Perforce, distilling the beliefs of 1.4 billion people into a 1,000 word essay requires generalization. Yet the effort seems worthwhile—after all, I still believe that negotiating requires some understanding of the goals and values of one’s partner. I hope this article is useful as we confront the current stand-off across the Pacific.
Given that there are approximately 1.4 billion people in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), it would be almost impossible to write an accurate and credible essay about what they believe. Almost anything I write on this topic will inevitably invite criticism. And yet, seasoned travelers are prone to making such generalizations, and most readers find them at least somewhat helpful, recognizing of course that they never apply to all people. I explore many of these in depth in my book, The Chinese Business Conundrum: Ensure That Win-Win Doesn’t Mean Western Companies Lose Twice, but given the amount of attention China is getting in the news of late, I thought I might share a distillation of that discussion here.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about China’s system of state-sponsored censorship, which makes it difficult to determine what people really believe—and thus makes an essay like this one perhaps more useful. Since it is impossible to actually know what people in China think, what might an observer infer they think, based on what we can see them doing?
For a more extensive response to this question, I would refer you to the section entitled “The Other 93%” (that is, the members of the population who do not belong to the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP) in my book. But here, I will list just a few:
Education and hard work are admirable. For many, these are ends in themselves. But for many others, they are important because they can lead to wealth and power. Wealth and power are, for many people in China, the most important goals in life.
Might makes right. Whoever has leverage should use it. People who have leverage, but don’t use it to achieve wealth and power, are stupid. This philosophy is engrained in the Chinese negotiating system, which I discuss in a future essay as well as in my book.
The ends justify the means. There are so many “laws” in China, and so many of them are arbitrary, that the Chinese spend a great deal of their time dreaming up end-runs. And if those end-runs involve cheating, so be it; the rules they are breaking are often unreasonable and aren’t followed by the people who made them up in the first place. Hypocrisy is alive and well in China.
Nationalism is important. Many Chinese are obsessed with the goal of “making China great again.” This is Xi’s pretense. His promise to the people is that he will “make China great again.” His actual goal is wealth and power for the 7% of the population that belongs to the CCP. To be sure, Xi also wants to provide wealth and power to the other 93%, but I believe this goal only exists to ward off protests.
Stability is an end in itself. China has experienced so much tumult over the centuries that people yearn for stability.
The Chinese are not ready for democracy. Stability is a higher priority. Many do not consider democracy (as we define it) a worthy goal.
You must be born Chinese; you cannot become Chinese. You could love China and live for decades in China, but you cannot become Chinese. There are numerous examples in recent history of non-Chinese people who have moved to China, fallen in love with its culture and married Chinese people, but have never been granted citizenship or membership in the CCP. On the other hand, there equally numerous examples of Chinese women who have flown to Los Angeles in the third trimester of their pregnancies, given birth to their children, and then flown back to China, with American passports for their offspring.
Foreigners cannot be trusted. For centuries, foreigners have been referred to as “foreign devils.”
It is everyone’s duty to have children. Boys are better than girls. It is better to produce full-blooded Chinese children than half-blooded Chinese children. As recent population figures have shown, though, this belief is not being translated into action. The World Bank estimates that China’s population fell by 0.1%. between 2022 and 2023 and the current birthrate is 1.18 live births per woman, substantially below the replacement rate of 2.1 births (for developed countries). The parents of young people in their child-bearing years are not happy about the reluctance of their offspring to reproduce. And neither is Xi Jinping.
Americans are a war-like people who are constantly engaged in conflict in various parts of the world (not completely untrue). The Chinese, on the other hand, have never in history invaded another country. Nor do they ever involve themselves in the internal matters of other countries. This is total nonsense. China has been invading other countries for centuries. For example, China occupied Vietnam for almost 1,000 years (111 BC to 938 AD). The Vietnamese are still angry about it. The last time China invaded Vietnam was in 1979, to “teach them a lesson,” because the Vietnamese were aligning themselves too closely with the Soviet Union. More recently, China has lopped off parts of both India and Bhutan. And, of course, two of China’s largest “acquisitions” were Tibet (during the Qing dynasty) and what is now Xinjiang (also during the Qing dynasty). And, when Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge killed off almost 20% of the Cambodian population in the 1970s, they were supported and, to a certain extent, financed by Mao.
“Face”—that is, respect, prestige, and social standing—is more important than a clean conscience. Getting away with cheating (by Western standards) is OK (and perhaps even admirable), but getting caught is not.
Chinese are not inclined to engage in philanthropy as we define it. Most Chinese are perfectly willing to help relatives and people they know well, but not strangers.
Most Chinese are respectful of their elders. Many consider it an obligation to support their parents in old age, as their parents supported them when they were children.
Most Chinese believe that they should focus on supporting their families, working hard, and accruing wealth for themselves, their children, and their descendants. The are willing to leave the business of governing China to the CCP.
Finally, I think that China has a chip on its shoulder. Most Chinese believe (rightly or wrongly) that China is the oldest continuously running civilization in the world and that, until the 1800s, it was the most advanced. From the time of the First Opium War (1839-1844) until the “Liberation” in 1949, though, the West beat up on them. This period is referred to as the “Century of Humiliation.” As a result, many Chinese feel that the West “owes them one,” which is one of the reasons they feel totally justified in “borrowing” our technology without asking.
Of course, these are generalizations. As such, the list is both incomplete and imprecise, as each element does not necessarily apply to all Chinese people. But as we think about how the relationship between China and the U.S. may evolve in the coming years, we need understand what most Chinese believe. It is equally important to understand ourselves and know what we, ourselves, believe.