That said, kaizen as a Japanese industrial concept a la Toyota is continuous (small!) improvements, not broad ground-breaking change. With Japanese manufacturing, it was quite compatible with keeping with social norms on the surface and deeper, while optimizing to whatever goals. Kaizen as a broader life-philosophy term is known as gaishan in Chinese, where the word originated and is still used with some frequency, and is known as many other words in Buddhism, where the concept originated. Surely the inventors and practitioners of kaizen in South Asia and China haven't completely lost their love for improving things to the beckoning of material comforts and money?
The gǎi shàn meme (and its consistent practice) seems to me more highly correlated with specific organizations that promulgate it: families, companies, clubs, etc., than a particular ethnicity/nation. YMMV, of course; I'm interested in hearing where people see this meme practiced.
I have heard the phrase used in the same empty way that many places must use it, along the lines of corporate pep-talks, such as "Listen up! We must improve and get better at what we do, etc. etc." This is obviously not the Toyota kaizen meme as said and did.
At the moment, chabuduo reigns over gaishan in China.
https://aeon.co/essays/what-chinese-corner-cutting-reveals-a...
> I'd caution against using broad strokes
Yes it can be dangerous using broad strokes. However are there no dominant features or beliefs in a particular culture regardless of its size? My opinions on Chinese culture both on the mainland and elsewhere were formed after a lifetime of exposure to it so maybe I'm biased.
> That said, kaizen as a Japanese industrial concept a la Toyota is continuous (small!) improvements, not broad ground-breaking change
I don't know as much about Japanese culture as I do about Chinese. What I mean is the Japanese obsession with mastery of an art or skill. I can't remember the word. I don't feel that it's shuhari either but I could be wrong.
How long will their time last?
The funny thing about the influence of culture on innovation is that when this country (USA) was rewriting the rules and breaking down boundaries this way and that way, we were sending minorities to jail like "AI WW" and generally compelling them to behave and know their place.
China has bet the farm on continual economic growth, and that worked for a while, but they're close to parity with the west now, so maintaining that rate of progress is going to become much more difficult. When the government fails to deliver continual rapid quality of life improvements, autocracy is going to become a major liability. They are going to be forced to either rapidly democratize, or become increasingly isolationist. I suspect that the government will push for the latter, though in the long run democratization is pretty much inevitable. The djinni is out of the bottle, and it's not going back.
This isn't to say that I see China collapsing per se, but there are some major speed bumps on the path to global domination.
China, even the Han-culture is not a monolith. There are huge cultural differences in China. One billion people are not 'one china' in anywhere else than communist propaganda.
There are differences in business culture, management hierarchy, language, food (what people in the west think as Chinese food is Cantonese food) and relationship with authority. People in eastern cities are culturally more individualistic and take more initiative than they do in other parts of China. That's something that foreign companies with subsidiaries in China have noticed.
This happens in every culture when pressures are pushed upon it. For decades after WWII, Japanese goods and products were considered inferior and "just good enough", and specialized in cheap things that didn't really need to be high quality. External pressures (exports) forced more precision and rigor on them.
Same thing for China. Right now it manufactures many things for a low price to a low quality. Nobody really cares if a chew toy is to spec. Once things start mattering, like exporting for Apple, the cultural pressures start changing quickly.
Also, striving for perfection occurs in every culture. Look back at old Chinese teachers or masters of particular arts or culture. Simply attributing the way things are in certain areas during certain times to cultures is simplistic and naive. Sure, if the market pressures were there, China could manufacture goods to high tolerances. But there is no large market currently for extremely high quality mass market consumer goods, except for computers and cell phones, which China has locked up nicely.
The Shaolin masters and their philosophy are pretty much gone. Today those who train just end up leaving the temples and either joining private security or the military for money. Culture and society's values aren't static. I'm describing what is reality today, and not in a past century.
> Simply attributing the way things are in certain areas during certain times to cultures is simplistic and naive.
This isn't isolated to just exports. There's fake food, specifically rice and noodles made from plastic. Dangerous blood transfusion services. There's fake and poor quality meds. These exist regardless of market pressures and demand. There's a nothing else matters but my family and I mentality and a social hierarchy model that's hard to understand unless you grew up in it; living there for a year or a few months isn't enough.
You will not find anyone who actually ate any of this mythical rice. Just friends of friends of cousins.
