China has enough attention, but not enough respect

I remember a phrase: the thing that mostly terrifies you is large enough and changing rapidly. Absolutely, China meets both of these. In recent years, China has been getting more and more attention from all over the world. We could get in touch with more and more foreigners in our lives and at work. We also hear lots of comments from the foreign media, positive and negative. Yes, we should be proud of all of them. Through the effort of one generation, we finally stand near the center of the world stage, and get the spotlight to have a show.

Never let excitement lead you to a lost. The question is why is there so much attention on us from the outside? We must realize that more attention doesn’t mean something is better. The Middle East peace progress has attracted people’s eyes for many years, but I don’t think it is an exemple to learn from.

For historical reasons, we keep learning from the West. We set up the market economics, urge privatization, and reform our monetary system to build a similar economic structure with the West. We take part in global competition according to the rules made by the main Western countries. In these years, we have made huge achievements and also met big challenges. To get a better place in the global market, we spontaneously consider using Western thought to analyze the complicated environment. Under this situation, Western culture spreads into us, from every aspect, and changes our lifestyle.

If you live in China for a long time, you could feel internationalization is the most important direction for Chinese companies, both small and large, never mind if it’s necessary. You could observe the influence in the education field. There are so many English training institutions sprawling in cities, not to mention role of English in the exam system. You could find many foreign experts working in different fields of our economy. They will get a higher salary, but do the same thing as a Chinese. Can you imagine how these experts do their work well without the basic language skills and common sense of our culture? Behind all of the above is the influence of Western culture. It looks unequal but reasonable.

Now we consider one thing, why do so many foreigners come to China, leaving their homeland behind? Honestly, the income they can get in China is the same as in their own countries. Maybe the reason China is attractive, but easy to live in, considering the unemployment rate in western countries. So we should not be blinded by the surface of society and ignore the facts happening around us. In one word, China has much attention, but doesn’t earn enough respect. We should not stop to enjoy what we already have, and must make a bigger effort to progress. It’s not time to satisfy.