Item — HN Reader

>>I hope the Chinese are able to take criticism better than the west. Westerners can't get over their superiority complex.<<

Actually, most Chinese people I've met, especially those who were born and raised in mainland China, have a massive superiority complex. In every type of discussion comparing the West to China, they keep bringing it up the fact that China has thousands of years of history, and has invented things like gunpowder. Most of them view the West - especially America - with condescension and contempt.

2 comments

I've noticed the same thing - but I've interpreted as an inferiority complex. As a Chinese, I feel like the Chinese feel an incredible need to prove themselves.

After all, the 19th and 20th centuries have been one crushing defeat after another. The yearning and obsession with past achievements (like, 500+ years past) is symptomatic of a general lack of confidence in the present state of Chinese society.

You meet a lot of Chinese with a chip on their shoulders and a remarkable need to assert that China will be strong once more, along with vague threats about how naysayer countries will get their comeuppance when the time comes. This all sounds quite similar to "The South shall rise again!" - an attitude borne out of defeatism, not true optimism.

That's an interesting perspective. I'm actually Turkish, and Turkey definitely has the same king of yearning and obsession for the achievements of its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire. That said, it's a bit different because Turks tend to have a real inferiority complex, as opposed to one that is disguised by the pretense of superiority like the Chinese. I wonder why this is.

Russian people of Soviet era had the same complex.

We were taught that we have best science, culture, sport, military and most progressive state. Also we were strong but good, not as "prokliatye imperialisty" ("cursed imperialists")

It evaporated in '90s, but not completely - I often hear "we were ...."

Jerome K. Jerome wrote about the same complex in British people. If I recall correctly that must be in "Diary of a Pilgrimage"

I hear that Russia still has the best mathematicians. Culturally Russia was at the forefront of music/opera - just see the famous violinist of the 20th centuary. I read though in Nathan Milstein's biography that he fled the Stalin regime which stifled art in Russia.

but you really had first rate scientists.