50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 859 The Origin of the Yellow Race
In any case, compared to other Western countries, Swedes are indeed considered fortunate.

During Palme's tenure, Sweden entered a state of "pseudo-communism," and the United Nations once investigated its happiness index, which was indeed very high.

However, all of this started to decline at the beginning of this year.

Palme was shot and killed on the street one night in February of this year, and the identity of the perpetrator remains a mystery.

Palme had too many enemies. His policies affected the interests of too many capitalists, and he even clashed with the Soviet Union and the United States on the international stage, attracting their aircraft carriers.

As for motives, both the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as their own capitalists, had their own motives.

However, the murderer could not be found for decades afterward. Only Su Mei could have done it so secretly.

He planned to investigate the next time he went to their intelligence department. If it really was them, he would find an opportunity to release the evidence and cause some trouble.

However, Palme was both their strength and their weakness.

Palme's policies were largely beneficial to the people, but some were idealistic, such as his immigration policy.

The Palme government allowed the country to open up to refugees and immigrants, and provided them with the same welfare benefits as locals. Housing subsidies, job training, medical care, and education were all provided.

Palme's idea was actually quite simple: as a neutral country, Sweden had a responsibility to help people in war-torn regions.

At the same time, introducing labor can also solve the problem of aging and inject fresh blood into society.

Unfortunately, his ideas were too idealistic.

In the beginning, the immigrants were mainly Finns and Yugoslavs, and they integrated quite smoothly. They opened small shops or worked in factories without any major problems.

In the late 70s, the sources of immigrants began to expand, with Turks and Iranians arriving. By the 80s, Lebanese and Iraqis had also poured in.

Such a good welfare policy is so tempting, my goodness!

The word spread quickly, and those who had tasted the benefits were calling out to their friends: "Family, people here are gullible and rich, come quickly!"

As a result, more and more people applied, and the flow of people at the Swedish border increased dramatically.

Palme's original intention was to establish a multi-ethnic nation, allowing more ethnic groups to integrate into Swedish culture and making Swedish society more diverse.

But can ethnic integration be achieved simply by wishing to do so? If you want to integrate, others also need to be willing to cooperate.

It took thousands of years for the Chinese nation to integrate into 56 ethnic groups. Are you, Palme, a god? You think you can accomplish this in just a few decades?
His original intention was good, but things didn't go as planned.

Palme is now dead, but his immigration policies continue.

In the 2010s, the Syrian civil war broke out, and a refugee crisis swept into Europe. Sweden received a record 16 refugees in 2015 alone.

At this point, the problem fully erupted. Crime records across Sweden skyrocketed, with a particularly alarmingly high rate of rape reports.

The media began calling Sweden a "rape country," women were afraid to go out at night, and social order was in a mess.

It is foreseeable that Sweden's high-welfare policy will collapse if it is not changed; it is only a matter of time.

Therefore, Sun Zhiwei doesn't say he hates this country, but he certainly doesn't like it either.

Although Sweden was the first European country to recognize China after its founding, it remains largely unfamiliar to the Chinese people, with most not even knowing which continent it belongs to. What most Chinese people don't know is that Swedes, on the other hand, are not unfamiliar with China; in fact, they often feel a strong aversion to it.

This reason has to be traced back three centuries, when the Kingdom of Sweden not only did not dislike China, but actually admired it.

For example, in 1753, King Adolf Frederick of Sweden gave his queen Luvisa Euryka a "Chinese Palace" as a birthday gift.

At that time, in "The Travels of Marco Polo", China was referred to as the "Land of Gold".

In the eyes of Europeans, China at that time was like paradise, with rivers flowing with gold and milk.

However, all of this began to change gradually at the end of the 18th century.

At that time, Europe began to industrialize, and a large number of products were produced that needed to be sold, so they turned their attention to the East.

At this time, Emperor Kangxi was still alive. My family, the Kangxi Emperor, has vast lands and abundant resources. What good things do we have? Why would we need to buy things from you Western barbarians?

After the Western merchants arrived, Kangxi's ministers gave them a good lesson.

Then they were given a four-pronged imported package: isolationism, corruption and bribery, extortion and demanding, and 30% of their wealth being wasted.

When these European merchants finished their business and settled accounts, good heavens! Every single European merchant who came to the East to do legitimate trade at that time had lost everything, and the Swedish merchants were naturally among them.

Who were these people who were able to cross oceans to trade with the East at this time? They were the first generation of Western capitalists. Back in their own countries, they were all ruthless and predatory.

However, their trade in the East resulted in huge losses, which infuriated the early capitalists.

Cutting off someone's livelihood is like killing their parents. These capitalists truly hate this ancient Eastern country to the core.

Therefore, as they returned to Europe, rumors quickly spread across the continent, eventually leading to prejudice against China among Europeans.

This was just the beginning. Prejudice was prejudice, but it wasn't serious yet. However, things finally changed dramatically because of a book.

In 1735, a Swedish biologist named Linnaeus wrote a book called Systematic Nature.

This book made a very important contribution to the development of botany, but the content on "race classification" contained some personal opinions.

Before the publication of Systematics of Nature, Europeans had not yet reached a unified understanding of the skin color of Asians.

Some people consider Asians to be "white" like Europeans, while others define Asians as "brown".

But in any case, there is no such thing as "yellow race".

In the cultural context of Europe, yellow is not a popular color.

In a Christian context, yellow is between white and black; it is neither absolutely pure nor completely impure, and is considered a "shameful" color.

Therefore, when Europeans still held Asians, especially Chinese people, in high esteem, they naturally wouldn't use "yellow," a negative color, to define Asians.

It wasn't until the 10th edition of "Systema Naturae" that Linnaeus subtly adjusted the description of Asians to "yellow," which led to the current term "yellow race."

But it is clear that Linnaeus's change to "yellow race" was not so well-intentioned.

(End of this chapter)