the Confucian concept of filial piety is being promoted. Filial piety is the respect someone should show towards his father or ancestors. In this case, however, the Communist Party has reinterpreted filial piety to mean respect for the government and its leaders.
Finally, Xi Jinping has initiated a seemingly never-ending anti-corruption crusade. Thus far, more than 70,000 high-level party officials have been disciplined for corruption. The government claims that this is all in the name of strengthening the rule of law in China. However, there is a real question as to whether this anti-corruption drive represents “rule of law” or “rule by law”. In a nutshell, does the law apply equally to everyone in the country, or is Xi Jinping just using the law to weed out possible opposition to his rule?
Now that the Chinese economy has started to show signs of slowing, given all of the fissures within Chinese society—between the urban poor and the urban rich, between cities and rural areas, between those working in private companies and those still working directly for the state or in SOEs, between the communist old guard and those who joined the party for personal advancement, etc.—there is a real question as to where the country is heading in the future.
As Minzner sums up,
Uncertainty hangs in the air. Chinese with the most to lose are diversifying against risk—placing their money in Vancouver real estate and their children in U.S. colleges, and maybe even seeking passports from one or another of the small Caribbean nations that is known to put citizenship up for sale.
The events of 1989 did not resolve the core question of China’s political future. Nor did they put it on hold indefinitely. Rather, they launched a cascading set of effects that have swept through China’s politics, economy, and society in the years since. The resulting reverberations have now begun to dislodge core elements of the institutional consensus that has governed China for decades. A new future is slouching toward Beijing to be born.
Chapter 2
The New China
History has shown that cultures generally change slowly, except when life-altering new technology is introduced. Such technology can cause cultures, no matter how hidebound, to change virtually overnight. This is now the case in China, a culture rapidly transforming in response to a wholesale introduction of new technology that is changing the way its people think and live.
The new China can be both startling and awe-inspiring to first-time visitors. Signs of affluence and modernization are every-where, particularly in the eastern cities. In that part of China one has to go to the countryside for more traditional sights.
Perhaps the only thing that has remained constant in China is its mass of people. If you haven’t had the experience of walking in lockstep to avoid treading on the heels of other pedestrians in shopping and entertainment areas you cannot begin to appreciate what being crowded can mean.
However, in the downtown areas of Shanghai, Beijing, and other Chinese cities it is easy to imagine that you could be in the most upscale shopping areas of Chicago, New York, London, or Paris. The people are well-dressed, many more fashionably so than their foreign counterparts. There are ritzy restaurants as well as familiar fast-food outlets, attractive cafés, and high-end boutiques.
In other words, the externals of much of Chinese civilization in the major urban areas have changed dramatically. (Except for Chinese food, which appears to be eternal.) But what has not changed that much for the vast majority of older Chinese, especially in rural areas, is their internal culture—their etiquette and ethics, the attitudes and behavior that make them Chinese. Despite the modern facade that is spreading throughout China it is this internal traditional culture that attracts—as well as confuses and stresses—many foreign visitors.
Then there are the post–Cultural Revolution urban generations, born after 1976. These generations have had upbringings so different from their parents’ that they qualify as “New Chinese.” They are more individualistic, independent-minded, and spontaneous in their behavior, all attributes that were taboo before the advent of New China and are very familiar to Americans and other Westerners.
This is particularly true of the new breed of entrepreneurs who have become rich and behave in nontraditional ways, either because they never learned traditional behaviors as children or because they have discarded them.
In spite of the cultural changes that have occurred and are still occurring in China, even the New Chinese still retain many characteristics that set them apart from their Western counterparts. For example the Chinese, like most Asians, are programmed to think of time and events as occurring in a circle, not in the straight line that is characteristic of the thought processes of Westerners. The Chinese cultural encoding to think in this holistic way is far too deep for it to disappear in one or two generations.
Another thing that continues to distinguish all Chinese, especially those who are in the mainstream, is a powerful sense of patriotism and nationalism that pervades virtually every thought and action.
Some perspectives have changed, though. The new breed of Chinese no longer believes the old idea that foreigners should not be allowed to learn anything about China—even as the Chinese made extraordinary efforts to learn everything possible about foreigners— or that foreigners who display an intimate knowledge of China are both dangerous and an embarrassment.
However, China’s government continues to control the spread of American-style pop culture into the country by prohibiting much of the vulgarity that is presented as entertainment in the West. In Chinese talent shows, for example, government guidelines allow no vulgar songs, no tears, no outlandish hairstyles or apparel—and no mocking or humiliating behavior by the judges. When these restrictions proved to be not strong enough, the Chinese government simply cancelled a slew of new talent shows that were soon to hit the airwaves, and ruled that the current shows could no longer be shown during prime time. How long these restrictions will be enforced is a matter of conjecture, as modern-day Chinese have a history of ignoring government controls they disagree with.
Like much of the rest of the world, China has undergone major social changes since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Revolutionary advances in technology, from television to the Internet, are only the beginning. For both visitors and businesspeople who hope to make the most of their time in the country it is important to understand the impact of the following cultural influences.
China’s Little Emperors to the Fore!
As important as China’s one-child-per-couple government policy has been since it was inaugurated by Mao Zedung, there has long been concern that the system would cause its own kind of serious social problems, including a breakdown in traditional Chinese etiquette.
This worry sprang from the tendency of parents with just one child to seriously spoil that child, especially if it was a boy. From the 1980s on, this symptom of the one-child law was clearly discernible among more affluent families, so much so that the children of such families were commonly referred to as little emperors.
This new generation of “un-Chinese-like” children is usually dated from 1978, when the country’s new Open Door policies began making it possible for well-off parents to indulge their children with the trappings of capitalism. Most of the children affected were in the educated upper class, and they began moving into positions of leadership early in the twenty-first century.
The fear that the one-child system would water down what remains of China’s traditional etiquette has become a reality. Most young people in China are more interested in getting ahead than in conforming to the old ways.
In part because the wealthy have always been able to find a way around the one-child policy, and in part out of fears
