Here’s a comment from an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune by Michael Vatikiotis, “In Asia’s Chinese diaspora, are loyalties divided?” It’s about the influence of the overseas Chinese people, whose numbers are estimated, with wildly variation, from 35 to 60 million, and apparently even higher. Given the large ethnic Chinese population in southeast Asia, the higher figures seem reasonable to me. But I’m not a demographer, and I’m dazzling by all statistics related to China, in any case.

The difference between being American and being Chinese is that America has a universal appeal, rather like a religion; being Chinese is a tribal thing, Yeo argues. “A Chinese cannot cease being a Chinese.”

Some people would say that religion is tribal, too, and that it’s only Americans who see religions as things to be put on and taken off like clothing. As we put it in the introduction to the Encyclopedia of Community (I’m using an editorial we: in fact, I know that Michael Zuckerman of the University of Pennysylvania wrote these lines):

Consequently communities in industrialized, Westernized nations, at any rate become more elective than imperative. In the United States, people are no longer Italian, or Republican, or Seventh-day Adventist because their parents were or because they have to be. They can embrace their Native American, or Norwegian, or Jewish heritage because they choose to celebrate that aspect of their repertoire of identities. Further, they can style it according to their own preferences and predilections. Contemporary Protestants, Catholics, and Jews alike customize their religions to suit themselves, and so do contemporary ethnic groups. We improvise our sexuality and abandon our old political partisan allegiances for an unprecedented independence.

We go on to say:

But the absence of sustaining primary communities is no minor thing. Humans need to be connected, and without adequate communities we suffer from personal and social ills that include depression, poor health, and crime. At its most extreme, an absence of human ties leads to violence and extreme social disorders - one has only to think of the stereotypical description of a serial killer as a loner.

And this relates to Chinese perspectives a good deal, I think, and to guanxi. The value placed on sustained connections and social harmony, even at the loss of some personal choice and individual autonomy, is something many Americans find hard to understand.