Why are the Chinese so disciplined?

I’m guessing by disciplined you might mean this:

70th Anniversary Celebrations of the founding of the PRC

or maybe this…

Student studying despite his room being flooded.

Well, first let me tell you a little secret:

Chinese people are very disciplined.

But, to some extent this is also a stereotype.

Before we get into the second point, let’s address the first point, where does the discipline of those pictures above come from?

If I can make one generalization about life in China, it would probably be that life in China is one big competition. Life anywhere is competitive of course, but there are some particular reasons why life in China is particularly competitive.

It consists of: traditions, difficult and poverty-stricken recent past, vast size and density of population, rapid modernization, and full-on capitalism.

Regarding traditions, China has always been a meritocratic society (in principle at least). To get up high in society, you have to be educated. How to test level of education? Exams! So for centuries China has had a competitive examination system which means from a very young age children are already set against their peers to try and achieve better than them. This remains today. Addin the fact that there are literally hundreds of millions of other people around you, and the game is on!! No wonder why you get students studying for a whole day at the hands of a Tiger Mom who claims they’re doing it for the child’s own good.

What does having a good job earn other than respect? Obviously money. And for most of China’s recent history, there wasn’t a lot of it around. Families therefore have a built in protection mechanism where money = survival. Even if you’re already rich, you need more because who knows what will happen tomorrow? This is why in China a lot of marriages are still arranged as monetary contracts.

If the past was difficult, then modernity and capitalism, which are predicated on the concept of individualistic competition, has made the individual’s strive for success (survival) a whole lot more complicated.

This isn’t just relevant to individual families but to the nation on a whole. China has just emerged from what was called the ‘century of humiliation’ where it was beaten down by western imperialist powers. The first picture is a symbolic display of how far China wants to show it has come, the might of its military that it can afford, that will protect it against global competition.

In other words, to be modern, to survive, whether as an individual or a nation, relies on money’s ability to afford status and security, which means engaging in a competition against millions, many of which have a strong head start over you.

Ok, so why did I say China also isn’t as disciplined as we might assume?

Despite the impressive work and study ethic of Chinese people, I was also surprised when I lived in China over how relaxed people were. Sometimes it made me wonder how anything gets done.

This might seem like a contradiction, but China is full of a lot of contradictions.

Basically, I rarely sensed ‘rush’ or ‘deadline’ in China. Any deadline that was set turned out to be flexible. Most of the time, people never finished what they were supposed to do by the deadline, and that was ok. I often walked into offices thinking ‘I bet they’re going to delay this issue’, and every time, they did, unless I absolutely insisted. In fact, I still haven’t received proof of the qualifications I earned with them over 3 years ago! They said they’d email them to me, I thought “well, let’s see…”.

In one work setting, people freely came and went when they liked. In another work setting, everyone stayed the required time but spent most of it on Wechat talking with friends.

I also found a lot of Chinese people had great respect for the work ethic of the Japanese and Koreans, which they considered stronger than their own (not sure how many people think this though).

I’ve been careful not to say Chinese people ‘lack’ discipline, because they certainly don’t. I’ve shown clearly the ways in which many people work and study very hard and the pressures they face. There’s just a greater sense of flexibility and freeness to how things should be done.

On the one hand, it could be quite annoying, there are situations that really do need to be done and it was frustrating people weren’t really doing their jobs.

On the other hand, maybe I’m the one at fault. A relaxed, more free sense of work certainly sounds appealing to anyone. Considering the competitive nature of the society overall, maybe it’s a good thing there is a lot of flexibility in the work place.

if you want a society that is highly competitive and has a highly structured work ethic, then look to Japan. But also make sure to look at Japan’s rates of mental health issues and tiredness.