In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell said: “Historically, Western agriculture is ‘mechanically’ orientated. In the West, if a farmer wanted to become more efficient or increase yield, he introduced more and more sophisticated equipment, which allowed him to replace human labour with mechanical labour: a threshing machine, a hay baler, a combine harvester, a tractor. He cleared another field and increased his acreage, because now his new machinery allowed him to work more land with the same amount of effort. But in Japan or China, farmers didn’t have the money to buy equipment – and, in any case, there certainly wasn’t any extra land that could easily be converted into new fields. So rice farmers improved their yields by becoming smarter, by being better managers of their own time, and by making better choices….Throughout history, not surprisingly, the people who grow rice have always worked harder than almost any other kind of farmer.”

And so it is that Gladwell joins the long list of anthropologists who say that thanks to Chinese farming techniques, the Chinese work harder. That’s why the Chinese do so well at school, continues the argument.

By contrast, in Europe, for months every year there was little the farmer could do. Land was left fallow because land needed to rest.  It is said that during the winter, peasants barely left their beds.

It is also often argued that in China agriculture required mass cooperation. Unlike in Europe, where the nature of the terrain meant individual farmers often worked in isolation.

Consider this, taken from Bubbles and Wisdom,  the book by co-written by the author of this article:

According to economics historian Angus Maddison, the adoption of Christianity was a key point in the West’s economic development. ‘The papacy,’ says Maddison, ‘imposed a pattern that differed substantially from what had prevailed earlier in Greece, Rome and Egypt.’ He went on to cite the church’s efforts to ensure marriage was ‘strictly monogamous,’ with ‘prohibition of consanguineous marriage with siblings ascendants, descendants, including first, second and third cousins.’ The purpose of this, argues Maddison was, ‘… to limit inheritance entitlements to close family members and to channel large amounts to the church. This had the effect of breaking down previous loyalties to the clan, tribe and caste.’ He said this in turn promoted ‘… individualism, accumulation and reinforced the sense of belonging to a nation-state.’

It has also been theorised that the Chinese have a more collective conscience, thanks to the different agriculture system adopted in China versus the West. The cultivation of rice requires mass cooperation, so you can imagine how farming practice in China may have been quite regimented. It has been speculated that this has encouraged the Chinese to think more holistically.

In the West, people are supposedly more analytical and individualistic. The legacy for this can perhaps be traced back to Ancient Greece, where the mountains and valleys of that country fostered a more individualistic approach to farming. There are even psychological studies that support these views. For example, scientists found that in an experiment in which various scenarios involving daughters rebelling against their parents were put to students, American students tended to suggest one party was at fault, whereas Chinese students were more inclined to try and see the account from both sides.

The West has its legacy of individualism, which in turn helped promote democracy. China, or so it is argued, with its legacy of Confucius and mass cooperation in agriculture sees a bigger emphasis on the group.

The argument continues, China will never have democracy and an ideological divide will always separate China from the West.

Those who say democracy can never evolve in China because the Chinese do not share Western individualism may be right. Others argue that the emergence of Christianity in the West and the breakdown of tribal culture led to individualism in the West, creating an environment that was ripe for democracy. These arguments may be right.

Consider, however, these words taken from an article in New Scientist (7 March 2009):

“The simplistic notion of individualistic Westerners and collective Easterners is undermined by studies designed to assess how people see themselves, which suggests that there is a continuum of these traits across the globe. In terms of individualism, for example, Western Europeans seem to lie about midway between people in the US and in east Asia.

“So it’s not that surprising, perhaps, that other studies find that local and current social factors rather than the broad sweep of history or geography tend to shape the way a particular society thinks.”

For the next piece on China see What went wrong with China and what went right?