Why do the Chinese people glorify elders and authorities?
All throughout history the people of China have always worshipped those held in high authority over them.
Look at Qin ShiHuangDi the so-called First Emperor for instance.
He was a monster and a megalomaniac whose bloodthirsty reign took the lives of hundreds of thousands, including many of the scholar class who had alternative ideas and philosophies about government.
And yet the modern Chinese celebrate him as a God-like figure who rescued China from a chaotic past and gave them a unified empire, a big ass wall, and a common language.
I do not dispute those events of his epic legacy. But I also find it very odd that so many would be so enamoured of these deeds without remembering the monstrous price in human lives that was paid.
The same goes for many of China's leaders through the ages.
Aside from the many Emperors, there are too the examples of Mao Ze Dong and Deng Xiao Ping who have accomplished a great deal of great things at a great cost to humanity.
Remember the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and Tianamen Square.
And these people are still worshipped as gods by the Chinese people!
Not to mention the Sino-philic neo-Confucian leader of a certain island in South-East Asia just north of the Equator- beholden and revered as a Messianic ruler by his minions.
Are we Chinese fundamentally an authority-worshipping culture, a race of insects and ants and hive-minds, all bent and focused on achieving wealth and prosperity at the expense of moral values, stability at the expense of dynamism, cohesion at the expense of uniqueness, unity at the expense of individual expression, and authority at the cost of human rights?
Sadly the answer seems to be yes.
I think it has to do with the fact that we are the most populous people on the planet.
You can't rule 2 billion of us effectively without resorting to Stalinist methods.
To be cynical but realistic, the larger a people is, the more unruly it would become, hence the need for draconian methods, especially if the vast majority of the ruled are uneducated peasant simpletons (which is the case in real life).
But necessary evils are still evils, as evil as they are necessary.
And beware us Chinese, O the Rest of the World, for we the Yellow Horde are coming to infest every corner of the planet with our Hives and Colonies! BWAHAHAHAHA
