Chinese collectivist mentality? Too simple to say so...

When I first read Mr. Brooks' essay on the societies with individualist mentality and the ones with collectivists mentality several days ago, I sensed something wrong in it. The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will be over tonight. Since that essay has something to say about the opening ceremony, it would be interesting to review it from the final result of the Games.

The following presuppositions for Brook's argument are especially problematic.

1. Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts.
2. Americans are more likely to see categories. Asians are more likely to see relationships.

Brooks draws evidence from some scientific research for the above-mentioned presuppositions, but by presuming such a flawed generalization as the truth, Brooks himself falls into a collective mode of thinking, a typical problem of the external reflection where the content goes against the form.

Anti-thesis to such a fault statement is quite obvious when one looks into the Olympics medal table. China's version focuses on the number of gold medals, while America's more on collective overall figure of all medals. That will lead America into the No.1 sports country. It is indeed. China stands at the top of the gold medal list, largely because of its unique national sports system - a highly efficient champion making mechanism, if not an elite one. But strangely, most of the gold medals won by Chinese athletes are from individual competitions, collective wise, US performs much better in team-work games, such as basketball, volleyball, women's football, baseball, softball, relay competitions in swimming and running. Brooks' argument certainly can't explain such a phenomenon.

In addition to sports, business world also sees something contradictory. Anyone who attends American business school to get MBA degree would find that networking and team spirit is the central theme in their studies of successful multi-national companies. They are influential now in China as well, and I'm shuddered to find out how popular the American style corporate training programmes are in China, in which the team spirit is instilled by the slogan 'we are the one'! To say successful MNC secretly adopts the ideology of fascism and brainwash their employees in such a manner might go too far, but its impact on the mentality of anyone in the economic sphere across national borders and cultural boundaries can't be ignored. Does the great convergence happen in both countries as this interesting essay argues?

The paradox is that although the Chinese authority heavy-handedly maintains the public order, individuals' desire to reach their full potentials is not repressed in the economic sphere, which has made it very vibrant and energetic, but also brutal and primitive.

One of the following readers has keenly observed that Chinese are rather in conformist mentality, instead of collectivist one. I would add that this is more or less in the political sphere.

Here are some noteworthy readers' comments on Brooks essay:


'A society that is either too individualistic or too collective will not prevail. As a Chinese-born American, I have seen the downfall in both. The Chinese have learned to be more individualistic over the past few decades (and probably want to continue moving in that direction). Perhaps it is time for the U.S. to put a little more emphasis on the collective. (And then maybe we can actually get some meaningful health care reform.) '— Michelle, Princeton, NJ

'Let's not confuse "collectivist" with "conformist." Conformity may be a virtue in the East, whereas it may be a character defect in the West, (except that everyone's conforming in the West, too!)' — G, Tucson, AZ

'The tension between individualistic behavior and collectivist behavior is very fundamental to how the world thinks - it is not a simple East-West cultural binary. The very fundamentals of the Scientific method, are rooted in reductionist thinking that isolates subjects from their contexts in order to objectively study them.' — Alan, Houghton, MI

'If we replace the word 'collectivism,' which has a more negative connotation in the West, with a word like 'communitarism,' which emphasizes 'cooperation,' 'interdependence,' and 'civil society,' the importance of a balance between 'Harmony and the Dream' becomes clearer to Western ears.' — D.B. Borsody, New York

'Has David never considered that the left has always been collectivist and the right individualistic since the dawn of the industrial age or that the working class tends to be collectivists while the middle class is individualistic. Unionism, suffrage, abolition,and grass roots movements for the living wage, universal health, and so on are collectivist in aim and method. Read Raymond Williams for starters.' — patrick finn, buffalo, ny

'As I see it, collectivism and individualism, far from being mutually exclusive, are complementary and both necessary for a healthy society and culture. The idea of them being separate opposites may be, after all, due to that American way of perceiving things, as Mr. Brooks himself points out: one that fails to see the relationships but focuses, instead, on categories.'— Diogo, Portland

Some of comments have entered into the determinate reflection, like the last one. Good to see such a cool head!