Oh man. Imagine bringing up "the Congo" (I'm assuming disparagingly in comparison to Japan) to argue that genetic differences viz. race shape economic and political outcomes instead of things like colonialism and white racism. The Congo! (There are two Congos, the DRC and Republic of the Congo, but I'm assuming he's referring to the DRC.) There's is perhaps no clearer, more obvious example of how a region has been obliterated by colonialism and post-colonial imperialism. After King Leopold and then the Kingdom of Belgium engaged a horrific reign of terror that killed at least a million people and eviscerated pre-colonial social and political structures (and provided the rubber and raw materials that fuelled the industrial and automotive revolutions in the West), the US then assassinated the country's first post-colonial leader Patrice Lumumba because he dared to suggest the country might redistribute its wealth and be neutral in the Cold War. The US then helped install and then propped up the military dictatorship of Mobuto Sese Seko for decades because he was an ally in the Cold War. He looted the country for 32 years, skimming billions into his bank accounts from the exploitation of natural resources by western firms. And then post-Cold War DRC became embroiled in two regional wars that killed 4 million people, triggered by the fall-out from the Rwandan genocide that every scholar acknowledges had ITS roots in Belgian colonial policy - and which was operationalised by militias like the Interhamwe that had received training and arms from France. That chaos created the conditions for what is now a horror-show of competing militias, human trafficking and slavery, driven by the exploitation and export of resources to feed global tech, with paths to development systematically blocked by organised criminal networks heavily tied into the west and benefitting it's oligarch-class, reproducing the systems of colonial extraction that preceded it. These systems interpolate with local ethnic systems and political opportunism that ALSO have colonial origins. The history of the Congo is varied, and long, and subtle, and unique. But the vicious long-term impact of colonial and imperial violence is undeniable and profound, and, most importantly, STILL ONGOING. But this guy wants to dismiss all that and point to IQ tests to explain why Japan has a high Human Development Index and the Congo doesn't. IQ tests! How is this man an academic? How can he claim to speak about world when he is so plainly ignorant of its most basic histories?