We must acquire knowledge not only of China but of the Chinese. To most of us China is a strange. distant. and dangerous nation. not a society made up of 700 million individual human beings but a kind of menacing abstraction. When Chinese soldiers are described. for example. as "hordes of Chinese coolies." it is clear that they are being thought of not as people but as something terrifying and abstract. or as something inanimate like the flow of lava from a volcano. Both China and America seem t: think of each other as abstractions: to the Chinese we are not a society of individual people but the embodiment of an evil idea. the idea of imperialist capitalism. and to most of us China represents not people but an evil and frightening idea. the idea of aggressive communism. Mans capacity for decent behavior seems to vary directly with his perception of others as individual humans with human motives and feelings. whereas his capacity for barbarous behavior seems to increase with his perception of an adversary in abstract terms. This is the only explanation I can think of for the fact that the very same good and decent citizens who would never fail to feed a hungry child or comfort a sick friend or drop a coin in the church collection basket celebrated the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and can now contemplate with equanimity. or indeed even advocate. the use of nuclear weapons against the hordes of Chinese coolies. I feel sure that this apparent insensitivity to the incineration of thousands or millions of our fellow human beings is not the result of feelings of savage inhumanity toward foreigners. it is the result of not thinking of them as humans at all but rather as the embodiment of doctrines that we consider evil such as fascism and communism. Wrote William Graham Sumner: If you want war. nourish a doctrine.
Identified stereotypes
Chinese soldiers are described as "hordes of Chinese coolies," dehumanizing them.