The Rise of Individualism in a Collective Society
For those of us who have yet to venture east to China, Chinese society brings about traditional collective images such as the filial child or the sacrificing parents. Those who have lived or travelled to the central kingdom have even more pressing images of a strongly collective culture; the ladies square dancing in the park, the men with their large bellies hanging out on a sweltering day together in the local shequ/社区 (small neighbourhood side streets).
We have just started to scratch the surface of a complex culture that is evolving and changing. Individualistic trends such as the growing wave of study abroad students and the westernisation of the work place challenge the notion of a strictly collectivist culture. Herein we discuss the various theories and influences that demonstrate that even China, the only constant is change.
East vs. West Mentality
The divide between Western and Eastern mentalities is one that delves deeper than economics, politics and history. This divide is the basic way in which people from each side perceive the world in which they reside. As David Brooks of the New York Times once wrote, “If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim”. Many experiments performed all over the world have exhibited a strong underlying pattern in Eastern versus Western mentalities; the West emphasises individuals and the East emphasises contexts.
One of the first individuals to establish this unique perceptual difference was a Dutch social psychologist named Geert Hofstede, who addressed the idea of individualism as, “the degree of interdependence a society maintains among its members”, or whether someone’s self image is defined as, “I”, or, “we”. While people from individualist societies are mostly expected to look after themselves and immediate family, collectivist societies go a step further in taking their membership in groups as an important part of self care, or a sort of exchange of individual loyalty for self protection. Hofstede’s scale rates China as a highly collectivist society in which people are more likely to act in the interest of the group than for themselves.
For quite some time, Chinese majority societies such as the PRC and diasporas such as Singapore and Malaysia, were grouped as societies with “low individualism” and “high collectivism”. Studies from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and The Journal of Management Studies published in the late eighties and early nineties have supported these findings further by specifically focusing on the degree of success in which either eastern and western management styles are implemented within the Chinese work place. One of these studies, performed in Hong Kong, actually led to a “Chinese hierarchy of needs”, that is very much based on famous American psychologist, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, with “self actualisation in the service of society” replacing the traditionally named “self-actualisation”. The view of China as a strongly collectivist society has a wealth of evidence, however, while an increasing amount of new findings are pointing to a more complex and mixed view of Chinese society.
The Rise of Individualism
While the late eighties and early nineties saw a new understanding and interest in the East Asian world outlook, even more findings were starting to challenge the idea of a society that is highly collective. Studies based on the same Chinese mainland areas and diasporas, such as Mainland China and Singapore during that era have already questioned the widely accepted notion of the traditional Chinese collective family unit and behaviour, especially in terms of how this behaviour may apply to the modern work organisation in east Asia.
According to a study published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Management in 1998, researchers found that over a two-and-a-half-year period, young Chinese managers in Shanghai experienced a profound change in work values. The study suggested increasingly independent styles of “Chinese individualism” in the Chinese work place that incorporates more Western styles of management and work methods. In Hong Kong, empirical evidence shows that conflicts of the individual type are for more abundant than those of a more collective nature. However, whether this shows that individualistic attitudes garner more conflict than collective ones, is yet to be exhibited. Another study found that young managers and managerial trainees from mainland China were adopting even higher levels of individualism within their personal management styles than those of their Hong Kong counterparts.
From the above studies, we find that those studies that are focused on a cultural explanation of Chinese behaviour tend to agree that the majority outlook relies on strong levels of collectivism. However, those studies that are analysing the intersection of culture and international business or managerial styles, tend to find that that those same strong levels of collectivism can be compromised by outside influences and create a unique set of work environment and managerial values throughout China’s business sector.
An alternative theory termed, “passive fatalism”, suggests that the collectivist psyche of Chinese populations is a form of adaptability towards reforms that are initiated from above, especially within in the work place. This theory argues that the readiness of workers to align themselves with authority does not represent traditional collective behaviour within the workplace. Instead, such behaviour, that is more reminiscent of “passive fatalism”, is suggestive of an even deeper mentality that is rooted in the religious values of traditionally Buddhist or Taoist populations. Furthermore, Chinese “passive fatalism” is not an example of the complete and total readiness to sacrifice for the greater good, as is the case for other East Asian populations such as the Japanese. On the contrary, “passive fatalism” can explain the coexistence of collectivist and individualist behavioural trends within the Chinese workplace. The theory, however, cannot predict in what type of situations Chinese individuals will act in a more collectivist versus individual way.
Individualism Across the East
Although Hofstede’s analysis has remained one of the strongest and most widely utilised findings in terms of understanding East Asian perspectives, some have criticised his findings as too general, especially in terms of comparing Chinese and Japanese behaviour. The two populations differ obviously in various ways; however, to an outside observer it may be more difficult to understand how Japanese and Chinese exhibit different behaviour within the same value scale. One major difference between the Chinese and Japanese is that Chinese employees will show higher levels of loyalty to their familial groups as opposed to non-family institutions. Conversely, Japanese employees have no difficulty in taking their familial loyalties with them to the work place. This finding challenges the popularly held notion of collectivist behaviour being a seamlessly shared trait across east Asian countries. The evidence also points to the importance of reconstructing the individualism-collectivism scale to include divisions between individualist and collectivist attitudes towards the family and the workplace.
Individualism Outside the Work Place
While individualism within the east Asian workplace may be increasing, some argue that individualism in its purist form is still lacking in China. Social acknowledgement is still a primary indicator of success in China. Although the trend of individual entrepreneurship and owning one’s own business is far more in fashion and held in high regard currently than in China’s past. However, non-traditional career paths and life decisions, such as committing one’s self to a life of charitable work, are usually either looked down upon for their lack of “social or individual success” (i.e. financial success and social acceptability) or abandoned by individuals who have left that idealistic age of their twenties and early thirties. This is especially the case for men who are responsible for a continually successful family lineage or for women who feel the constant pressure of avoiding the dreaded name of “left over women” (sheng nü/剩女). For many young Chinese, the pursuit of individual happiness may be more of a tempting but forbidden fruit, or in the words of their parents “an adolescent dream that is avoided for the security of a car, house, and savings account (有车，有房，有钱)”, all of which being modern qualifiers of the ultimate socially acceptable partnership; marriage.
Tom Doctoroff also argues that self-expression is not necessarily akin to independent thought. Chinese society has yet to celebrate individual change or rebellion, or at the very least celebrate publically on a large scale. Creativity is available and exists all over the mainland in various forms, yet the underground musician will woefully remain underground as the environmental activist will remain taboo. Neither is individual’s fate not only due to censorship laws; it is also due to the public’s gravitation towards the majority, the socially acceptable, and the easily accessible.
Is Any of it Accurate?
Well, if you ask this ex expatriate, yes and no. I remember a day back at school at Nanjing University when I was frustrated and longingly looking out the window onto the buzzing cars and pedestrians. One of my Chinese friends was with me and I decided to ask him, “Don’t you ever just want to get out of all of this and do something else?” He looked at me with a puzzled grin; “Why? Everything is in here.” He was right, we had a quiet place to study, we lived in the building next door in comfortable dorm rooms, the cafeteria was a short walk from there, all of it situated near the centre of one of China’s most burgeoning second tier cities. Yet, I was mortified. I thought, “Why? WHY?” It is my individual duty to do something different, to feel like a successful individual of my own doing, maybe even in a path unheard of by my parents! How could he not think of the same? We were young, in our twenties and the world needed fixing; didn’t he want to fix it in his own vision like I did? Well, maybe he did or maybe he didn’t, but at that time I could only be shocked by his answer and categorise it under “Well, that is China, why rebel and be an individual, that’s just what Chinese people think, right?”
For anyone currently in China, simple categorisation is probably a comforting and easy way to deal with difficulties, but don’t do it. Individualism and collectivism are all within the individual. That same friend of mine made a difficult choice to leave his family across the country in Gansu to attend a school that will bring him and perhaps his existing and future kin success. He did what he did; I am not sure of the reason, but does it really matter if it was only for himself or for his family? In my experience, individual sacrifice and collective ties usually go hand in hand. In certain ways, I have seen Chinese individuals who are willing to do way more for themselves in the name of familial success than I may ever be able to understand. The man who used to serve my favorite “Jian Bing” (煎饼/Egg MacMao/whatever you want to call creation), one block away from my internship in Beijing probably doesn’t care one bit for underground music and probably doesn’t plan to change his career path any time soon. He left his sleepy town to make money and be a success, whether it was for himself or his family was not clear, maybe it was for both. In my eyes many Chinese individuals, like my favorite Jian Bing cart owner, have utilised individual strength, character, and ability to be successful in a society as complex as its recipes for street food.
China, to be sure, is neither simply collectivist or individualist (anyone who has been in China for more than a month probably saw this conclusion coming from a mile away); it is a mixture of influences both modern and traditional, both individual and collective, both succeeding and failing, like most other nations on this planet. What draws people to China is that it continues to be one of the larges paradoxes and it remains to be a distant land that is at the same time, the literal Central 中 Kingdom 国.
This article was first published in The Nanjinger Magazine, March 2016 issue. If you would like to read the whole magazine, please follow this link.
