Comments on: The Chinese Lacking in Creativity?

By: J

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:34:16 +0000

This doesn’t seem like a discussion on creativity, more about modes of art. And I disapprove of the disparagement of the western (particularly American) educational system, as it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The US educational system is not the best, but I was never hyper-specialized in anything (by the way, to say kids are less hyper-specialized in China is to not watch the Olympics or Chinese Opera). Anyhow – I agree that a good base of knowledge will develop creativity – but to say that a wide base is not required to develop an individual style is a fallacy. There are plenty of people on the internet with an individual style without any base – they can’t do anything with their art. China is plenty creative, and if you look at the traditional artistic base you can see it’s creative direction. I don’t think that’s any negative reflection on the creative style of the west, though. It’s just a negative reflection on the enforcement and acceptance of cultural colonialism.

By: Mystery soup

Mystery soup — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 05:33:03 +0000

I think that the majority of the problem is that Americans are raised to believe that everything they do is amazing and special, no matter what it is. They are also taught to speak their minds on all subjects, because not saying what you think is considered to be “sneaky” and “weak minded”.

I think that it is difficult to understand a culture that you were not personally raised in, and this causes much confusion.

By: Dyske

Dyske — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:42:30 +0000

Hi Sara,

That is an interesting hypothesis. Are “creativity” and academics mutually exclusive? Does that mean, the universities that are academically superior like Harvard are creatively inferior? Does that relationship between academics and creativity hold true within the US among different schools and institutions?

If yes, it might be universal. If not, then there is no reason why China could not also win the creativity contest.

By: Sara

Sara — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:37:41 +0000

I see that China seems to have an issue with the fact that mostly Americans won this ‘creativity contest’. But you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. The U.S. is berated for its general lack of academic rigor, but they get the fame and bragging rights of stealing this creativity show. I’ve never seen studies about this, and I’ve never been to China, but I am to understand that the Chinese are much more involved in academics and much more studious while they don’t seem to excel in the innovation department. So, what will it be, China? Academics or creativity? It seems you can’t have both. I wouldn’t complain about not having a Chinese representative among the winners when it seems to be a trade-off for a vigorous academic system.

By: Dyske

Dyske — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:29:25 +0000

Hi Jake,

We just have disagreement about what “creativity” is. You are using the Western definition of it, and yes, as long as we use the Western definition of what “creativity” is, then your arguments are correct. I just think that the Western definition of “creativity” is bogus, and self-fulfilling.

By: Jake

Jake — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:22:58 +0000

Sorry, but this article is amazingly wrong. Irrational anti-americanism/anti-westernism without any evidence, reasons, or logic. Who is emphasizing “creativity”? How? Americans have no classes in creativity, and supposedly creative classes like art, drama, and music have always been minimal and are even decreasing in frequency. Teachers don’t focus on creativity in their lessons, because instructional time is at a premium due to the emphasis on national test scores. There is no sacrifice of basics for creativity. Creativity occurs in the west naturally because it is not STIFLED as it is in asia. Western cultures allow for wide, open individuality and expression. Asian cultures are much more reserved. Often the restraints are not only cultural, but legal as well (China, Vietnam, North Korea, Myanmar, etc). 35-40 years ago, artists, many artists, writers, poets in China were being imprisoned in labor camps or even executed. Today it is commonplace for a creative film, book, or blog to be banned in several of these countries. There are a million ways to offend an asian (or an asian government). So, in a group society, deviating from the group is frowned upon and has consequences. But creativity requires individual thinking, not group thinking and fear of criticism. Asia is severely handicapped in creative endeavors because of this cultural difference. Luckily, Japan has demonstrated that there is hope. Certainly, all asian countries will most likely become more creative as time goes on and they are gradually westernized/modernized. But they will never overtake or even come close to western countries in this regard. Africa and the middle east theoretically could, but for asia, the ingrained cultural barrier is too great.

By: Inst

Inst — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:06:37 +0000

By the way, regarding the inability of Chinese to innovate, the Chinese are in fact very good at innovation right now. The unfortunate thing is that it’s expressed in terms of melamine in your pet food and carcinogenic dry wall. The proposed reason for that is that most Chinese producers have no idea what they’re producing. It’s like a cargo cult: produce a product in a certain way, and these westerners (or Japanese or Koreans or whatever) show up to buy your product and give you money for it. The profit outcome is already predetermined: if you manage to get your goods to meet a certain standard, the buyer will buy your product and give you money. If it’s above normal quality, well, you wasted a lot of money in upping the quality as your buyer won’t pay more for better quality product. If it’s below normal quality and manages to deceive the buyer, well, this is called cost-innovation, you profit, and your cargo cult process has been streamlined.

By: Inst

Inst — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:42:13 +0000

In my view, rote-oriented culture tends to produce more late-bloomers. In my experience, if you want to look for original thinking, you look towards the middle-aged and the elderly, and they’re the ones who have new ideas. The problem is, for these kinds of people, they’re usually bound up in social obligations that they never have the opportunity to implement; they have rent to pay, they have a wife, they have to pay for their children’s education, so they never have the opportunity to take the risks necessary to bring their ideas to fruition.

I like the notion that you have people with more life-experience coming out with their ideas, in part because I have a disdain for other people of my age. A lot of people are told to be creative when they simply don’t have the capability to do such things, so in attempting to do something new, they fall flat on their faces and end up being a waste. Encouraging the young to be creative reminds me of a reverse tragedy of the commons; the society at large benefits from young people taking chances, but for the average individual the failure rate is a disaster. At the same time, in a rote-oriented society, the tragedy is that by the time people develop a unique sensibility, as I’ve mentioned before, they no longer have the ability to execute.

By: VG

VG — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 13:37:51 +0000

OK, I think I do understand your point now, that you are referring to manipulating what people perceive as being “creativity” rather than creativity itself, and in that case I agree with you, China can easily get the upper hand. On the other hand I do feel that that is not manipulating the perception of creativity as such, but merely putting on the facade of creativity (which is, I suppose, creativity in itself in a paradoxical way). I have a great deal of respect for Chinese culture, and I certainly think that, particularly with the excesses of Maoism now well out of the way, China can certainly come out on top.

By: Dyske

Dyske — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:36:01 +0000

Hi VG,

I believe you are misunderstanding my point.

“and institutionalized knowledge seems to be what you are advocating”

My point is that there is nothing to advocate with respect to teaching or encouraging creativity, because there is nothing you can do about it anyway. So, it doesn’t matter what you teach or how you teach in schools. I’m criticizing the Western criticism of China (and the East in general) that how they teach somehow stifles creativity. I think that is nonsense. No matter what you do, you can’t stifle creativity.

You equate flourishing of culture with creativity. I don’t. I don’t think Russia now is any more creative than before or any other country for that matter. Just because they are building a whole bunch of flashy modern buildings and selling a massive amount of luxury goods does not mean that they are being creative.

New York’s economy was booming before the crash last year, but there was nothing particularly creative about anything anyone did. When the economy is booming, people try to take care of everything with money, and we don’t see much creativity. We just see a whole bunch of crap get produced. I see people becoming more creative with their approaches to doing business or solving problems now, so I’m quite happy about that.

The way I see it, how creativity manifests in culture and through different periods in history has nothing to do with what true creativity is. As I said in my original post, that’s just “marketing” of creativity. How “creativity” is presented and perceived, is a different matter from what creativity actually is.

If China wises up to how to manipulate the perception of “creativity”, in a few decades, they would be able to defeat the US, and the Americans will be publishing a bunch of books on that subject like “The Secret of Chinese Creativity”, “China, the Creative Capital of the World”, “The Tao of Creativity”, and so on, just like they wrote a whole bunch of books about Japan in the 80s in a similar way.

In short, the Western conception of what “creativity” is, is all on the facade, and it wouldn’t be hard for China to beat the West at their own game of manipulating the perception of “creativity”. That’s my point.