The American Identity and The Chinese Identity

I noticed an interesting comment posted by mtlyorel in Elliott’s recent post about David Brooks:

Neither Brooks or other commentators let alone career China-bashers i.e. Fallows – understand fully the concept of collectivism in China. For starters, collectivism needs semantic qualification. Collectivism is really a concept that exists in all cultures, and certainly one can say the same thing about Japan and Korea. Collectivism in the Asian context in this instance really means a unified desire to reach one goal. This ‘spirit’ has little to do with ethnic or cultural homogeneity which is what the commentators and Brooks himself fail to understand.

Simply, it is a desire to achieve successfully a common goal. The Chinese people are most similar in character to Americans. (If you don’t believe me, google for academic references on this topic.) There is no one ‘Chinese’ as there is no one ‘American’ or ‘French’. The misconception is that China is one monolithic and homogeneous entity. It isn’t. It is like a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities that are taught – just like all Americans – to have one single Chinese identity. In this case of course, through the directive and propaganda of the CCP.

The emphases are mine, and to me, the statements I emphasized were interesting enough to compel me to separate my response into its own post:

Might I suggest that the “collectivism” in China is not so much about a “a unified desire to reach one goal” but rather a “shared ideology of lost glory and historical victimization?”

Along the lines of comparing the Chinese to Americans, I do believe there certainly exist interesting parallels, but at the same time I feel there might be a qualitative disconnect between the two here. We can argue that the unifying American “identity” surrounds that ever-cliched “American Dream.” However, what is the “story” that the unifying Chinese “identity” is built upon? If the Americans have their “American Dream,” what do the Chinese have? Could we suggest it might be “Chinese Victim-hood?”

Furthermore, can we argue that Americans are more driven by a shared dream whereas the Chinese are more driven by a shared fear of their past, a past consistently characterized as the world’s oldest and once-mightiest civilization squandered away and raped by outsiders? Is there a qualitative difference between people yearning for what they never had and people struggling to regain what they perceive as something they lost?

Without straying too far from the above propositions, how does “collectivism” and “individualism” fit into this? If we accept the American Dream as the basis for the unifying identity of Americans, would we have to examine if this identity is merely the collective coincidence of individual dreams and aspirations set in a land perceived to offer the opportunities for their realization? Would we, then, need to ask ourselves if the unifying “Chinese Victim-hood” is something that all Chinese individually and coincidentally ascribe to or if it was instilled in them, systematically, by the very “directive and propaganda of the CCP” that mtlyorel presumes?

Nothing hard and fast here, just questions to prompt discussion. What are your thoughts?