Collectivism vs. Individualism: Olympics Provide Insight

Sport is an integral part of societies all over the world. What's so great and interesting about this relationship is that oftentimes we can use sport as an opportunity to make observations about the world around us. Sport can indicate changing trends in society and can enable comparisons to be made between different societies. The Olympics in China have provided great insight into China as a country and a people.

One of my favorite writers, David Brooks, used the occasion of the Olympics as a means to comment on China and to compare its collectivist mentality to the individualistic mentality of the United States. Here is a link to that article. Below are some key graphs and some observations.

The ceremony drew from China’s long history, but surely the most striking features were the images of thousands of Chinese moving as one — drumming as one, dancing as one, sprinting on precise formations without ever stumbling or colliding. We’ve seen displays of mass conformity before, but this was collectivism of the present — a high-tech vision of the harmonious society performed in the context of China’s miraculous growth.

The rise of China isn’t only an economic event. It’s a cultural one. The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream.

If Asia’s success reopens the debate between individualism and collectivism (which seemed closed after the cold war), then it’s unlikely that the forces of individualism will sweep the field or even gain an edge.

I definitely noticed the collectivist mindset when I spent a month in China back in 2005 when they were ramping up efforts to prepare for the games. Everyone was doing their part in a collective effort to make these games the best ever—not only was that their goal, they seemed to know that it would happen. The confidence was impressive. Maybe it’s the nature of living in an authoritarian environment, but the Chinese certainly seemed to subjugate their own self-interests for the interests of the nation. When I visited a school in the early morning all of the children were outside singing the national anthem (which is hugely nationalistic and actually kind of brutal) loud and proud—and collectively. At my school, you couldn’t say the pledge of allegiance without an atheist expressing his displeasure with our nation’s choice of words. China may have atheists, but the nation’s unity, and thus its success, takes priority.

Brooks is brilliant and there’s not much to add to what he has written. Indeed, it is spot on in my opinion. A successful person in the US is likely to attribute his accomplishments to his own hard work and commitment to his goals whereas a Chinese person will point to collective efforts and a commitment to goals in their societal context. For these reasons collectivist societies tend to be more self-deprecating that individualistic ones. We can see this play out in the Olympics where the US tends to excel in individual events while China often performs better in team events. By and large, we in the West have been brought up to think that, in general, success comes from the individual’s hard-work and his dedication to capitalism. But as Brooks asserts, “The opening ceremony in Beijing was a statement in that conversation. It was part of China’s assertion that development doesn’t come only through Western, liberal means, but also through Eastern and collective ones.”