What aspects of Chinese culture can succeed overseas?
- Source: Global Times
- [21:24 June 17 2010]
- Comments
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Matthew DiGiovanni, an Australian statistician working in Melbourne and Beijing
The common good
I think the positive side of Chinese economic thinking will start to have more appeal overseas, as the rotten edifices of the kind of free market capitalism the West has energetically promoted or imposed for the past three decades begin to crumble.
This stems from both the socialist origins of the PRC, and the collectivist ethos of traditional Chinese culture.
Chinese thinkers have always been concerned about ways to ensure that everyone got a fair share, but perhaps more importantly, most Chinese are only a generation or two removed from the countryside. Rural life certainly had its disadvantages, but it encouraged thinking about the good of the whole of the village, not just oneself.
Wealth in China has seldom been associated with virtue or ability; the Chinese recognize the unfairness of life, and acknowledge that a well-run society can play a powerful role in correcting it. Look at the calls for social welfare, redistribution of wealth, and a just society that permeate the Chinese Internet, and contrast it with the numerous cries on the US Internet to take away the rights of others, be they Hispanic immigrants, married gay couples, or Muslims.
It might seem odd to say so at a time when Chinese welfare is badly in need of reform, the wealth gap is dividing society, and the arrogance and greed of the nouveau riche here is growing.
But people here still assume that redistribution of wealth, giving disadvantaged groups a helping hand, and providing social welfare for everyone are innate goods, and the rightful business of the government.
It's a far cry from the US or Australia, where rising social inequality seems to be taken for granted by many as the "natural" state of affairs, rather than something created by a generation of policies designed to help the rich and screw the poor.
That mode of thinking, however, is looking increasingly outdated in the wake of the financial crisis. At the moment the backlash to that seems to be an unfocused, often fanatical anger, but if China can build a society that's both prosperous and focused on the collective rather than the individual good, it can be a model for the world.
