> I don’t think anyone is arguing that Taiwan or Japan are uniquely or universally racist.

The original comment used this as the explanation for why there's low crime. Here's a reminder of the context we are conversing within.

> > > > East Asia built a uni-culture by being extremely racist against outsiders. I don't think you can get away with that anywhere else.

I think "extreme racism to outsiders" is detectable within a month. I am as outsider as they come - being a brown-skinned South Asian Indian[0]. I also think that "I don't think you can get away with that anywhere else" means "uniquely". I guess we could argue about whether "extreme racism" means "universal racism" if you'd like but I don't think it's interesting as an explanation for safety. And the other statement I'm replying to there is

> > > > A friend of mine (white guy) married a Chinese woman and when they visited China they were subject to slurs and dirty looks in public.

My wife's cousin is married to a White Irish man who has lived there over a decade. This is not his experience anywhere in Taiwan, in particular, as opposed to the GP's China experience.

I think his decades of living there prior to and then after marrying my wife's cousin probably provide some experience. There's a lot of Planet of Hats thinking from Westerners visiting Asia. But different countries there are clearly different, just like France and Switzerland are different.

And in the end, if racism is not unique then it cannot explain difference in crime outcomes. To quote the great sage pj evans: "Cars have windows and can move. Houses have windows and can't move. So it's not the windows that make the car go. It's something else entirely."

And as a little epilogue, we may consider other countries with a foreign-born populace similar to Taiwan's: Poland, Argentina, Uruguay, and South Africa. None of them match Taiwan's broad lack of crime while having a similar degree of foreign-born people.

Which brings us again to whether the windows make the car go or not.

0: website in profile, feel free to take a look at my face

Flock cameras track more than your license plate, and they're spreading fast