This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Villanova University historian Andrew Liu. Andy published an excellent essay in n+1 magazine in April that captured how the eclipse of the “wet-market” theory of COVID origins and its replacement by the “lab-leak” theory illustrates how an old racial form — “Orientalism,” which sees countries of Asia as backward, dirty, and barbarous — gave way to what’s been termed an “Asiatic” racial form, which reflects anxiety over Asians as hyperproductive, robotic, and technologically advanced.
3:05 – Andy’s n+1 essay on the lab leak theory and the two racial forms
6:26 – A primer on Edward Said’s Orientalism and why it’s a poor fit for Asia today
10:41 – The “Asiatic racial form” and the notionally “positive” Asian stereotypes
13:58 – How Orientalism and the Asiatic racial form interact today and historically
23:50 – Conspiracies on China, and what’s wrong with the Asiatic form
27:51 – Japan’s rise as a parallel
30:57 – How to talk about Chinese attitudes toward tech without invoking Asiatic stereotypes
37:27 – Race, culture, and global capitalism
A full transcript of this podcast is available on TheChinaProject.com.
Recommendations:
Andy: Stay True: a memoir by the New Yorker writer Hua Hsu and donating to abortion providers in states affected by the end of Roe v. Wade:, like Abortion Care for Tennessee, abortioncaretn.org
Kaiser: The Danish political drama Borgen on Netflix
