25 Key Points of the Chinese Mentality
🍋 1. The concept of “Face”
That’s literally all they care about. They don’t even care about their own health, or actual well-being. It is all about “face” and “status”.
The most important is to "keep face", regardless of the actual truth of things - the public image of a thing is way more important than its content.
They only care about one thing above all: how they are being perceived by others.
They only care about their "face" in front of society, never about society itself.
🍋 2. The Hive-Mind
What a Chinese will tell you is exactly what every other Chinese will tell you.
They are like mirrors of each other, or like a hologram.
They have no opinions or preferences of their own. You’re not talking to an individual but to a reflection of a collective hive-mind.
🍋 3. No appreciation for anything
They only care about how a thing can enhance their social "status" or material benefit.
Art, nature, historical artifacts, etc are only seen from the standpoint of the pecuniary amount or the amount of “face” they could bring.
They always worry about small everyday trifles, and are constantly bickering each other, blaming each other over petty things.
🍋 4. Total lack of intellectual curiosity
This stems from the above: anything that doesn’t bring tangible material benefits is to be shunned as a waste of time.
Their anti-intellctualism is fanatic: you are not supposed to think about anything else than family life and moneymaking.
Every conversation is restricted to talking about either food or money.
Every other topic is likely to make them uncomfortable, and readily "offended" or "insulted" at the smallest things.
🍋 5. Extreme stinginess combined with irrational waste
Chinese are irrationally stingy on some things and irrationally extravagant on others.
Spending lots of time and energy over petty scrounging, only to splurge on unnecessary “prestige” items or activities that bring them '“face” in front of their hive.
READ ALSO: Why are the Chinese so stingy?
🍋 6. Belief in "social status" in the smallest aspects of life
Your every actions are being constantly analyzed to try to gauge your “social status”.
Very impressed by displays of superficial “prestige”, they love luxury brands
Yet will only ever buy those 2 or 3 luxury brands that have been validated by the collective Chinese hive-mind.
🍋 7. Life is lived as if it were a program
You need to do what others do, what is “normal”, without ever thinking for yourself. Chinese are the ultimate normies.
To be a normie with money is their idea of a good life.
🍋 8. You can’t have a relaxed, honest conversation with a Chinese, ever
Their whole lives revolve around the assumption that humans are born to screw each other for material benefits.
Thus any conversation is just a means to evaluate you, scrutinize you until they can devise a scheme to swindle you in some ways, either financially or socially.
🍋 9. Pathological lying even when it serves no purpose
“[...] The Chinese have no word for lie or for liar.
[...] There is [...] the difficulty, not to say impossibility, of lodging in the head of the average Chinese any notion that what is said is meant.
[...] With absolutely no advantage to be gained by lying, in a thousand instances where the explanation is of no importance one way or the other, a Chinese will relate the most absurd sort of cellophane lie.
From the smallest to the largest affairs, the aim always, among themselves and with foreigners, seems to be deception.
[...] The Chinese seldom lie with consistency, and never with ingenuity. Their production aims at quantity, not quality.
They could rarely fool a bright ten-year-old after he had been in the country long enough to get the hang of their style.
[...] Wherever we look in Chinese history we find it characterized by this absolute meaninglessness of words, with the virtues of loyalty, reliability and truth all tumbled into a sterility of mere outward noise.”
- Ralph Townsend - Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China
🍋 10. They cannot take the slightest criticism
They simply can’t take an open discussion. Any differing opinion is seen as “an insult”.
Their culture is all about lies and make-believe. So when you tell the naked truth they usually take the first excuse to leave the room.
As a result, there is no culture of irony and irreverence towards authority figures in Chinese society.
You are supposed to blindly “respect” anyone with money or authority.
🍋 11. Money is God. Materialism is everything.
They can't respect anyone or anything which is not based on materialism or "social status". They have a purely materialistic outlook on life.
Chinese believe that if someone is rich, it is most likely because they are more intelligent, diligent, and virtuous than the rest of society, and thus that they are reaping the financial rewards of being better people.
According to this mentality, money not only allows them to buy goods and services. Being rich Chinese culture affects everything: It determines how authoritative one’s opinions are and shapes others' perceptions of what is politically and morally correct.
Historically, rich men in China financially supported their extended families and friends, and enjoyed a certain amount of prestige and subservience in return.
Their expectation is that those around them should act submissively toward them, which means that many wealthy benefactors feel they can act with an impunity not afforded to poorer people.
Their typical behavior is to throw just enough crumbs around, until they can make others dependent from them and in turn freely abuse them socially.
🍋 12. All forms of physical work are considered "low class"
Again, this is something related to “face” and “status” obsession: When a Chinese does any form of sport, it is only out of mimicry to the modern international lifestyle and then they only do it to take photos of themselves, to “gain face” in front of the hive.
Otherwise they'd be much more happy to just sit in front of a bowl of noodle. They have zero interest in actual physical exertion.
In the same vein, walking itself is seen as "low class". They are so physically lazy that they will always prefer to wait for a car and spend 20 min in traffic than just walk 10 min to get anywhere.
Driving motorcycles is also irremediably deemed as "low class" even if it's so much faster and more convenient.
"Almost every veteran foreigner in contact with native Chinese has been asked in bewilderment why he plays tennis, or why he rides a horse without appearing to go to any definite destination. A frequent query is, “Why don’t you hire coolies to bat the ball around and sit down and watch?”"
- Ralph Townsend - Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China
🍋 13. As a result, there is no such thing as self-reliance in Chinese culture
Their whole lives revolve around sneaky social games of trying to make others socially and financially dependent, like a tenant farmer.
So when disaster strikes, you've got a bunch of totally incompetent mommy boys who will die by the millions, incapable of cooperating still trying to cheat each others out of a few crumbs.
That is the ugly secret behind the recurrent periods of starvation in China: it is their scarcity mentality, greed and cutthroat attitude that creates the penury, not the other way around.
Speculative cheating techniques such as the ones explained here are always being used in China:
The people who control the economy are totally ready to sacrifice half of the country's population, as long as they derive some financial benefit out of it.
🍋 14. Can’t resist social pressure
When a new branch of a “famous” brand opens in their location, you’ll have a 50 meter queue in front of that shop for the next 2 weeks.
Chinese are hypnotized with luxury brands and worship these useless luxury items as if they were holy objects. Some even consider a Louis Vuitton handbag as some form of “investment” (I kid you not) akin to gold or silver.
This leads them to be extremely stingy when buying everyday useful items, only to later become extremely lavish, splurging on unnecessary luxuries.
The women are vapid, soulless drones who care about nothing other than how many followers they have on Instagram. They literally don't care about anything, other than some overpriced pair of shoes that cost about $4 to make...
"Better be sick and sad in a BMW than happy and healthy on a bicycle." - Modern Chinese saying
🍋 15. An obsession with “social status” and kitsch luxury
Example: A Chinese guy said that Trump was now "embarrassed" because Huawei had paid for a very expensive advertising on the Dubai tower, in response to Trump’s ban of Huawei products because of industrial cheating.
In the Chinese mentality, Huawei "got back" at Trump by showing "they have a lot a-money lah". This was supposed to “embarrass” Trump.
In Chinese mentality, showing “you have a lot of money” is the ultimate “face” credit, and others are supposed to blindly respect that and start groveling and showing you obsequious deference.
🍋 16. Evaluating other countries only from the money and “prestige” point of view
This leads to the building of useless skyscrapers in China which are empty and left unfurnished - but at least the skyline looks “expensive”.
They also forbade the driving of motorcycles in Chinese cities, afraid that this would project the image of being a “poor” country - they don’t realize that nobody cares about that outside of their Chinese bubble.
Kuala Lumpur also forbade motorbikes in an attempt to “look rich”, due to the heavy influence of Chinese materialism there that sipped into the Malaysian mainstream.
🍋 17. The Oriental Despot Mentality
Deep down the deepest wish of every Chinese is to be some kind of uncontested, dictatorial “leader” in their community
Cooperation does not exist among them, only unconditional obedience to whoever has emerged as the most skilled in making money.
Due to this character, the vast majority of Chinese businesses are a one-man enterprise, micromanaged with little to no delegation.
As a result, in all Chinese communities, personal independence is punished.
They do the opposite: trying to make you dependent, so that you become a perpetual slave of “the family”, slave to the head of the family, slave to the company, slave to the government and to mainstream beliefs.
This is the Oriental Despot mentality. They don’t want to empower you, they’d rather keep you in ignorance and powerlessness to maintain a sense of control.
🍋 18. The Chinese have no use for freedom
The Chinese do not hold freedom as an important value.
Westerners are totally mistaken when they think any significant portion of the Chinese want freedom.
They systematically favor safety and are ready to sacrifice all freedom for safety and conformism.
They only want more material comfort. It is a low-testosterone culture of absolute social conformism.
The much-praised Singapore, for example, is managed like every Chinese family business: the rich uncle will make sure you have material comfort and safety, in exchange for your slavish obedience and you just pretending to be happy.
This kind of system works well with the Chinese, who only need money and noodles. Other people prefer a bit of danger and insecurity over living in a golden cage.
🍋 19. Hollow social life and mimicry
They see everything in terms of superficial "image" and pride, regardless of the actual substance and truth of things.
They do not have any personal opinion and only function through atavism and social determinism.
They do a thing only because their family or community does it, without ever wondering about the reasons behind it nor questioning anything.
🍋 20. Shit-scared of "what other people think"
They do not accept anything that isn’t validated by their community, no matter how good it is. Approval of their peers is paramount
Their obsession with face, reputation and “dignity” leads to a love of ritualism and over-complicating things that could be done quickly, directly, efficiently.
"A Chinese, callous in many respects, is acutely sensitive to ridicule and public acrimony. After many inquiries I could never learn of a single authenticated instance of one remaining happily indifferent to such tactics."
- Ralph Townsend, Ways that are Dark: The Truth about China
🍋 21. Hating out of envy is the core of Chinese mentality
You will never see a Chinese sincerely wishing well to others. They have a sadistic joy in seeing others being in a lesser position.
Of course this type of human ugliness is universal, but in Chinese culture, it is systematized.
“Their language is chock full of proverbs about peace and good will, and yet a short walk through any native Chinese street will reveal more family rows, angry bickerings over trifles and more general quarreling than anywhere else in the world.”
- Ralph Townsend, "Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China"
🍋 22. Crab-bucket mentality
They’d like to succeed in life, but if they don’t, they’d as well be happy by making you fail - it would bring them the same amount of satisfaction.
Destroying others out of sheer jealousy is integral to their mentality.
"[…] It is a frequently true principle of Chinese character that if one of them is not strategically in position to kill you, he will most cordially and admiringly agree with you."
- Ralph Townsend, "Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China"
🍋 23. Absolutist mindset
They are authoritarians by nature - They are incredibly inflexible at thinking outside of their cultural norms. All they see is: right vs wrong, us vs them.
The Chinese are constantly bitter about almost everything and they think the world revolves around their ideals.
They are incapable of treating another human being as an individual and will only see others relatively to their "social status" and as an extension of a hive.
“Gratitude, in the shape of reciprocated kindness and consideration, cannot be expected in the average run of experience with Chinese.” - Ralph Townsend, - "Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China" (1933)
🍋 24. Cowardice and Hypocrisy
Harvard's Personal Score is a score that Harvard gives based on character traits such as integrity, courage, kindness and empathy. But the record shows that Asian students get the lowest personal scores of any other group
Total hypocrisy - They smile, only to screw you from behind. They will never do or say anything frontally - they are very fearful of direct confrontation.
They put up a total facade in public, only to reveal a totally different, extremely aggressive attitude in private
Every time you see a Chinese beating around the bush for no reason, he is either trying to “save face” or to evaluate how he's going to scam you in some petty things. Either way.
They often acting like spoiled children with a disproportionate ego, vanity and pride, having a low tolerance to frustration, being risk-averse and very afraid of ridicule and of direct confrontation.
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