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I don't know about that last part. Most Eastern European countries were part of the USSR and underwent massive revolutions. I've even seen them described as lo

I don't know about that last part. Most Eastern European countries were part of the USSR and underwent massive revolutions. I've even seen them described as low-trust societies, but they seem to do well.

factsaresacred 7y ago
The Cultural Revolution was unlike the political revolutions of Eastern Europe. It was a bloody orgy of violence and vandalism that attempted to tear traditional Chinese culture out from the roots, and in the process destroyed China's social fabric and trust, perhaps irreparably (or at least until the Party collapses and the country can confront its past - something the Eastern European nations have been allowed to do). An excerpt from the book 'Out of Mao's Shadow': > Families were torn apart as wives divorced husbands who had been accused of political crimes, children condemned parents, and siblings turned against one another. When the Cultural Revolution finally ended, it was easier for many people just to move on than talk about it... > ...Such violence has not been expunged from the country’s collective memory so much as repressed, and repressed memories have a way of surfacing unexpectedly. There have always been voices in China calling on the nation to confront the barbarity of the Cultural Revolution. Only with an honest accounting and thoughtful examination of the era, they argue, can the country come to terms with the legacy of mistrust and moral decay that haunts it today.
- vkou 7y ago
  The cultural revolution was not the cause of this. Chinese history did not start in 1966. 1966 was preceded by six decades of brutal military occupation, a complete breakdown of law and order, and civil war. I'm not sure you can point at any country that had gone through such a violent, unstable, and lengthy period of fragmentation and bloodshed, and came out on the other end as a cohesive, high-trust society.
  - shadofx 7y ago
    Taiwan and South Korea were both bloody, autocratic military regimes. Many nations have walked the bridge to hell and back, but the cultural revolution meant that China burned the bridge after crossing it.
    - vkou 7y ago
      One of your examples further proves my point - nobody can categorize Taiwan as a high-cohesion, high-trust society, despite not having a 1966 moment. The other's not a very close parallel. Korea was under Japanese occupation in that same time period, which was no picnic, but it at least had a functional, centralized government, and at least, was not an active warzone through most of it. (It is more similar to post-war Eastern Europe in that regard.) It also did not go through a multi-decade-long civil war.
      - MagnumOpus 7y ago
        > nobody can categorize Taiwan as a high-cohesion, high-trust society Having done business in both, it is an order of magnitude better than mainland China, both in terms of civil society (helping out strangers, littering, tax dodging etc) and in terms of larger-scale trust issues (prevalence of fraud). Same goes for Korea. (As for Korea not being an active war zone and having a functional centralized government in WW2... the Korean War put paid to that pretty quickly.)
        vkou 7y ago
        > Having done business in both, it is an order of magnitude better than mainland China, both in terms of civil society (helping out strangers, littering, tax dodging etc) Your personal anecdotal experience does necessarilly agree with the statistics. There's a difference, but not an order of magnitude one. According to the corruption perception index, Japan is at 73, the US is at 71, Taiwan at 63, Korea is at 57, India is at 41, China is at 39, and the Phillipines are at 37. Neither India, nor the Phillipines had a 1966 moment, if I may point out. According to trust polling, people in China trust their peers, and businesses more than in most other countries, but I'd assume you would want to dismiss that result. I can't think of a good objective proxy besides those two. Do you know of one? > As for Korea not being an active war zone and having a functional centralized government in WW2... the Korean War put paid to that pretty quickly. The Korean war lasted 3 years, and was largely a proxy conflict, with clearly-defined sides, largely made up of foreign armies. The Chinese civil war lasted 30, without anyone having a clear understanding of who the enemy was. It's like saying "The United States had a civil war, and it's now fine!" There's more than an order of magnitude difference in the cultural trauma of a war that lasts a few years, and one that lasts an entire generation.
ido 7y ago
What do you mean when you say eastern european countries "do well" (supposedly compared to China)? Some (like the Baltics) are doing great, but I don't think I'd rather live in Moldova, the Ukraine or Albania rather than China.
- virtuous_signal 7y ago
  “Well” was the wrong word (unless one is thinking of the experiment as a test). I simply meant the percentage of lost wallets returned. In the study from Science that the LA Times article covers, this group of countries as a block did better than all countries from South America or Asia, for instance.

factsaresacred 7y ago

The Cultural Revolution was unlike the political revolutions of Eastern Europe. It was a bloody orgy of violence and vandalism that attempted to tear traditional Chinese culture out from the roots, and in the process destroyed China's social fabric and trust, perhaps irreparably (or at least until the Party collapses and the country can confront its past - something the Eastern European nations have been allowed to do). An excerpt from the book 'Out of Mao's Shadow': > Families were torn apart as wives divorced husbands who had been accused of political crimes, children condemned parents, and siblings turned against one another. When the Cultural Revolution finally ended, it was easier for many people just to move on than talk about it... > ...Such violence has not been expunged from the country’s collective memory so much as repressed, and repressed memories have a way of surfacing unexpectedly. There have always been voices in China calling on the nation to confront the barbarity of the Cultural Revolution. Only with an honest accounting and thoughtful examination of the era, they argue, can the country come to terms with the legacy of mistrust and moral decay that haunts it today.

vkou 7y ago
The cultural revolution was not the cause of this. Chinese history did not start in 1966. 1966 was preceded by six decades of brutal military occupation, a complete breakdown of law and order, and civil war. I'm not sure you can point at any country that had gone through such a violent, unstable, and lengthy period of fragmentation and bloodshed, and came out on the other end as a cohesive, high-trust society.
- shadofx 7y ago
  Taiwan and South Korea were both bloody, autocratic military regimes. Many nations have walked the bridge to hell and back, but the cultural revolution meant that China burned the bridge after crossing it.
  - vkou 7y ago
    One of your examples further proves my point - nobody can categorize Taiwan as a high-cohesion, high-trust society, despite not having a 1966 moment. The other's not a very close parallel. Korea was under Japanese occupation in that same time period, which was no picnic, but it at least had a functional, centralized government, and at least, was not an active warzone through most of it. (It is more similar to post-war Eastern Europe in that regard.) It also did not go through a multi-decade-long civil war.
    - MagnumOpus 7y ago
      > nobody can categorize Taiwan as a high-cohesion, high-trust society Having done business in both, it is an order of magnitude better than mainland China, both in terms of civil society (helping out strangers, littering, tax dodging etc) and in terms of larger-scale trust issues (prevalence of fraud). Same goes for Korea. (As for Korea not being an active war zone and having a functional centralized government in WW2... the Korean War put paid to that pretty quickly.)
      - vkou 7y ago
        > Having done business in both, it is an order of magnitude better than mainland China, both in terms of civil society (helping out strangers, littering, tax dodging etc) Your personal anecdotal experience does necessarilly agree with the statistics. There's a difference, but not an order of magnitude one. According to the corruption perception index, Japan is at 73, the US is at 71, Taiwan at 63, Korea is at 57, India is at 41, China is at 39, and the Phillipines are at 37. Neither India, nor the Phillipines had a 1966 moment, if I may point out. According to trust polling, people in China trust their peers, and businesses more than in most other countries, but I'd assume you would want to dismiss that result. I can't think of a good objective proxy besides those two. Do you know of one? > As for Korea not being an active war zone and having a functional centralized government in WW2... the Korean War put paid to that pretty quickly. The Korean war lasted 3 years, and was largely a proxy conflict, with clearly-defined sides, largely made up of foreign armies. The Chinese civil war lasted 30, without anyone having a clear understanding of who the enemy was. It's like saying "The United States had a civil war, and it's now fine!" There's more than an order of magnitude difference in the cultural trauma of a war that lasts a few years, and one that lasts an entire generation.

ido 7y ago

What do you mean when you say eastern european countries "do well" (supposedly compared to China)? Some (like the Baltics) are doing great, but I don't think I'd rather live in Moldova, the Ukraine or Albania rather than China.

virtuous_signal 7y ago
“Well” was the wrong word (unless one is thinking of the experiment as a test). I simply meant the percentage of lost wallets returned. In the study from Science that the LA Times article covers, this group of countries as a block did better than all countries from South America or Asia, for instance.