ambient

A colleague of mine forwarded me the link to this excellent report on Chinese internet company, QQ, and the Chinese online media industry in general.

Andrew Leonard, at the excellent “How the World Works” has written a biting commentary on China’s environmental practices in light of their explosive growth over the last decade. As we continue to redefine and include new players into the perpetrators of exploitative practices that are often a part of globalization, China will likely appear again and again as one of the major culprits.

What I found equally interesting were the comments, including this scathing review of Chinese capitalist culture:

China is like a hyper active spoiled and rich 14 year old watching MTV on acid - soaking up all Western culture, private label brands, capitalism and the absolute worship of MONEY - they cannot distinguish good and bad taste, good or bad art, good or bad values, basics of honest communication and the entire warp speed nature of their rapid transition from 2nd or 3rd world agricultural society to becoming a dominant world super power, has impacted on their core values like a tsunami. Not an accident that they have been successful traders for 10,000 years - they now epitomize Glengarry Glen Ross values on a global scale. David Mamet Economic Perversities in China while smoking crack and in non stop meth craze.

And

A young colleague of mine, smart, educated, shy 25 year old, knocked down an old woman to get a taxi and told me that’s how things are in China. If you wait, if you’re polite, you’ll be left behind.

This last comment rings true for anyone who has personally experienced the extreme distaste that Chinese people seem to have for waiting in line.
It’s easy for this sort of analysis to come off sounding like frantic xenophobia. It does echo, at least in nuance, the fears that Americans harbored towards Japan in the late 80s and early 90s.

I have never been to China so I can’t speak to these accounts firsthand.

In many ways, the language reminds me of the language DeTocqueville and others. (althogh he was more admiring than these commenters are) used in his essays on American culture.

There is indeed an irony here, and it is this: America will one day experience firsthand the negative effects of its own biggest export — greed.

What should be sobering to us is twofold.

First, the Chinese, by these accounts anyway, don’t appear to have any moral qualms about exploitative greed while at least we pay lip service to a moral code that emphasizes the value of human life and the environment over financial gain.

Second, as our own societies inch ever closer to authoritarian policies, our leaders may be watching China as a model for an even more aggressive breed of capitalism for the 21st century, one equally free from the fetters of moral concern.