A Chinese View . . .
Westernization Hurting China

By Clare Luo San

Children in China are growing up under circumstances very different from their parents. They have enjoyed higher standards of living, greater access to information and more freedom to express their own feelings. They are used to Western influences and they are very attracted to Western concepts like freedom, democracy and human rights, although many don't fully comprehend these concepts. When confronted with routine lessons of traditional morality, they become annoyed. Somehow the Chinese historical traditions and perspectives have been placed on the backburner while the Western perspectives are steamrolling over our culture.

Frustration occurs when parents cannot communicate historical traditions to their children. You may say that a generational gap causes frustration in every home around the world. But here, parents feel as though they are losing much more. They feel that they are loosing ground with their children who don't respect their traditional Chinese ideology and our country's rich historical roots.

Radical changes are taking place in China. After Mao's "pervasive pressure" to enforce Communist rule (Perry Line, "China's Core Problem," China in Transformation), a mixed form of market economy was unleashed. With it there has been "a radical shift in people's value system." Shocked by this economic boom, China has gone "from a non-materialist society structured around principles of ideology to a now overly-materialist society driven by values of conspicuous consumption. While standards of living have improved alongside massive infrastructure development and growing productivity, there has been a rapid breakdown of social morality and an unfortunate loss of ideology and principle in general." (Laurence J. Brahm, China's Century: The Awakening of the Next Economic Powerhouse).

Harvard University professor Tu Wei-ming (TeenSpeak's Spring 2004 issue) refers to this as "a lack of spiritual resources." In a speech he made recently at Hua Zong Institute of Science and Technology Tu states that people today are influenced by a kind of self-centeredness. There's more of an emphasis on materialism than on mentality; utility more than inspiration, which has led to a kind of social materialistic Darwinism. What's worse, it has dwarfed the contribution of many other positive ideologies.

Translation - we study to get high test scores rather than enjoy being educated; we celebrate the importance of performance over the importance of what kind of a person we become; we have become more narrowly focused on what is considered good (Western), and we discard or forget the foundation upon which our culture has been built (Chinese).

Are parents to blame for wanting their children to keep their culture and their history? The truth is, our minds have been led astray by a force of spiritual emptiness, which is creating a dramatic transformation in our society. While China's youth are very attracted to the money and new lifestyle this force brings, it is shallow and does not include our rich history of traditions.