mentioned the one child policy. So now, people can legally have three children in China, but most people don't. Why? Because they feel as expensive. What does that mean? Does that mean that if they have three children, they'll be destitute, no, that what that means is they can't afford to educate their children in the way that they think is necessary to have a decent life. And so you see China cracking down on a lot of these things like, recently, they've been cracking down on a lot of tech companies lately, but recently, they've been cracking down specifically on, um, after school tutoring companies, where they're, they're even saying that they might make them not for profit, because they feel people are... because think about it, if you have to spend a large amount of your income for one child to get tutoring, just to keep them competitive, that will limit the amount of children that you might potentially want to have. Right? So so so the government, so the government is highly interested and in, you know, increasing the population, there's been a lot of talk in China, a lot of confusing messages coming out of the party around women's place in the workforce, and women's place in the home, and women having more children, etc. Um, there has been a, there's a lot of things around that around population. But another thing about control is that I think what China is looking at, and we're going to see a lot more of this, you know, in the last couple of weeks, Chinese stocks at last trillion dollars in the in the US stock markets. And that's because the Chinese government has put in all these controls or threatening to put in controls on various Chinese companies, especially social media companies. You know, like the biggest one being Alibaba, that was the first one that they really cracked down on. Alibaba was gonna do a giant IPO, one of the biggest in history, and on NASDAQ. And I'm sorry, not not Alibaba itself, a subsidiary Ant Financial - Ant Financial, just to be very quick for your audience. What they do is they provide financial services for ordinary people. So if you want to borrow money, if you want - if you're a company, and you want to check somebody's credit history, China doesn't have a national credit, um, doesn't have a national credit history, institution set up. So private companies are taking on this role. Any type of financial transactions you would think of, um, Ant Financial, probably doing it or trying to do it. And so they're making money off of this a lot. And the government basically cracked down on him and said, You have to hold a ton of more assets. And you have to basically be like a bank, which really hurt the IPO and then they cancelled the IPO altogether. They basically said they don't have permission to do it. Um, after they're, they're after the owner, Jack Ma is a billionaire who helped co founded Alibaba after he made some very negative remarks against the Chinese government for regulating Ant Financial and similar organizations so long and short of it is, I think under Xi Jinping. What you're going to see is that a lot of these things that affect the society, a lot of these organizations, they want control of them. And they don't consider these organizations necessarily big tech companies like we do, when you think of technology in America, a lot of people will say, Google Facebook, China's not concerned about that what China wants is chips, high end chips, so they're not dependent on Taiwan, or South Korea, or the United States. Um, they want, um, you know, supercomputers, they want quantum computers, they want better AI, etc. So this has almost become like an industrial policy, I think that's where they want resources to go, because that's what they see that they need for the future, to be competitive in a space where America or its allies can cut them off. Um, you know, and so, I think you're gonna see a lot more movement like that in China... That's the Cold War. That's the new Cold War, if you want. It's almost like a soft decoupling of certain industries, so you have better control. So China has better control over them, and the resources going into them? Um,
Well, let me ask you a quick question. Let me ask you the last question. Um, you know, in the, in the 2000s, Putin, Vladimir Putin really clamped down, frankly, persecuted a lot of the oligarchs, and the Western media, this was reported to some extent, as an anti liberal measure, and the rise of Putin's authoritarianism in Russia, I'm pretty sure from what I've heard, it was perceived totally differently, because people felt in the 1990s, the oligarchs were controlling the country. And they're called oligarchs. There, it's not a Democratic liberal system, Mafia and oligarchy, and all these things, that it was just chaotic, and the average Russian hated it. So Putin actually became quite popular clamping down on the oligarchs, I've seen some reporting in the Western press that Xi Jinping is a the clamping, you know, the control on Chinese capital on Chinese industry on Chinese corporations on, on on, you know, mega billionaires, like Jack Ma, is actually quite positive, positively viewed in China. And I even see some Western commentators expressing a little bit of admiration in that China is a state and a society where capitalism and the oligarchs exist to serve the country in the culture, whereas the United States, you know, it kind of goes the other way, like, Bezos controls Washington Post, you know, like all of these, you know, Elon Musk has his own media empire implicitly. You know, Bill Gates is running our public health. So what do you think about that, that perception of what's going on here?
No, you're spot on there. And I think that, uh, how popular would Biden and the Democrats be? Even Republicans are somewhat on the same page that, you know, tech companies need to pay as they say, their fair share. Um, a lot of people - Elon Musk, you know, people like this Bazos are very popular with a lot of people and they're hated by quite a lot of people. There was a lot negative reaction to the recent space race we had with, you know, billionaires in the cockpit recently. I'm considering what's going on with COVID. And so, so if you're Xi Jinping, right, uh, getting companies pay their fair share, controlling these oligarchs making them serve the people like Alibaba, I know, or at least Jack Ma funded quite a bit of rural education. Recently, quite recently, probably to get out of hot water with the party, I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars for rural education. I'm pretty sure that would be popular in the US, too, if you could get away with it. Right, um, by a lot of people across the political spectrum. Um, and so I think that that is part of it. They - and I also think it's part of it is this, Xi Jinping has consolidated his power. And he's you he's done that by using anti corruption policies to crack down on factions that he feels are threatening to him within the party. And so he's kind of doing the same thing with a lot of these tech companies as well. And it's, it's very popular at the people because it it really is cracking down on corruption and oligarchy, etc. But at the same time, it it at the same time, it makes him popular to people, but it also empowers him in his faction, right? So remember, in China, the number one rule is there can never be a competing power. Um, most of these oligarchs are party members, Jack Ma is a party member, but, you know, he's a party member in name but they don't want any other factions of the party or oligarchic faction to be competing with Xi Jinping for power behind scenes. So anybody who threatens that or starts to act like that, they're going to be dealt with. I'm 100% sure of that. I think Xi will not tolerate this the way, like you mentioned, Hu Jintao or Jiang Zemin, they were much more governed by consensus, which is something that Deng Xiaoping before them had put in to stop things from going the way it did with Mao. Mao Zedong. So I think Xi is not like this. He's much more authoritarian. I'm not saying there is no consensus building anymore. But I'm just saying that they know there's a first among equals, and they know that there's a very little leash that they have to, to go against what Xi wants the core interest of Xi Jingping
Well, I mean, I, you know, I think we're going to be talking about, I think Xi is going to be a thing. You know, if we talked about Putin in the teens a lot, I think Xi is who we're going to be talking about in the in the 20s. I think that's basically where we're at right now. Like, we got to know more about this guy. He's gonna be around. I mean, Putin still around. But let's be frank, Russia has a declining Petro state, you know,
Exactly. Russia, Russia is like, almost like Saudi with much better weapons. Right. And and, yeah, one thing to keep in mind about she is he has not named a successor, he's definitely gonna have a third term. Um, it's highly on, I almost feel, and this is just my personal opinion, the way he consolidated power, it is almost impossible for him now to step down and guarantee the safety of himself and his family. I'm not saying that they would kill them, that usually does not happen. But there have been former leadership put under lifelong house arrest, had their assets taken, etc, that's happened. There's been former leadership put in prison in China and still in prison. So those things are real threats. Um, and so Xi has consolidated more power than anybody since Moa Zedong That is definitely true. However, that comes at a cost. The cost is he can't just walk away. I don't believe that, you know, and so I think he's gonna be around for a while.
Yeah, yeah. All right. Um, it's been great talking to you, Colin, I really appreciate your insights, as usual, I think the listeners will also appreciate it, because, you know, you can talk about something and read about it in The New York Times, or Wall Street Journal or whatever. But then, you know, talking to someone who has the direct experience, that's important, because a lot of times, I mean, that's what journalists have, I mean, that that's their competitive advantage. So let's get as many perspectives as possible, right?
Sure. No, yeah. And thank you, thank you, for your time Razib, it was great talking to you again, um, hopefully, you can chat in the future about new revelations that come out of China or East Asia, I think, in our lifetime it will be Many, many.
Maybe you're talking about if you're talking about genetics, calling, you know, there are these preprints I haven't, like had like, some time to work on it. But there's been a bunch of preprints that I need to think about part of the issue with Chinese genetics is we know a lot about the present. It's pretty well characterized, but, you know, phylogenetic scaffold of the past is just much much more spotty than it is with many other parts of the world in particular Europe. And so I think a lot of the inferences that we make about deep time aren't super robust because they have these huge gaps
Hmm, that's interesting. Is that is that is that partially due to climate? Why we don't have good good sampling or is it.... ?
I don't think it's climate I think what it is is China's hasn't been like developed with its own archaeological tradition and a lot of its antiquities r you know, there's there's issues of turning them into traditional medicine Yeah.
Or 'Chinese people are unique and did not did not come out of Africa. Like everybody else on earth' et cetera
Maybe there's a little bit about that too. But yeah, what maybe we'll talk about that in another podcast. I'm definitely actually I was thinking about that. But I take care take care Collin.
Okay. Yeah, yeah. Talk to you later. Razib
Is this podcast for kids? This is my favorite podcast.
