> How can you still hold this belief after reading articles like this?
I'll push back on this. Spending time in China helped me look at myself and break down what was universally human and what was learned culture. For example, the story about the missionary giving a talk at the local English Corner about "the meaning of life"
> He said he knew what people would say having lived in China for sometime but even so was stunned at how deeply and rigidly held the belief that making money was the entire meaning of life. There was no value system. There was no exogenously held right or wrong, only whether you made money.
Yes, people espouse that. Even to themselves.
But spend some time with them and find out what makes them happy and sad, and what they want to make money for, and it's the same as a westerner (and I suspect the same as any mentally healthy human on the planet): having basic autonomy in your life, developing as a person, quality time with friends and family, helping each other, a chance to raise children peacefully and otherwise contribute to society. Those are the things people genuinely want.
I think people universally find obsession with wealth to be unsatisfying, but it's sometimes only after a learning experience. They may try it for a while, but they realize it's a socialized value, not an intrinsic one.
To overgeneralize, China as a whole is still at an earlier stage of learning about wealth than the US or Europe or Japan or Korea. But they are in the process of learning the lessons of wealth and will, I believe, get there faster than we did, simply because everything is changing faster there than it did here.
Edit: And we in the West are not done learning either!