This is almost certainly some dude in their basement playing out a stereotype to stoke fear.

Yes, youre right in a strict sense but the whole advance tech at any cost including mass casualty (as long as its disproportionately nonwhite people) was a colonial era development leading up to the industrial revolution. The idea of outsourcing labor to lesser humans (on a global scale) also comes from that time. Those are the precursors that have led to the Elons and Zuckerbergs of today.

Yes all third world countries are the same /s. Not at all a reductive viewpoint.

Techno fascists have set our world on an unsustainable path and it is past Colonial powers that started that. So, revisionism aside, those “big bad” technology and industry obsessed empires will be attributed most of the blame and they better fix it or we won’t be here much longer.

That, or China will have to fix it since Western countries have been thumb twiddling for decades (despite being the source of the problem). Either way it will be ugly once past colonial powers lose their shine and history reflects an honest assessment of them. “Great” Britain is already a shadow of its former self. More will follow that march into relative obscurity as the rest of the world fixes the mess they created.

The cultural, economic and environmental impact of the Colonial era is much more profound than most know (largely because its ignored in most Western curriculums). You may not recognize issues if you’re white or man, but that can be remedied by going outside and speaking to people that don’t look or talk like you.

A lot of so called ‘third world mentality’ is just Victorian cultural norms that were imposed by the global techno fascists of the time (the British Empire).

The original article says women. Unless they are using women with small hands as code for children.

I would hope a social studies teacher would understand the pitfalls of Western orientalism and Western cultures obsession with describing other groups as ‘its’ rather than as whole persons.

But if we’re going to objectify people, why don’t we get real technical about it. Why not move manufacturing to other east Asian countries? Even outside of East Asia, you can find many countries with less labor protections and large populations where you can select for millions of people with small hands. Why China? Anyone who is being intellectually honest knows that hand size was not the central reason.

If this is widely accepted then Western culture has a long way to go when it comes to facing its history of racial objectification. Because this sounds less like a valid rationale and more like modern phrenology presenting itself as business and engineering acumen.

Young Chinese women have small fingers, and that has made them a valuable contributor to iPhone production because they are more nimble at installing screws and other miniature parts in the small device, supply chain experts said. In a recent analysis the company did to explore the feasibility of moving production to the United States, the company determined that it couldn’t find people with those skills in the United States, said two people familiar with the analysis who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/technology/apple-iphone-trump-india-china.html

They’re supposedly paraphrasing “supply chain experts” but they could definitely paraphrase better.

Western culture is built on a foundation of race based hierarchical brain rot and isn’t it remarkable how it always finds a way to remind us of that?

The Gospel according to Capitalism

Greed is good

More recent data from Our World in Data.

The only countries with a higher Gini coefficient after taxes (higher=more inequality) are Mexico, Turkey, Brazil, Costa Rica and Chile.

https://ourworldindata.org/income-inequality-before-and-after-taxes

Who woulda thought the most capitalist developed nation on earth would also have the most inequality?

It’s almost like thats a features of unfettered capitalism, not a bug.