Why Do Analysts Keep Talking Nonsense About Chinese Words?

A Long March 2F rocket, carrying the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft for China's first crewed mission to its new space station, sits on a launch pad encased in a shield, behind the Chinese characters for China, at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert in northwestern China on June 16. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

Imagine that you are cornered at a party when the topic of race comes up. Your interlocutor tells you that, in the English language, “race” can refer to both a competition wherein one tries to outrun the others and a visually identifiable group of people sharing common ancestry. It is no wonder that racism has been such an intractable issue in the Anglosphere; the very word embodies a sense of competition among different peoples.

You quickly spot a friend on the other side of the room because you understand using a literal reading of a vocabulary item to explain the origins, evolution, and persistence of racism in the Anglosphere is completely ridiculous.