In the United States and most of the liberal West, the ill-defined concept of racial, sexual, and ethnic "diversity" has assumed the status of a sacrosanct religious dogma. No one can sensibly define its parameters, but few in "respectable" society stop to question its desirability or importance.
Governments, corporations, the armed forces, and universities all endorse and follow the precept that optimal diversity is critical to success in all areas of endeavor. The ubiquitous mantra that "diversity is our greatest strength" is recited and repeated -- although never proven --like some kind of indisputable religious dogma. Proof of efficacy is deemed irrelevant, and those who demand such proof are deemed retrogressive or racist.
Nearly all of the foregoing institutions maintain entrenched diversity officers and diversity divisions whose mission -- at enormous financial and human cost-- is to maintain and manipulate the diversity imperative towards the goal of fewer white males and more blacks, Hispanics, and women. For some odd reason, however, expanded representation of East Asians is deemed to undermine diversity, as illustrated by a lawsuit in which Harvard University is currently defending its blatant discrimination against East Asian applicants on that very basis.
The ubiquitous diversity imperative has even achieved the status of a binding legal doctrine in the United States. In the 2005 case of Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court elevated the promotion of a university's diversity to the status of a "compelling government interest," sufficient to override the anti-discrimination principles of the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. In a conflict between a non-minority student's claim to equal treatment of his application and the university's promotion of undefined "diversity" objectives, diversity now trumps fairness thanks to the Grutter decision.
Thus, in the United States and much of the Liberal West, the diversity imperative is accepted, revered, and scrupulously followed in critical areas of national policy ranging from education to employment to immigration and refugee policy.
China's Pink Militia is untroubled by its diversity deficiencies
Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), and Taiwan are each among the most homogeneous, and least diverse, nations on the face of the earth. They are also among the most intelligent, well-educated, technologically adept, safe, and civil societies in the world. The question naturally arises, therefore, whether these facts are a matter of causation or mere correlation.
Japan is an industrious, technologically adept, and prosperous monocultural democracy of 128 million people. It rose from the ashes of World War II (with much U.S. help) to become the economic envy of the world by 1979, when responsible scholars were writing books with titles like Ezra Vogel's Japan as Number One. Its economic success has since flattened, receded, and partially recovered, but it remains one of the world's five leading economic powerhouses (it presently ranks No. 3 in nominal GDP in the IMF's official rankings) .
About 97.5% of Japan's population is of the Yamato, or native Japanese, race. A predominant portion of the remaining 2.5%, moreover, are fellow East Asians, largely Korean, Chinese, or Filipino immigrants. Another significant portion of the non-native 2.5% are actually ethnic Japanese Nikkei who migrated back to Japan from Brazil or Peru. In brief, Japan is utterly lacking in the ethnic diversity that is so highly prized and relentlessly demanded in the U.S.
This striking racial and ethnic homogeneity is caused and sustained by a combination of factors: Japan's physical insularity, its highly restrictive immigration policies, its extremely difficult language (mastery of which is a prerequisite to permanent immigration), and its adamant refusal to join the West in welcoming purported refugees from the Mid-East and elsewhere. In 2017, for example, Japan admitted a total of twenty refugees out of 19,628 refugee applicants. Another likely factor is that the Japanese people actually prize their Yamato identity and culture -- unlike guilt-ridden westerners -- and are unwilling to dilute them with an influx of non-Asian immigrants who are unlikely to assimilate or blend.
Although Japan is presently considering a modest expansion in the numbers of temporary foreign workers it may admit in future, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has stressed such expansion will not entail permanent residence of aliens accompanied by families, but merely temporary worker relief for industries suffering from a current shortage of native Japanese workers. Moreover, any expansion of temporary or permanent immigration to Japan will, as with the minimal current foreign residency, likely be dominated by racially similar East Asians from Taiwan, China, Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines.
The Taiwanese lady behind the desk represents typical Japanese immigration -- racially indistinguishable from Japanese natives, at least to the Western eye. -- Japan Times photo
The ROK, often called South Korea, has a total population of some 51 million. Like Japan, it is an economic and political Phoenix that rose from the ruins of war and occupation (in its case, Japanese occupation from 1905 to 1945) to achieve its current status as an economic and technological Asian Tiger of the first order. Despite its small area and comparatively modest population, it currently ranks 12th among all nations in nominal GDP (2018 IMF data). As shown below, it joins Japan and Taiwan at the very apex of world rankings in various indicia of intelligence, education, STEM scores, safety, and other measures of technological advancement.
On top of all this, the ROK also has its own distinctive "Gangnam Style" -- as YouTube viewers worldwide are well aware.
K-Pop Girl Groups have succeeded PSY's Gangnam Style in the ROK music explosion
Ethnic or racial Koreans are estimated to constitute upwards of 97.5% of the total population. Moreover, a good portion of those classified as foreign residents of the ROK are actually ethnic Koreans repatriated from China. Suffice to say, the ROK's ethnic homogeneity is remarkable, near total, and closely similar to Japan's. One online encyclopedia (Encyclopedia.com) flatly states that the ROK "has no sizeable ethnic minority."
The final member of the East Asian Trio, Taiwan, is a de facto sovereign state that, sadly, is treated by much of the world (including the U.S.) as a non-state and diplomatic pariah due to the demands of its domineering progenitor, the People's Republic of China (PRC). Despite this severe handicap, Taiwan has survived and prospered as one of the world's most vibrant and well-educated democracies and economies.
Taiwan's total population of about 23.6 million is composed of over 95% Han Chinese (the dominant racial and ethnic group of China); when limited to actual Taiwanese citizens, its population is about 97.5% Han. Most of Taiwan's non-Han population is composed of native or aboriginal Taiwanese. As with Japan and the ROK, resident immigrants from the U.S., Europe, Africa, and the Middle East are negligible. Whatever Taiwan's "greatest strength" may be, it is certainly not diversity.
Of course, the fact that these three Asian nations all have highly homogeneous, non-diverse populations is not in itself a matter of great moment or credit. A nation's relative diversity or homogeneity is often more a matter of geography and history than of design.
Whatever one may think of the current diversity meme, the enormous diversity in the U.S. population has been with us from the founding. We have had to accept and adjust to racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity whether we liked it or not, from the time when the successive waves of Northern European white settlers, black African slaves, Italian and Slavic immigrants, and Chinese railroad workers surrounded the appalled Native Americans with the multi-ethnic population that persists today. In short, ethnic diversity is simply an inescapable reality in the United States. Only the degree, nature, and promotion of this diversity has evolved to reach the pervasive and dogmatic stature it manifests today.
The question, however, is whether the American standard of diversity should or could be beneficially applied to profoundly distinct nations like the Asian Trio. Put another way, is artificially enhanced diversity inherently beneficial on the national scale? Or does national homogeneity have its own benefits?
The achievements and qualities of Japan, the ROK, and Taiwan when compared to the rest of the world's strongly indicate a negative answer to the former question and a yes to the latter. Specifically, the demonstrated superiority of these emphatically "non-diverse" countries in qualities such as education, scientific and technological ability, IQ, safety, crime prevention, and economic development strongly suggest that, in some national cases, homogeneity may have genuine benefits.
In published rankings of nations by average IQ (compiled by the Statistic Brain Research Institute in 2016 at gazettereview.com), the ROK (#2), Japan (#3), and Taiwan (#4) are surpassed only by Hong Kong. Since Hong Kong (itself a non-diverse 93% Chinese/Han) is not in fact a nation but a part of China, the Asian Trio could be considered the Top 3 nations in the world in IQ. The U.S. ranked 28th.
Although one might question the validity of any single rating of national IQ's, the preeminince of the Asian Trio is reinforced by other such rankings which consistently place them at or near the top. For example, the ROK and Japan were surpassed only by the cities of Hong Kong and Singapore in another published IQ ranking, which placed Taiwan as No. 6 (all of the top six were East Asian nations or cities).
Another revealing indicator is found in the STEM (science, technology, math, and engineering) rankings of national school systems by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as reported by Business Insider in 2015. Similar to the IQ rankings, Singapore and Hong Kong were on top, followed by ROK and then Japan and Taiwan in a tie. Non-diverse Finland (at No. 6) was the highest ranking country outside East Asia. The U.S. was in a tie for No. 28 with Spain. Again, Japan, ROK, and Taiwan were the top three nations of significant size in STEM rankings.
Relatedly, the ROK, Finland, and Japan ranked 1-2-3 respectively in rankings of the world's best education systems (primary school through college) by the World Top 20 Project.
Similarly, in overall technological innovation, the ROK and Japan were ranked No. 1 and 3 worldwide, respectively, with the U.S. at No. 2.
One important index area that may be closely related to ethnic homogeneity is that of public safety and crime control, which amount to the same thing by different measures. Here again, the East Asian Trio are at the very top of national rankings. Depending upon which institutional ranking one consults, either Japan or ROK is the safest country in the world, and Taiwan is not far behind.
A 2014 study by the OECD ranked Japan as "the safest country in the world," as well as maintaining the world's second lowest homicide rate (after Iceland) and the second lowest assault rate (after Canada). A 2014 survey compiled by Listovative ranked Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the ROK, in that order, as the world's safest countries.
A 2016 ranking by Numbeo, a data aggregator, confirmed and reinforced the status of these countries as the world's safest, with only slight modifications. Numbeo ranked the ROK No. 1 on its overall safety index, followed by Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
One could continue with other areas of interest, but the foregoing representative rankings suffice to demonstrate that the Asian Trio of Japan, the ROK, and Taiwan are performing superlatively in key indicators of national achievement and well-being despite their decided lack of diversity as measured by American or western standards. Their superiority in these national indicators confirms that, whatever may be the case with the United States and its European cohorts, the value of diversity at the national level is entirely relative and in some cases dubious at best.
Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), and Taiwan are each among the most homogeneous, and least diverse, nations on the face of the earth. They are also among the most intelligent, well-educated, technologically adept, safe, and civil societies in the world. The question naturally arises, therefore, whether these facts are a matter of causation or mere correlation.
Japan is an industrious, technologically adept, and prosperous monocultural democracy of 128 million people. It rose from the ashes of World War II (with much U.S. help) to become the economic envy of the world by 1979, when responsible scholars were writing books with titles like Ezra Vogel's Japan as Number One. Its economic success has since flattened, receded, and partially recovered, but it remains one of the world's five leading economic powerhouses (it presently ranks No. 3 in nominal GDP in the IMF's official rankings) .
About 97.5% of Japan's population is of the Yamato, or native Japanese, race. A predominant portion of the remaining 2.5%, moreover, are fellow East Asians, largely Korean, Chinese, or Filipino immigrants. Another significant portion of the non-native 2.5% are actually ethnic Japanese Nikkei who migrated back to Japan from Brazil or Peru. In brief, Japan is utterly lacking in the ethnic diversity that is so highly prized and relentlessly demanded in the U.S.
This striking racial and ethnic homogeneity is caused and sustained by a combination of factors: Japan's physical insularity, its highly restrictive immigration policies, its extremely difficult language (mastery of which is a prerequisite to permanent immigration), and its adamant refusal to join the West in welcoming purported refugees from the Mid-East and elsewhere. In 2017, for example, Japan admitted a total of twenty refugees out of 19,628 refugee applicants. Another likely factor is that the Japanese people actually prize their Yamato identity and culture -- unlike guilt-ridden westerners -- and are unwilling to dilute them with an influx of non-Asian immigrants who are unlikely to assimilate or blend.
Although Japan is presently considering a modest expansion in the numbers of temporary foreign workers it may admit in future, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has stressed such expansion will not entail permanent residence of aliens accompanied by families, but merely temporary worker relief for industries suffering from a current shortage of native Japanese workers. Moreover, any expansion of temporary or permanent immigration to Japan will, as with the minimal current foreign residency, likely be dominated by racially similar East Asians from Taiwan, China, Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines.
The ROK, often called South Korea, has a total population of some 51 million. Like Japan, it is an economic and political Phoenix that rose from the ruins of war and occupation (in its case, Japanese occupation from 1905 to 1945) to achieve its current status as an economic and technological Asian Tiger of the first order. Despite its small area and comparatively modest population, it currently ranks 12th among all nations in nominal GDP (2018 IMF data). As shown below, it joins Japan and Taiwan at the very apex of world rankings in various indicia of intelligence, education, STEM scores, safety, and other measures of technological advancement.
On top of all this, the ROK also has its own distinctive "Gangnam Style" -- as YouTube viewers worldwide are well aware.
Ethnic or racial Koreans are estimated to constitute upwards of 97.5% of the total population. Moreover, a good portion of those classified as foreign residents of the ROK are actually ethnic Koreans repatriated from China. Suffice to say, the ROK's ethnic homogeneity is remarkable, near total, and closely similar to Japan's. One online encyclopedia (Encyclopedia.com) flatly states that the ROK "has no sizeable ethnic minority."
The final member of the East Asian Trio, Taiwan, is a de facto sovereign state that, sadly, is treated by much of the world (including the U.S.) as a non-state and diplomatic pariah due to the demands of its domineering progenitor, the People's Republic of China (PRC). Despite this severe handicap, Taiwan has survived and prospered as one of the world's most vibrant and well-educated democracies and economies.
Taiwan's total population of about 23.6 million is composed of over 95% Han Chinese (the dominant racial and ethnic group of China); when limited to actual Taiwanese citizens, its population is about 97.5% Han. Most of Taiwan's non-Han population is composed of native or aboriginal Taiwanese. As with Japan and the ROK, resident immigrants from the U.S., Europe, Africa, and the Middle East are negligible. Whatever Taiwan's "greatest strength" may be, it is certainly not diversity.
Of course, the fact that these three Asian nations all have highly homogeneous, non-diverse populations is not in itself a matter of great moment or credit. A nation's relative diversity or homogeneity is often more a matter of geography and history than of design.
Whatever one may think of the current diversity meme, the enormous diversity in the U.S. population has been with us from the founding. We have had to accept and adjust to racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity whether we liked it or not, from the time when the successive waves of Northern European white settlers, black African slaves, Italian and Slavic immigrants, and Chinese railroad workers surrounded the appalled Native Americans with the multi-ethnic population that persists today. In short, ethnic diversity is simply an inescapable reality in the United States. Only the degree, nature, and promotion of this diversity has evolved to reach the pervasive and dogmatic stature it manifests today.
The question, however, is whether the American standard of diversity should or could be beneficially applied to profoundly distinct nations like the Asian Trio. Put another way, is artificially enhanced diversity inherently beneficial on the national scale? Or does national homogeneity have its own benefits?
The achievements and qualities of Japan, the ROK, and Taiwan when compared to the rest of the world's strongly indicate a negative answer to the former question and a yes to the latter. Specifically, the demonstrated superiority of these emphatically "non-diverse" countries in qualities such as education, scientific and technological ability, IQ, safety, crime prevention, and economic development strongly suggest that, in some national cases, homogeneity may have genuine benefits.
In published rankings of nations by average IQ (compiled by the Statistic Brain Research Institute in 2016 at gazettereview.com), the ROK (#2), Japan (#3), and Taiwan (#4) are surpassed only by Hong Kong. Since Hong Kong (itself a non-diverse 93% Chinese/Han) is not in fact a nation but a part of China, the Asian Trio could be considered the Top 3 nations in the world in IQ. The U.S. ranked 28th.
Although one might question the validity of any single rating of national IQ's, the preeminince of the Asian Trio is reinforced by other such rankings which consistently place them at or near the top. For example, the ROK and Japan were surpassed only by the cities of Hong Kong and Singapore in another published IQ ranking, which placed Taiwan as No. 6 (all of the top six were East Asian nations or cities).
Another revealing indicator is found in the STEM (science, technology, math, and engineering) rankings of national school systems by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as reported by Business Insider in 2015. Similar to the IQ rankings, Singapore and Hong Kong were on top, followed by ROK and then Japan and Taiwan in a tie. Non-diverse Finland (at No. 6) was the highest ranking country outside East Asia. The U.S. was in a tie for No. 28 with Spain. Again, Japan, ROK, and Taiwan were the top three nations of significant size in STEM rankings.
Relatedly, the ROK, Finland, and Japan ranked 1-2-3 respectively in rankings of the world's best education systems (primary school through college) by the World Top 20 Project.
Similarly, in overall technological innovation, the ROK and Japan were ranked No. 1 and 3 worldwide, respectively, with the U.S. at No. 2.
One important index area that may be closely related to ethnic homogeneity is that of public safety and crime control, which amount to the same thing by different measures. Here again, the East Asian Trio are at the very top of national rankings. Depending upon which institutional ranking one consults, either Japan or ROK is the safest country in the world, and Taiwan is not far behind.
A 2014 study by the OECD ranked Japan as "the safest country in the world," as well as maintaining the world's second lowest homicide rate (after Iceland) and the second lowest assault rate (after Canada). A 2014 survey compiled by Listovative ranked Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the ROK, in that order, as the world's safest countries.
A 2016 ranking by Numbeo, a data aggregator, confirmed and reinforced the status of these countries as the world's safest, with only slight modifications. Numbeo ranked the ROK No. 1 on its overall safety index, followed by Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
One could continue with other areas of interest, but the foregoing representative rankings suffice to demonstrate that the Asian Trio of Japan, the ROK, and Taiwan are performing superlatively in key indicators of national achievement and well-being despite their decided lack of diversity as measured by American or western standards. Their superiority in these national indicators confirms that, whatever may be the case with the United States and its European cohorts, the value of diversity at the national level is entirely relative and in some cases dubious at best.
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