Chinese culture

Many things in China are fascinating to watch as they change: economy, environment, internal politics, international affairs etc. As China becomes more important and develops all of these are changing, but possibly the most fascinating of all it to see how China's culture changes, or at least deals with, all these other changes.

As you may know the Chinese are rather proud of their 5,000 year old culture entailing all kinds of elements: from education to ethics or religion (in a sense) to guanxi (relationships) and of course language! The best thing about having a tutor is the chance to discuss and often argue about all these kinds of topics and really get to understand different views on China.

Today we argued about whether Chinese culture is fundamentally changing -she denies it; though i did manage to convince her that at least there will be some impact on culture from all these changes and that it will be interesting to see what happens. What is most interesting is that she recognises the changes to everyone's lives due to economic changes and does not think it is due to cultural changes; though i disagree. However, we both agreed that irrelevant of the cause, there will be impacts.

A few examples include that the massive internal migration that leads to parents separating from each other, and/or from their kids and/or their grandparents which is a massive change for China and impacts on education and the role of the family unit. Another might be the increasing number of divorces -brought on according to my tutor not because of people leaving others to find something better (which it is in the West apparently), but just because of economic change, jobs and communication issues; so what will happen to the single parents kids and the grand parents; and how does the 1 child policy affect this (you can normally work it out to have 1 child per marriage).

Finally consider the impact of the drive to emulate Western culture and values, closely aligned with the drive for (Western) economic growth and quality of life leading to people becoming fatter, but becoming more obsessed with being thing; going clubbing and dating more; living with partners before marriage and so on. In theory a strong traditional Chinese culture can help China develop and avoid some of the problems of the West, like 'anti-social' or 'disrepectful' youth for example. But then it may make things worse; since it is relatively common for men to visit other women on business trips, which are becoming more and more frequent nowadays!