FLASHBACK: COCKTAIL PARTY, 2000, AND WE'RE TALKING CHINA AND INDIA.
Culture’s Role in the Waking of the Dragon and the Tiger.
Since we were talking China all last week, I thought it might be fun to consider a few final thoughts about the roots of Chinese culture, and compare them to Indian culture, which we’ll be moving onto next week! So here goes…
You’re at this cocktail party lo, those many years ago in the year 2000, and the talk is of China and India, and someone comes up to you and says…
“On the one hand, you have an Asian country (here’s your clue: think “dragon”) with:
a. a billion plus people, mainly under-educated, who do not speak English
b. an authoritarian government and political system
c. an ideologically communist economic system
d. a social system that strongly rejects outside influences
On the other hand, you have an Asian country (your clue: think “tiger”) with:
a. almost one billion people, many of whom have been educated by western standards and who speak English
b. a democratic government and political system (in fact, the world’s largest!)
c. an economy based on capitalism
d. a social system open to Western influences
And then they ask you: “Based on these facts, which country do you think will be the first one to economically “take off”?
And you probably guess wrong, because you’re a logical, rational person. You interpreted the data correctly. But your logical answer is likely
wrong because, despite the demographic clue (a), despite the political clue (b), despite the economic clue ( c), and despite the sociological clue (d), you didn’t have all the CULTURAL clues. And, as we’ll see, it is culture which most profoundly determines the destiny of nations.
Now, here’s the missing, critical cultural information for the “dragon” (and, yes, that’s CHINA): a Confucian-based cultural system, resulting in active consensus-driven compliance with authority.
And here’s the missing, critical cultural information for the “tiger” (yup, it’s INDIA): a Hindu-based cultural system, resulting in passive individual acceptance of unchangeable realities.
These two fundamentally different cultural orientations, at work for thousands of years in both countries, determine the answer to the question of which country, China or India, would take off first in the 1990’s, and the answer is of course (ah, the power of historical hindsight!): China. Economists, no doubt, will look at recent economic policies and find the reasons for China’s growth there (however, economic policy, as we will see, is an outgrowth of cultural orientations); political scientists and social pundits will find their explanations for China’s sudden emergence by emphasizing the changes in politics that have supposedly recently occurred (but which, upon closer examination appear not that dissimilar to older political traditions). If we only look at the immediate, we see only the superficial; if we only look within one silo of understanding, we see only those answers created in that silo. Current economic and political policy, if viewed only through the economic or political lens, gives us a superficial account of what is really happening, since economic and political thinking is the result of culture.
However, to understand culture, its very nature requires us to understand its roots, where it comes from, its history, and in so doing we are forced to view things through a much deeper lens. There is an old Chinese story about walking through the woods and coming upon a rushing stream. When first observing the stream, with its cascading waters and rocks, one might be tempted to conclude that the rocks are certainly more powerful than the water, as they force the water to part as it rushes over the rocks. However, if we were able to return to the stream in one hundred years, it is likely the rocks will be gone, eroded by the more powerful stream of rushing water. Despite the undeniably real contributions that particular recent economic and political policies may have made to the hastening of China and India’s emergence, the real engine behind this phenomenon is culture, shaping those very same economic and political decisions, determining how it all happens for each country and why, and how it will all unfold in the future.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Dean Foster Global Cultures to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.