Don't globalize me, bro!

China ranks 79 from 180.  Kiwis are the least corrupt!!

In all my years in China no one has tried to corrupt me (in the financial sense of the word .) and now I know why - they know I cannot be corrupted because I am from New Zealand.

Come on - test me out. Take me to dinner at an expensive restaurant and give me a traditional 'red envelope' with x,xxx,xxx RMB in it and see if I take it.   

  Generally speaking none of it is basic culture inasmuch as the definition of basic culture says, more or less, basic culture isn't visible on its own.  Basic culture is so fundamental to the person's cultural identity that they don't even know they're supposed to tell you about it.  And if they had to tell you about it, they might not be able to put it into words.

I wonder what is fundamental to a Chinese identity.

When I teach culture we talk about the 4 foundations - religion, language, education and social structure - and how these shape and carry culture.  When we analyse these 4 aspects in China I think it is easy to see a clear transition to becoming a 'different' culture.  Religion - decried, slowly allowed, is seeing greater growth in both 'real' atheists as well as in Christianity.  Maoism as a religion has odd resurgences here and there but more as a way of legitimising claims to power.  Confucianism as a way of relating and ordering society is being touted as something wonderful by the government as a way of maintaining order, but ask Chinese teachers and they will tell you students are no longer respectful but becoming arrogant.  Check the number of civil disorder incidents and it is growing (saw a small one yesterday). Even the traditional family relationships are changing because of the one-child policy.  Buddhist influences are waning.

When students talk to me about their 'spiritual' life, I ask them what they mean and it usually boils down to emotions and dreams for the future - not a relationship with any higher power or any inner growth.

Language - dialects are being phased out which would have originally created patterns of thinking, seeing and understanding of the world around them.  These dialects are being replaced by putonghua and English.  Putonghua in its broad usage hasn't been around for too long to have a major influence on perception and thinking patterns.  With English being taught to most students at an earlier and earlier age, English ways of thinking and perceiving will be adopted along with those created by putonghua and the remnants of local dialects.  Ask teachers who are interested in classical Chinese literature if the modern Chinese translations are able to convey the ideas and concepts in them and you will hear a resounding 'no', so even for the educated, the language no longer has the same ability to shape thinking as it did previously. Similar to the changes that occurred when French or Latin were replaced as the languages of power in the west.

Education inculcates behavioural patterns and manifest/expressed culture.  Confucianism once ruled in education processes, but is today having less influence.  The one child family has increased competitiveness, and despite the much touted, and supposedly taught, 'collectivist' society there are clearly increased individualist tendencies.  Check out how collectivist your local fruit and vege sellers are, how collectivist families are when it comes to getting making sure Xiao Zhou gets the best chances.  Would a truly collectivist society have the widest and fastest growing Gini co-efficient in the world? 

Social strata - levels and mobility.  Yes, there are definitely classes in China, always have been.  But is it possible to change classes? Hell yes - a government job or increasing education gives a fair bit of mobility.  We have a rapid jump from peasant farmer to highly paid business person.  Probably more than 1/3 of my students are the sons and daughters of farmers, poor as churchmice.  These kids will be out there working in business, many in multi-nationals, studying, travelling, living overseas in a couple of years.  So few will return to their local area, let alone their village.  They will embrace a globalised world with glee and alacrity.  Next week I will be sitting in a tiny room surrounded by T'tan nomad children aged 12-17, teaching them English.  They will go home, fill their stoves with yak dung, eat their dried yak meat, bow reverently to the hidden pic of the DL and dream of going to Beijing or Australia.  And for some of them, it will become a reality.



As outsiders, what do you see as fundamentally Chinese?  Something that has no manifestation anywhere else in the world?

I agree, the culture is taking a beating and has been being slapped around for at least fifty years.  The cultural revolution, at least in its expressed form, was a country wide assault on manifest culture, and broadly speaking it succeeded.  And from 1949 onwards, the Revolution itself has been a systematic and enduring assault on traditional expressed culture.  And these days, what I guess we'd have to call globalisation--the arrival of foreign imagery and products, changing work environments, new access to money--allows for all kinds of new behaviours to emerge.

Even so, I've always had the naive idea that culture endured.  It would have been bastardised, driven into differing forms of expression, driven sometimes deep underground, but still....  It's just too hard to think of people as blank slates.  They may be for the first five minutes after they exit the womb, but from then on they're automatically building a foundation for their personality, and it's not much within their control, they get it from what's around them.  And really, who builds their identity on such ephemeral things as, say, Japanese fashion or what's on TV?  Identities like that come and go.  Identities that you can easily identify and talk about as if they could be chosen, those identities are not foundational.  Foundational identities are the ones you can't choose because they are the basis on which you make your choices.  Usually you can't even identify them because they're that deep in the heart of everything you do that you don't see them as anything other than the natural order of things.

Presumably foundational identity is identity you can't let go of because it sits in an non-analytical position for you.  Deep, for you.  Maybe obvious and questionable for others, but for you its found in a basic structural role for everything else.

Such things exist, I believe.  They are passed on without people being immediately aware of passing them on.  They can be significantly assaulted and they can change over time.  But they remain.  And really, it's just the same idea as saying that there's almost always a difference between what people do and what people say they are doing.

As for what it means to be Chinese... probably if spelled out it will sound really simple and kind of dumb.  Probably any alien culture spelled out at the deep level will sound simple and dumb.  It only attains its depth and seriousness by virtue of being held by a people to be valuable.

So, fundamental Chinese identity might be something as simple as: we are oriented on *this* group and we sacrifice for it, and we are related to our families and our family's family by duties of obedience, and we, as a people, are old.

I like the Table, too.

It helps answer the "Hey, our countries have corruption, too!" argument.

OF COURSE our countries have corruption...it's a difference of extent.
In our countries, corruption is seen most among government officials (usually the smaller the government they work for, the more corrupt they are...), some businessmen, sometimes the police.

In China, it's down to the household level.
I keep telling the story of the conversation with my housekeeper...the one where she advised me to give my 3-year-old's teacher a Spring Festival "gift" of at least 800 RMB, or the teacher wouldn't give my child enough to eat or watch out for her safety.

Would you ever have to bribe a teacher back home, so that they would fill the belly of a 3-year-old child in their care?

Of course you wouldn't. Nor would you have to slip the doctor a few hundred under the table to make sure he keeps an eye on your sick loved one. Or...well, it just goes on and on.

We just aren't talking about the same "corruption".

Corruption this deep is far older than Communism; don't blame the government. As a matter of fact, Communism managed to slow corruption way down, at least for a few years.

My biggest surprise in the table is to see that China was only ranked 79th. I'd hate to see what life in Uzbekistan must be like...

Or maybe the Chinese paid off the surveyors.

This word "corruption"...

An idea I came across once suggested that speaking of corruption in Asian countries, but in China in particular, is misleading.  For one thing, "corruption" contains a negative value judgment, and at least in English is supposed to refer to something outside the norm.  Well, since non-universalisable decision-making and relationship engineering are the norm in China, and probably have always been the norm, we probably need another word.  "Corruption" can be saved for talking of those times where personal exercise of institutional power benefits directly and only your own interests.  In that sense, I'm led to believe corruption has been on the rise in China.

korea seemed to me much more like china percieves itself as a quickly modernising country that has managed to keep it's links to the traditional collectivist family and boss confucian model of society

koreans actually believe it and actually live that system. chinese pay lip service to it and seem to like the idea but it seems like the country is just too big and has to modernise too much to actually apply these ideas in reality. chinese people i've met seem much more willing to adapt any ideas into their way of thinking.

What is China generating to take over as the main "employer" when cheap labour is no longer what China offers?  Pop Globalisation tells us India began a move into services and hi tech.  China shall... export people?

China is already 'exporting' people and has done so for a long time; its people are to be found in every country in the world.
Conspiracy theorists might hold that one day the Leader might call on every Chinese person in the world to rise up and overthrow their government - a Global Revolution! That moment would provide an interesting take on what is meant by culture and the degree to which it affects the daily functioning of people.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a Conspiracy Theorist and the idea advanced is not my own. I think I have must have heard it in a bar back home sometime. I do not believe that a Global Revolution will happen - unless, of course, the govt really does try to destroy the pirated DVD industry.
In the meantime I have just been reminded that it was Hermann Goering who said he felt like reaching for a gun every time he heard the word 'culture.'

   

       

Quote

What is China generating to take over as the main "employer" when cheap labour is no longer what China offers?  Pop Globalisation tells us India began a move into services and hi tech.  China shall... export people?

China is already 'exporting' people and has done so for a long time; its people are to be found in every country in the world.
Conspiracy theorists might hold that one day the Leader might call on every Chinese person in the world to rise up and overthrow their government - a Global Revolution!

Well, there was this story about a Chinese man who moved to the UK and married a Brit and had 10 children with her:
"Chinese encouraged to emigrate to defeat foreigners":
http://www.chinasmack.com/stories/chinese-encouraged-emigrate-defeat-foreigners/

But alas, it turned out to be an Onionesque hoax story.

On the other hand, I recently read they are remaking the 1984 classic Red Dawn but this time with China replacing Russia as the enemy.

Conspiracy Theorists are getting traction.

I agree, the culture is taking a beating and has been being slapped around for at least fifty years.  

Presumably foundational identity is identity you can't let go of because it sits in an non-analytical position for you.  Deep, for you.  Maybe obvious and questionable for others, but for you its found in a basic structural role for everything else.

So, fundamental Chinese identity might be something as simple as: we are oriented on *this* group and we sacrifice for it, and we are related to our families and our family's family by duties of obedience, and we, as a people, are old.

Culture by its very nature changes, and changes relatively rapidly. New social mores change the manifestations and expressions very quickly - take the civil rights movements for women and many disadvantaged groups as examples.  But these overt changes bring with them deeper changes.  No culture remains static, because then it becomes a museum piece, not reality - and this is why those going 'home' see so much difference.  The culture has changed.  Children of migrants are brought up to be more traditional than their cousins who stayed back in the old country.  So it is not just the last 50 years culture here has taken a beating.  It began taking beating when people from one group met people from over the hill or river.


If the foundational Chinese identity is obvious and questionable to others, what are we seeing for the Chinese?

Quote from: Calach Pfeffer on January 12, 2010, 05:39:44 PM

I agree, the culture is taking a beating and has been being slapped around for at least fifty years.  

Presumably foundational identity is identity you can't let go of because it sits in an non-analytical position for you.  Deep, for you.  Maybe obvious and questionable for others, but for you its found in a basic structural role for everything else.

So, fundamental Chinese identity might be something as simple as: we are oriented on *this* group and we sacrifice for it, and we are related to our families and our family's family by duties of obedience, and we, as a people, are old.

Culture by its very nature changes, and changes relatively rapidly. New social mores change the manifestations and expressions very quickly - take the civil rights movements for women and many disadvantaged groups as examples.  But these overt changes bring with them deeper changes.  No culture remains static, because then it becomes a museum piece, not reality - and this is why those going 'home' see so much difference.  The culture has changed.  Children of migrants are brought up to be more traditional than their cousins who stayed back in the old country.  So it is not just the last 50 years culture here has taken a beating.  It began taking beating when people from one group met people from over the hill or river.

Uttered like a true low-context culture emigree.  It's a basic fact--"fact"?--in low-context cultures that change is rapid, to the point that the culture is readily identifiable as different from generation to generation.  Or at least, that's what the members of that culture accept as basic.  They regard it as universally true too, that change is the norm.

Now, it cannot be denied that China is and has been for some time experiencing rapid change.  It is undeniable that Chinese are adapting.  How are they adapting?  what are they adapting?  the kind of environmental change we see in China, if seen in a low context culture, would more or less decisively mean the culture was shot and would change, but this doesn't automatically tell us anything about what would happen in a high-context culture.

I'd say, the education that needs to go with becoming a significant member of a high-context culture has been substantially uprooted and tossed aside in China.  But the approach remains.  How could it not?

If the foundational Chinese identity is obnvious and questionable to others, what are we seeing for the Chinese?

Hope?  That while their country is well on the way to being environmentally screwed and politically dangerous, they still have something to be going on with?


Like their computers, all Chinese are implanted with a culture chip.  They will one day be called back to the old faith.   They will rise up and destroy the oppressors, unifying the world in catastrophic harmony.

I was in a hurry before and didn't finish my question.  

fundamental Chinese identity might be something as simple as: we are oriented on *this* group and we sacrifice for it, and we are related to our families and our family's family by duties of obedience, and we, as a people, are old.

From what I am inferring from your post culture then is a choice.  We choose to ally ourselves with a particular form of culture.  An example could be a mate of mine, born, educated, grew up in the UK, but he quite clearly states that he is Indian - because his parents are.  However, he speaks very little Indian (Hindi or any other form), has visited perhaps half-a-dozen times - for me he is choosing a culture.

The options you offered for the Chinese are similar to all cultures aren't they?  I'm Australian because I was born there, so am oriented to that group, I sacrifice as much for Australia as I see most Chinese sacrificing for their country (I probably sacrifice more, by paying taxes!!).

I am related to my family and family's family by duties of obedience (well, only when my Mum was alive - but check out the little emperors and the '80/90s generation in China - not too much obedience happening there!).  I would say that I am related by the bonds of caring and love, rather than a Confucian concept of duty that is rapidly dying out.  

And we, as a people are 'old'.  For that one I figure we all came down from the trees at the same time, and the splits and re-alignments of China (Warring States, break aways etc) are no different to those in Europe.  

How much of 'high-context' do you see in the culture?  In language and guanxi customs, I would see a reasonable amount, but where else do you see it?  I would also see that these are changing in practice.

Where things remain unchanged it is because technology remains unchanged.  Therefore in essence, whilever there is a basic agrarian system in place, then the rapid changes of officials, court intrigues etc make little difference, unless the rulers (Kings or Emperors) try to extort too much. The majority of dynasties did not last for very long, so China has been in a state of change, in official terms, pretty frequently since the Qin Dynasty in 221BC. The Mao Dynasty has perhaps lasted a little longer than some already (Shun, Sui etc), complete with the court intrigues and attempted overthrows etc.  

With the advent of greater technology, the reliance on an agricultural/artisan base decreases, and change becomes more pronounced further down the ladder if you like.  

Where you have the rapid change in technology you don't have the time for the depth of relationships to develop to maintain a high context culture.  High context is based on shared understanding of the fundamental things, and with a complete change in lifestyle (peasant to IT specialist or factory worker eg) and change in location (Inner Mongolian village to Shenzhen) then you lose the high context background and need to relate more overtly.  Each move for an individual decreases the high context process in total for a society.

She doesn't address these issues in depth, given the constraints she is lecturing under the TED format (18 minutes or less), but Amy Tan addresses a lot of these issues in her talk at TED 2008 on "Creativity".  They let her have 24 minutes as she flew through what she wanted to say. And what she wanted to say has a lot of the elements brought up in this thread. She even threw in "quantum mechanics" and "string theory" to garner (successfully) the attention of the non-literary types in the typical TED audience.

A lot to ponder in her presentation on culture and how it affected her writing and creativity and on issues being discussed here in this thread, and what she found when she went to the Chinese "outback" to research her last book. (an article about which was published in National Geographic last year as I recall).

A good watch and on topic for what you all are discussing even if you have to slow the video down and take notes; she's trying to get through her prepared presentation on a time schedule.

http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_tan_on_creativity.html

And I never even really liked her books.

P.S. The beginning doesn't explain the large Gucci(?) bag she has onstage with her. They probably had to cut the intro because she went overtime. I took the Gucci bag to be a "typical Chinese woman" displaying her name brand prowess. Maybe not for herself, but for the folks back home. I was wrong at the end, but the denouement was just as annoying.

P.S. Note to ETR - she's on your reading list so take a look.

I was in a hurry before and didn't finish my question. 

Quote

fundamental Chinese identity might be something as simple as: we are oriented on *this* group and we sacrifice for it, and we are related to our families and our family's family by duties of obedience, and we, as a people, are old.

From what I am inferring from your post culture then is a choice.

Say what?  That inference is not an example of the principle of charity in counterargument.

  We choose to ally ourselves with a particular form of culture.  An example could be a mate of mine, born, educated, grew up in the UK, but he quite clearly states that he is Indian - because his parents are.  However, he speaks very little Indian, has visited perhaps half-a-dozen times - for me he is choosing a culture.

The disadvantage of ever bringing basic culture into the light is it looks simple and empty.  It loses its power.  The principle power of basic culture, one assumes, lies in it being unstated fundamental principle.  As a culture member you don't even have to express it, it just is the way things are.  It does presumably have some relationship to expressed culture, and presumably the unencultured observer can discover basic culture only by listening to expressed culture.  (And that is presumably why my naive shot at presenting some basic culture sounded a lot like rudimentary expressed culture as we've all heard it.)

The only way for there to be no such thing as basic culture of this sort is if human beings gain an identity independent of their culture identity, probably both logically and temporally prior to that cultural identity.

In which case, cultural issues are a pile of horseshit really because why deal with the cultural person when you could be dealing with the real person hiding behind that cultural eyewash, yeah?

The options you offered for the Chinese are similar to all cultures aren't they?  I'm Australian because I was born there, so am oriented to that group, I sacrifice as much for Australia as I see most Chinese sacrificing for their country (I probably sacrifice more, by paying taxes!!).

I am related to my family and family's family by duties of obedience (well, only when my Mum was alive - but check out the little emperors and the '80/90s generation in China - not too much obedience happening there!).  I would say that I am related by the bonds of caring and love, rather than a Confucian concept of duty that is rapidly dying out. 

And we, as a people are 'old'.  For that one I figure we all came down from the trees at the same time, and the splits and re-alignments of China (Warring States, break aways etc) are no different to those in Europe. 

*sigh*

All gods are the same god because all believers believe in one god.

How much of 'high-context' do you see in the culture?

Who cares?  How much high-context do you not see in the people?

Actually, how much high-context could one see if one wasn't an initiate?  The inscrutable Chinese gives one sentence, and as far as we know he spoke one sentence.  Would he actually tell you you hadn't understood?  Would a high-context person spend time explaining the complex meaning he had invoked?  Sure he would.  He be all over that because he's had an education.

The manner remains!  That's all.  The manner.  There are some bastardised holdouts of old properly expressed high-context culture, like sayings and utterances.  But for God's sake, has no one ever not known that Hello Kitty means far more than we recognise?  The boys and the wee gels court and live and study and do friggen everything according to the rules of a high-context people.  Everything!  That it's all so seemingly shallow and changeable really doesn't mean it's shallow and changeable... AT ALL!

The forms, the habits, the simplistic stylisations... the goddamn cartoons they draw on their books, the way they hold birthdays, the drinking habits, the holding hands, the dormitory life... everything.  It's in everything.

The expressed culture has altered some.  The manifest culture includes substantial pastiche and novelty.  And the structural aspects that hold it all together... the manner in which it is performed...?

Where things remain unchanged it is because technology remains unchanged.  Therefore in essence, whilever there is a basic agrarian system in place, then the rapid changes of officials, court intrigues etc make little difference, unless the rulers (Kings or Emperors) try to extort too much. The majority of dynasties did not last for very long, so China has been in a state of change, in official terms, pretty frequently since the Qin Dynasty in 221BC. The Mao Dynasty has perhaps lasted a little longer than some already (Shun, Sui etc), complete with the court intrigues and attempted overthrows etc. 

With the advent of greater technology, the reliance on an agricultural/artisan base decreases, and change becomes more pronounced further down the ladder if you like. 

Where you have the rapid change in technology you don't have the time for the depth of relationships to develop to maintain a high context culture.  High context is based on shared understanding of the fundamental things, and with a complete change in lifestyle (peasant to IT specialist or factory worker eg) and change in location (Inner Mongolian village to Shenzhen) then you lose the high context background and need to relate more overtly.  Each move for an individual decreases the high context process in total for a society.

You mean like Japan, right?

When I teach culture we talk about the 4 foundations - religion, language, education and social structure - and how these shape and carry culture.

Canada prides itself on being multicultural, but the cynics say all that survives of immigrant culture is the four D's -- dress, dialect, dance and diet.

Not sure about Japan, because I haven't lived there, only observed it for a couple of weeks with no language, and read about it much the same as I read about the 'inscrutable Chinese' - who aren't so inscrutable when you know them.  Therefore any comment I make about that culture and its changes are going to be from a totally ignorant point of view.  Having said that - yes I believe Japanese culture has changed fairly dramatically in the last 50 years or so as well.  Social mobility, role of women, openness by the young to different influences etc.  For another collectivist society with a focus on family - the Japanese were the ones who invented and first used robots to nurse the elderly.

As Aldous Huxley said "To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries".  

Aren't we looking for the ESSENTIAL thing that makes the Chinese culture different??  If so, if there is such a thing as real fundamental difference, then it has to be a different god, and while we put forward things that are in essence, part of all humanity, we have not found that different god.  

One of the mythconceptions that my students often bring up is that western families don't care about each other, and that we basically throw our children out into the streets at 18, never to financially, emotionally or physically support them again.  This aspect of western culture is somehow believed to be as true as anything we postulate here about Chinese culture, and it severely miffs me!

They see that as an essential difference between Chinese and western culture.  They see that their family structure is much tighter, more caring etc than ours - despite many of my students only seeing their parents once a year, at Spring Festival time, from the time some of them were born.   These overt expressions of culture are not reflective of what I perceive you to be calling the basic, and certainly not what is reality.  

We need to be careful that we do not see the expressed or the manifest as reality, as overt indicators of the foundational.

I hope when we really find the absolute essence of a culture - we realise we are Chinese, and they are us.