While shallow fools think that spitting on the ground is the mark of someone with no “quality,” we must understand that the spirit of fighting relentlessly for family and career is what true “quality” actually means.
P.S.: Originally, I planned to have a proper discussion today about life choices and investment opportunities in the wake of recent developments. But then I thought back to a dinner gathering a few nights ago.
Some overseas Chinese friends made comments about “the quality problem of Chinese people,” and Master Chi felt it was better to address this matter first.
Here is how it started: a couple of days ago, Master Chi attended a dinner with some friends who had finally completed their home quarantine. You can tell from those words alone — these friends had all returned from overseas.
So as soon as we knew everyone could move around freely, I arranged a meal — partly to reconnect, and partly to share notes on our respective plans for capital deployment and career development this year.
And during the casual conversation, a few of the guys drifted onto the topic of “the quality of the Chinese people.”
Those of you who have spent time around returned overseas Chinese will know that as China’s national power has grown significantly in recent years, many criticisms of our system and institutions have become less and less frequent.
But sometimes, just to have something to talk about, many returned and overseas Chinese still use “the quality of the people” as their favorite angle of attack.
I am not deliberately trying to stir up conflict here, but if you have enough overseas Chinese friends around you, you will know exactly what I mean.
“Ah, the quality of Chinese people… tsk, tsk, tsk” — that is actually one of the more restrained and polite versions.
More common is: “You see them? Spitting and urinating everywhere, tourist groups shouting all day, littering, scrambling for food at buffets.”
And at the extreme end: “A bunch of locusts — absolutely no quality! Nothing like the white folks in America and Canada, who smile at everyone all day! Or the Japanese and Koreans, who are always so composed and quiet!”
Anyway, if you have always stayed in China, you would rarely hear these things. But if you are overseas, you basically hear them all day long.
But Master Chi wants to make a very direct point here: the average quality of Chinese people is, looking across the world today, the highest — bar none.
You read that right. The average quality of Chinese people: highest in the world.
Why? Because they do not sweat the small stuff — they pursue what truly matters.
If you travel the world with a calm eye and take a broad look at people from various cultures and ethnic backgrounds, you will find that many traits Chinese people take for granted are actually quite rare anywhere else on earth.
Let us start with the generation that has historically drawn the most “quality” criticism — those born in the 1950s and 60s. These are the people who make up today’s main cohort of elderly uncles and aunties, and who tend to dominate the headlines in all manner of strange news stories: neighborhood disputes, square dancing that disturbs the peace, fighting over food at buffets.
Unseemly behavior? Without a doubt, absolutely unseemly. Even Master Chi feels his scalp prickle when he sees some of what this group gets up to.
But these same people, even when they have reached sixty or nearly seventy years old, still bravely shoulder responsibilities that were never originally theirs to bear.
Look around you — how many of these elderly parents, when they live near their adult children, do not voluntarily take on cooking for their kids and ferrying the grandchildren around?
I will not post photos here, but if you are curious, go search for photos of primary and middle school dismissal times in major cities. You will find that in roughly half the cases, it is grandparents doing the pickup.
Go ahead and try finding that kind of devotion in America. Or Japan. You cannot say it is entirely absent, but what is a common everyday practice here would be considered rare and unusual anywhere else in the world.
Among this silver-haired generation, Master Chi certainly sees the cutting in line, the penny-pinching haggling at the vegetable market.
There is also plenty of arguing and conflict with younger generations — and quite a lot of it. But that distinctly Chinese elder’s mindset — “I have lived my entire life for my children” — is truly something you will not find anywhere else in the world. If you look past the surface and see what is really inside, only one classical saying captures it: “The silkworm spins until its death” (春蚕到死丝方尽 — devotion that endures to the very end).
Tell me: which elderly population anywhere in the world possesses quality like that?
Now let us talk about our current mainstream middle-aged and younger population — a wide range, covering those born from the 1970s through the 1990s.
Again, set aside those minor shortcomings. You will still find that our young and middle-aged population is the most driven in the world — bar none.
A long time ago, I used to believe in the myth of Japan’s overtime culture, thinking it demonstrated Japanese diligence. Turns out, that is only half true at best. I specifically asked some friends who invest in Japan — yes, the service sector’s professionalism is impressive, but the overtime culture in Japanese business is, in essence, just dragging things out.
It is not Master Chi’s place to definitively settle the truth of this — everyone has friends overseas these days, so go verify it yourself. But the feedback from all sides consistently points to Japanese company employees being seen as methodical, inflexible, and quite inefficient. The basic picture: a young Chinese person can knock out five things in a day; a young Japanese person manages two at most.
So if you watch Japanese dramas, you will notice the gap between Japan today and its golden era: the pressure levels may be similar, but the drive and hustle of Japanese company employees has dropped sharply.
As for the West? Well, Master Chi is back from Canada — I will leave it at that. Feel free to look into the lifestyle and work ethic of North Americans and Europeans yourself.
Note: the gap I am talking about does not show up at the elite level — I am sure Sony, Samsung, and Google employees are all extremely hardworking. But the moment you expand the playing field to the general population, the average quality of Chinese people simply dominates.
Take any job dominated by young workers — across the entire world, only China’s construction workers, delivery riders, ride-share drivers, and young office workers labor relentlessly, drenched in sweat, without tiring of the effort.
Go look at construction sites across China in the height of summer. Go look at the roads under bitter cold where no one else would stand. That is the truest testament to the character of this people.
Say nothing of others — you, the person reading this right now: is your life particularly easy? At best, not too rough. Would you call yourself exceptionally dedicated? That might be a stretch. But take that same work intensity and level of commitment overseas, and you would be above the solid middle ground, without question.
I have always said: something at the scale of a nation is genuinely difficult for people to truly comprehend. And quality — that concept — is equally easy to misunderstand.
So in the eyes of a crowd of fools who subjectively equate “politeness” with “quality,” the fact that Chinese people’s politeness scores are not high enough means low quality — that only reveals their own shortsightedness.
Only those with sufficient depth of understanding will grasp that in judging the quality of a population, “politeness” is among the least valuable metrics of all.
What truly matters is whether the population is sufficiently dedicated, hardworking, law-abiding, and driven to produce.
Understand this: every single one of our fellow countrymen is, in some sense, our “teammate.” So tell me — if you could choose your teammates…
Would you choose a group who smile pleasantly all day, but are neither hardworking nor devoted to their families, keep carefully to themselves, and do not push hard enough at work?
Or a group who do not sweat the small stuff, who are constantly striving to learn and improve, who might grumble about you endlessly but still help watch your kids and cook your meals, and who stick to their post even when friction arises at work?
So now that we are getting to the heart of what quality truly means — do you still think Chinese people’s quality is lacking?
To put it plainly: as a collective, Chinese people are chaotic and noisy, constantly stirring up minor trouble — yet overall, they are extremely law-abiding and firm believers in building wealth through hard work. Citizens like these are what every nation envies and desires.
Take this pandemic as an example: from recognizing the risk to full national compliance took no more than two or three days. Tell me — which country’s citizens would come together with that kind of collective spirit to fight an epidemic as one united force?
So when people say it is hard for other governments to copy the homework — that is nonsense. The real obstacle to copying is the difference in the “quality” of the respective populations.
Our people are the classic case of “complaining endlessly with their mouths, but never wavering when cooperation is called for.”
And most countries overseas? Smiling and telling you: “Sure, I know the risk — but I DON’T GIVE A FUCK, we’re going to PARTY” — and then turning around to discriminate against Chinese people.
Honestly, as someone who has returned from abroad, Master Chi also knows that sometimes the behavior of our parents’ generation — and even our own behavior overseas — can be genuinely embarrassing. Things like the bizarre cases of people defecating in public, cutting in line, arguing — it makes even me blush.
That is fine — when you are wrong, you should correct it. No excuses.
But we must also recognize that these same people, in just a few decades, took a country that was not considered a major player in the world order and fought it to the top — to one of the world’s two poles of power.
So tell me — are these honest, grounded, steadfast compatriots high or low quality? Low? Then I suppose someone handed them those achievements as a gift?
When some fool dismisses the grand virtues of an entire people over a missed small detail like spitting — I am sorry, that only reveals serious deficiencies in both intelligence and understanding.
You see, when we consider and examine anything, the most important thing is to be clear about the angle from which you are standing.
This is a matter of perspective and depth of understanding. For some people in this world, their capacity for understanding will forever remain at the surface level.
And if you are smart enough and play the surface game well, these people will let themselves be played and manipulated at will. That is something that will never change.
And this is why many overseas Chinese, especially the long-established ones, happen to be the group most hostile toward the homeland. I am not joking — among overseas Chinese, the more recently they emigrated, the more patriotic they tend to be. The most extreme cases are those old overseas Chinese who have been entrenched in Chinatowns and old-style Chinese enclaves for forty or fifty-plus years. Those ones are really something…
There is also an interesting pattern: among those who go abroad, students and wealthy merchants and elites are generally very patriotic. But those who never achieved anything to begin with and scraped their way overseas just to get by — those are the ones who go the hardest when insulting their own compatriots and homeland.
No matter. We continue our own efforts. We continue our own progress. When certain people insult us, listen — keep the parts that have merit — but do not bother arguing with them. Giving them even half a glance would be our loss.