The United States and the People’s Republic of China

Culture: The United States and the People’s Republic of China
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Culture: The United States and the People’s Republic of China
Lately, the frequency upon which the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China have been on the news (whether mainstream or on the internet) has been quite high owing to their desire to attain global economic supremacy. The emergence of the COVID-19 virus in the seafood market at Wuhan has provided another dimension to this saga (Mizumoto, Kagaya, & Chowell, 2020). Despite the unraveling desire for supremacy between the two countries, it is fair to assert that they have robust cultures. The two cultures have notable discrepancies when it comes to the individualism versus collectivism aspect, language, and their views on materialism and consumerism.
Individualism versus collectivism has been cited as a major hallmark of cultural definition. It is one of the elements in Hofstede's cultural framework where he argued that this metric determined “the relationships individuals have in each culture” (Soares, Farhangmehr, & Shoham, 2007, p. 280). American society holds individuality and freedom values in high regard. In its extremity, this position is justified by peoples’ desire to accumulate wealth and even more specifically, corporate competitiveness whether internally or externally. Chinese culture is a little bit different in that there is a higher sense of the collective. In this regard, the Chinese people elicit significant respect for others and perceive social harmony as crucial to their well-being. For instance, it is unacceptable to embarrass one in public, which is a notion reflected in the Chinese concept of mianzi or “saving face.” Also, one pours tea for others before serving themselves. The Chinese people value relationships and perceive them as facilitators to their success, which is different from the self-reliance notion that is predominant in American culture.
Language is another predominant aspect and beyond the words, it is a major reflection of a specific culture. The American people use the English language while their counterparts use Mandarin. The two are unlike considering the characters of the languages with the case for Roman letters being the most straightforward difference. The Chinese language is over 3,700 years old unlike the relatively recent 26-letter alphabet of phonetic symbols (Ed...