This is a strange way of arguing. Race is geographical in its origin. If one makes a big deal out of the effects of high parasitic load on artificial selection of animals, the very same factor affect natural selection in humans, etc. The same geographic barriers that make centralized governing inefficient, make ethnical, cultural, and linguistic isolation possible. Racism is but organic part of geographical determinism (that is, alogically, contrasted to racism).

I think the argument is tendentious and ahistorical. China has been occupied, went through several periods of disintegration and reintegration, and changed dynasties several times. If the secret of world success is decentralization, China had it, for decades. Inwardness and lack of curiosity about the world beyond do not need geographical justification. India entered its long decline despite all of its mountain ranges and warring rajas. I do not see what is wrong with the old argument: that civilisations develop different worldviews that differ in their potential for global outreach and domination. Explaining these trajectories of thought by geography, diet, and whims of emperors is as ridiculous as reducing it to race.