Despite legal restrictions, Chinese immigrants built self-reliant communities. Many owned restaurants and laundries.
In addition, they supported themselves by promoting their culture to the non-Chinese community. This included a variety of entertainment, such as tong gun fights.
They also emphasized family values such as filial piety and loyalty to their country of origin.
Family Values
Chinese family values are based on the Confucian philosophy of “financial virtue”, “family benevolence” and “filial piety”. According to this tradition, a well-ordered family is the microcosm of a society. This family culture is a basis of social and political order and should be promoted by officials at all levels to cultivate healthy morality.
In the past, Chinese families were very patriarchal with men being the head of the household. Also, they valued age as an important factor in determining someone’s rank. Therefore, elders were given a higher rank than younger men.
Nowadays, the Chinese community has moved away from the traditional family structure. The family size has become smaller with many only having one child. However, some people still adhere to the tradition of arranged marriage. They will only marry if they have their parents’ blessings and are matched with the right person. In addition, they are very concerned about their children’s education and place a high importance on obtaining good grades and getting into top schools and universities to get advanced degrees.
Work Ethic
Chinese culture has long embraced hard work and self-discipline. Its zealous commitment to this ethic has been a key component in the country’s meteoric rise and global success. The core values of Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism encourage a dedication to hard work, even in the face of setbacks.
China’s hierarchical work culture puts a strong emphasis on preserving “face.” Employees avoid publicly disagreeing with their superiors or expressing disappointment in public. Managers also take care to protect employees’ dignity by addressing mistakes privately rather than in front of their peers.
Despite these guiding principles, China’s workforce is becoming increasingly disillusioned with overworking and a lack of balance in their lives. A growing number of young people have begun to embrace the philosophy of “tang ping,” which means “laying flat” during working hours by refusing overtime, producing low-quality work, or playing with their mobile phones. A code of conduct from headquarters is unlikely to be effective in this context.
Social Values
The Chinese have a strong sense of community, emphasized by the concept of “Guanxi.” This refers to the value placed on personal relationships and networks of trust known as “guan.” Chinese social values prioritize family and collective interests over individual ones. Respect for authority and elders is also paramount.
Traditional Chinese values emphasize harmony, benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom, honesty, loyalty, and filial piety. These values shape national psychology and guide China’s diplomacy.
The Chinese believe that human nature is inherently good, while the West believes that people are naturally evil. As a result, the Chinese prefer to work within the framework of mutual benefit and cooperation rather than engage in struggle. This concept of hexie is reflected in China’s foreign policy, with the goal of creating a world of universal harmony. It involves converting imbalance into balance, incoordination into coordination, and asymmetry into symmetry. It requires abiding by Tian Dao (cosmic laws), Di Dao (telluric laws), and Ren Dao (social laws). The pursuit of hexie promotes harmonious coexistence, peaceful competition, and win-win development.
Cultural Values
Traditional Chinese values focus on harmony and hexie. Hexie is a dynamic process that converts imbalance into balance and incoordination into coordination. It is believed that this process is essential to human survival. The pursuit of Hexie encourages mutually beneficial cooperation and respects diversity.
Although Chinese society is becoming more and more modern, many of these traditional cultural values remain in place. For example, most Chinese people consider family to be their highest priority, and they are devoted to the success of their children. Chinese people are also very hospitable and value indirect communication. They use formality to show respect, such as saying “ni” when speaking with teachers or elders.
However, there is a disconnect between the values that are socially advocated by contemporary Chinese and those that they actually prefer. Therefore, it is important to develop a tool to measure these values. This could be done through an open-ended survey or text analysis. This will help identify the values that are most important to Chinese individuals.