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Certainly one of the best and optimistic post about China from a non-Chinese perspective on this website for me. Thank you.
What irritates me most when people talk about China here is not the outright hostility but the lack of curiosity, so thank you for finding our society fascinating. Something I never get used to is how intelligent people who are active in political discussion show no interest in understanding China at all, despite pretending to care about it. Many rhetorical techniques were employed to never update on China, treating everything from the Chinese media as propaganda; treating all of our people, inside or outside or China, as nationalistic shills or payed propagandists; pretending all the changes and achievements inside the country as fake and unworthy of serious discussion. On some level I get it, after all that's my default opinion on anything too positive from my own country, and how can I expect better from the others. But on the other hand it's tiresome, especially since I feel some genuine urge to discuss with people and exchange opinions with people outside of my own as a mirror to allow some self reflection.
This has been one of the most important thing I learned from my experience in the United States. For Chinese people in China, it is difficult to see ourselves clearly, just as a person in the mountains cannot see its entirety. Everything feels natural and inevitable. It is hard to imagine living or thinking differently, and even harder to appreciate the benefits that alternative might offer.
Chinese and American societies are polar opposites in many respects, but also intriguingly similar in others. This is difficult to articulate. Broadly, the individualism-collectivism divide is obvious, as is the very different relationship between the people and the state. The “main character syndrome”, the intentional or unintentional domineering attitude toward other countries, and the industriousness of the people feels familiar. For me, American society has been a useful mirror and a nice calibrator, helping me to see what the optimum would be. As you said, for many things the “right way” likely lies somewhere between the two. It is fortunate that these two societies exist in the same historical moment. Unfortunately, instead of learning from one another there seems to be an irresistible pull toward conflict. I hope that this is not our fate.
You mentioned this above in a different post but I want to share my thoughts. I think that poverty, or the memory and cultural residue of extreme poverty, has a profound effect on people’s capacity for charity. Some personal anecdote. My mom grew up in the 1960s. Their generation lived through the devastation of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and unlike my generation they usually have more than three siblings in one family despite barely able to feed them all. When resources are scarce survival becomes paramount, like how a family of mice trapped in a small cage that cannibalize each other. People resort to whatever works: lying, violence, corruption. When abundance returns, the psychological mechanisms developed in scarcity do not simply disappear. In this sense her generation “inoculated” itself against charity, and they will pass that fear of scarcity on to my generation. I grew up without extreme poverty, without rampant pickpocketing, without scammers lurking at train stations hoping to lure me to their fake tourist attractions, without (too many) cab drivers driving in circles and charging more money for the ride. But still I remember how my mother carried a constant fear that someone would take advantage of us. She taught me to be perpetually defensive, hold your bag in front when you’re on a train, always double-lock the doors, never fully let your guard down even among close friends. As a child I was confused because her ways of living does not align with my experience. I remember asking her if thieves will wear a balaclava, and why I never saw them on the bus even though she seem confident that they’re out there somewhere. I remember yelling at her for her paranoia around my friend, as I couldn’t understand why helping others is anathema to her when I usually receive kindness in return, something I crave. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate kindness either. She often spoke warmly of strangers who helped her, like an elderly couple who fixed her tire, or how Americans in the suburb seem to always “forget” to lock the door, after her six month stay in the US as a visiting scholar. But she could not translate that appreciation into generosity toward others. It’s not just her, so are the other aunties and uncles I grew up with.
Thing do seem to be improving. Like many things this is the reason why I have my hope high for my country, despite how it is at the current moment. When I return home now I genuinely feel that more people are willing to help one another. After all I could easily see myself as someone who fixes other’s tire, and I do think people will be more likely to reciprocate now than it was before. We may be building a higher-trust society slowly, one in which people help others because they expect it to be reciprocated, and eventually because it becomes second nature. That path might be via harsh and draconian laws and immense social pressure, but I think it's worth it.
What I regret most about our low-trust society is how suboptimal it is. Helping others in our very homogeneous society would not harm you in most cases. On the contrary it should benefit you more as mutualism enriches everyone. Unfortunately we find ourselves stuck in a kind of social prisoner’s dilemma. The encouraging part is that we appear to be moving out of it, however slowly. Hope that trend continues before the society getting eaten by other societal illnesses which slowly start to manifest themselves.
Back to your point about the lack of moral responsibility to help the unfortunate. It may be true that the Chinese ordo amoris resembles a solar system, with most of its moral weight concentrated at the center, our own people, rather than the onion-like layers in a westerner’s mind. But I do not think this difference is immutable. Given a generation or two I believe we will converge.
From your mouth to God’s ears.
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