On some level I have no right to complain about what I complained about in yesterday’s post. When I first went to China at 23, I was a roiling mess of self-righteous “concern” for China in its failure to be exactly like the U.S. It’s taken almost 20 years of learning for me to nuance my understandings to where they are today, and I’m learning more all the time.

That said, it’s worth looking at the cause of the annoyance. From a cultural standpoint, the quality in question is self-righteousness. It’s a fine line between self-righteousness and universalism, which I’ve discussed a lot on this blog. I think the link between the two stems from the conflation of two ideas: that there should be a standard worldwide, and that the standard should be our standard, where “we” are a particular cultural group: in this case the U.S. or the West.

When self-righteousness is present, it tends to take over. I become more concerned with how I’m better than you than I am with what you might actually be up to in your life. In fact, it becomes hard for me to hear about what you’re up to in your life, because in my eyes it doesn’t really matter, because you’re not really the kind of person whose actions and interests matter. After all, I’m better than you.

Whether or not this exercise in pop-psych is accurate, it characterizes what I see in much Western media coverage of China, and much of what China novices from the West are curious about when it comes to China. Few Western journalists and publications seem interested in the myriad, and quite concrete and difficult, actions taken by officials, businesspeople and other leaders all across China to improve the lives of the Chinese people. There is much to be learned and gained from a careful study of these efforts. And thankfully it’s not all deficit, as shown by this piece from Time. Here’s a teaser:

Could the world’s lone but weary superpower actually learn something from China? It’s a politically incorrect question, of course. China is an authoritarian nation; its ruling Communist Party deals ruthlessly with any challenge to its hegemony. It remains, relatively speaking, a poor, developing country with huge problems to confront, massive corruption and environmental degradation being Nos. 1 and 1a. Still, this is a moment of humility for the U.S., and China is doing some important things right. If the U.S. were to ask the Chinese what it could learn from their example, it might gain some insight into what it’s doing right and wrong.

Now if I wanted to I could complain about the shock the author seems to be expressing at the very possibility that the U.S. could learn from China, but I’ll refrain. Or not.

Now that I’ve written this thoroughly self-righteous post, feel free to let me have it.