The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China

by Kevin Rudd

At the same time, China has a remarkable incapacity to reflect on its Han ethnocentrism, including its historical predisposition for racial stereotyping and the widespread view that most non-Han ethnicities are racially inferior, or luohou (backward), and in need of Sinicization. But our question here is not one of relative moral virtue on the part of Chinese and Americans on the question of race. It is to understand that when China identifies what it sees as American policies of containment designed to frustrate China’s rise, these are interpolated through the prism of race, depicted and often seen as a last-ditch stand on the part of “white” Western civilization to prevent an Eastern civilization from supplanting it. China’s view of America is that it is insufferably arrogant, condescending, and systemically incapable of treating China or its leaders with appropriate national respect, let alone as equals.

China's 'view'