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thaumasiotes • today at 11:47 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

A guy from a Chinese country with an obviously Chinese name isn't the greatest exemplar of the idea that "it's not just the Chinese".

The concept seems to have been mostly focused on the Chinese, but that in turn seems to have been largely because they outnumber everybody else.

You can read an essay criticizing the concept at Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26350/pg26350-images.ht...

(It's in French, written by a Russian in 1897.)


Replies

victorhooi • today at 4:04 PM

I think many here are conflating quite a few different things here.

Firstly, ethnicity is not the same as nationality.

Secondly, the CCP and China are two separate things. And then there's your definition of China, but I'm not going there. RoC and all...

Thirdly, Singapore is actually a former British colony, the native people are Malays, and there's four official languages (English, Chinese/Mandarin, Tamil and Malay). Now yes, there's a large erhnic Chinese diaspora in Singapore, but arguing that being Singaporean makes you a CCP spy would be a bit of a reach.

And geopolitical naivety aside, I find it mildly perturbing that somebody might assume that I'm a red under the bed, just because I have black hair, an olive complexion and am lactose intolerant.