To your fear of authority point EG, I actually don't think that is really true. I feel like Chinese people are taught to obey authority, and they mostly do, but they certainly don't fear it or fear the law the way we do back home. There are way too many instances in most people's day to day lives where people have a blatant disregard for authority and get away with it that I think most people just do whatever they feel like doing regardless of the consequences. Of course, the reason they do this is because the consequences are largely nonexistant.
It is sort of a strange dichotomy, because most of the time what Chinese people seem to feel like doing is fitting in, going along with the crowd, and that can look like obedience to us, but if you look at say, the way people drive, or the way people cut corners with food safety, cheating on tests, or the massive official corruption, it is clear that most people do not really have enough fear of the law or the people enforcing the law for it to be a deterrant.
EG, once you've been here awhile longer you'll see some fights. They happen fairly regularly and the consequences are rarely significant for either party. The law is actually pretty loathe to get involved in "personal matters" and will try and mediate an agreement between both parties (usually someone paying the other person's medical bills) but you'd rarely see someone actually prosecuted for fighting. I've never seen someone "go away" for fighting, ever, and I've seen some doozies of fights.
I actually think that on a day to day level, most Chinese people fear their government much much less than most Westerners fear their own governments. I'm not talking dissidents of course, but your average citizens. The whole "healthy distrust of the government" mindset is just not really a part of their cultural education.