This is at least why Niall Ferguson in The War of the World states. He says it has
to do with different blood groups apparently. Whats the Straight dope?
Going by this table from wiki and the information after it, people with O blood (more common in China than in Europe) have lower coagulation factors than average. That doesn’t lead to unviable children, though, much less if the father is O and the mother is anything-else (leading to kids being A or B; not AB since that would require a “letter” from each parent IIRC); as for Rh, Rh+ is not widely more prevalent in China than in Europe (which would lead to cases of Rh incompatibility). Also, an O mother might have a baby with hemolytic newborn syndrome, but the problem there is Euro-male plus Chinese-female. There may be other blood markers which are widespread in China but not in Europe and which could lead to incompatibilities similar to Rh’s, but I don’t even know how to start searching for them - and the reason we don’t test for them is how rare they are.
Does he provide any specific information?
Nitpick: An “O” father and an “A” mother can produce an “O” baby - the mother’s “A” could come from getting an “O” from one of her parents and an “A” from the other. This will make her an “A” but her baby could take an “O” from her to go with an “O” from the father.
Not the best explanation ever - I only sort-of understand the very basics of blood groupings, and then only in a handwaving fashion 
You are certainly correct though that as long as one parent is “O” the baby can’t be AB.
And vice versa.
When I was in China, I was informed by my student that we were slightly different species, like a lion and a tiger. While we could interbreed, our children would have “subtle genetic defaults.”
I wanted to ask them what they thought all those folks from Khazakstan were, if not a nice Eurasian mix.
There’s an emerging pseudoscience coming up right now around blood type, where people are claiming it affects all sorts of things from personality to sexual compatibility, and if you pay the right people, they’ll advise you as to what kind of diet you should eat and, presumably, what color clothes you should wear. It’s getting prevalent enough now, particularly from China, that when I see anything vaguely citing blood type as a cause of anything it sets off alarms. Unless there’s more specific information available about these claims, I’d going to go with pure woo.
Sorry, I was trying to pack everything in and that option fell out :o - I did know about it.
This is the one we were warned to be ready for in nursing school. Not a huge enough risk to do special counseling for, but to do extra thorough jaundice screenings and skin examinations for an unusual amount of bruising and/or petechiae (“blood blisters”) of the newborn. Midwives and doctors working to best practices standards will recommend to any rH- mother that she get Rhogam, Chinese or not.
I don’t recall any particular warnings about European mothers and Chinese fathers, though.
Naill Ferguson is a historian, not a doctor or a medical researcher. He’s known for having some oddball opinions. As has been pointed out, there are some warnings that should be made to mothers in certain cases when the blood types of the father and mother are certain specific combinations. The blood type combinations can occur for any racial match. Could you quote exactly what Ferguson says in that book about this?
It’s a throwaway statement, in a longer treatise about the biological basis of race. I am quite aware that he is not medically qualified and this sounded like bunk to me, hence this thread.
It’s been around for awhile, although it may be growing. I remember, years ago, seeing a translated video game from Japan that listed blood type in each character’s stats. It never came up in game play. I was told it was supposed to be a clue to personality, sort of like assigning astrology signs.
I am not a doctor but it sounds off to me. Aren’t most genetic defects caused by the parents having a common recessive gene? Having parents from widely different genetic groups - like European and Chinese - would presumably reduce the chances of this.
As a minor nitpick, I’ll note that Chinese men have a low risk of conceiving children at all (though they have apparently assisted in the conception of more than a few)
China does have a lower rate of Rh-, which I’m pretty sure is what Niall’s referring to, since that can cause problems in cases where the woman is + but the man is -. A random Chinese father would be more likely to have offspring with problems if his wife was a random European rather then a Chinese mother.
I have an alternative explanation.
Due to the one-child rule in China, there is a very high rate of infanticide. This is mostly of girl babies, as tradition still holds that a male child is much more valuable than a female child. (This is supported by the fact that China reports more newborn male than female babies even though everywhere, China included, the sex ratio of newborn babies is 51/50 in favor of females.) A European woman/Chinese man marriage is quite often going to be between people who actually reside in China, where the one-child law applies. That, and the fact that a Chinese man would be more likely to want a traditional, the-man-rules-the-house marriage, makes me suspect that what is really happening is that quite a few children of such marriages are killed at or shortly after birth, and that the authorities cooperate by falsifying the death records. If many Chinese people believe the pseudoscientific myth, mentioned by one poster, that Chinese and Europeans are different species, then that could be touted as an explanation for all the child deaths (Great East Wind Dragon Spirit never want gaijin-Celestial child to happen in first place).
The difference is pretty small, tho, and the children aren’t inviable.
A nitpick, but the Chinese are also gaijin. That’s the Japanese word for foreigners. The Chinese equivalent would be gweilo or laowai.
I don’t think the difference is small. A random Chinese man would have something like a hundred times greater chance of being Rh + while having a Rh - wife if he married a random European rather then a Chinese woman.
Wikipedia suggests the effect on viability in such cases for second children (it doesn’t usually effect firsttime pregnancies) absent treatment is a 5 point increase in stillbirths. Whether that constitutes a “high rate” is in the eye of the beholder, but I feel pretty confident its what the quote in the OP is referencing anyways.
Yep, my bad. We foreign devils often make such stupid mistakes (don’t both words, in fact, mean “foreign devil”?).
I have, in fact, talked to at least two Chinese university students whose parents had warned them sternly, in all seriousness, not to fall in love with an American woman because they would be unable to have children. (Another interesting observation I made was that I never saw a female Chinese student at this university, but there were hundreds of male ones.)
Gai jin means foreign person or outsider, with a usually negative connotation. Gaikokujin (lit. Foreign country person) is more politically correct.