That is the "mentality shift can take generations" part.

Those ladies may be part of the elite now. But remember their parents or grandparents went through the Great Chinese Famine where an estimated 15-60 million people died.

> No. These are virtues, not luxuries. You don't need a high income to be compassionate or have self-esteem.

It's not about you, it's about others around you. If they do not have a "high income" (or, in other words, materially comfortable life), you cannot expect them to be comfortable enough to be compassionate or have self-esteem. And then, if they don't, but you do, it's an easy recipe for your compassion to be exploited and your self-esteem to be perceived as danger. It's a self-leveling system.

It's not an individual matter, but a social one. Always has been.

And it's not specific to China - I see it in Poland, a relatively "we've been damn poor forty years ago" country as well.

One's compassion reservoir capacity is proportional to one's capacity to fulfill its own needs first. You fill your cup first before you pour into others.

> These are virtues, not luxuries

I'm only speaking from my own experience here. When I've seen stressed out people who are expected to believe in "virtues", they just become more dishonest to hide their bad behavior.

The bell curve of human behavior stays the same no matter what time or place.

Severely competitive and hopeless environments will do a hell of a job on human compassion.

Read about the dehumanizing effects of concentration camps on individuals hiding food from their family or praying their father dies so they can get his food

Its arguable that our ability to build luxurious enough societies has allowed out compassion to flourish far beyond what is witnessed elsewhere in the state of nature

Which is why I think the whole premise of GP is kind of suspect. China has housed a highly-developed society - not just a civilization, but a contiguous, if evolving, social order - for longer than most of the rest of the world. Even what they consider backwoods and rural is basically urban by most historical standards.

These aren't the problems of a society rising out of a state of nature; as TFA states, "The narrative is that China experienced a “century of humiliation”". I think certain aspects of Chinese culture as we know it, writ-large, make more sense coming from people who weren't just recently struggling as a society, but who are well aware of how that condition compares to their historical one.

Say that all you want, make it a mantra if you like. But have you ever skipped a meal out of sheer poverty? Or might you be projecting ethics (ie aka Americanism)? Maybe we should actually cut them some slack.

Who was rich in Imperial China? In most travelogues I've read about China in the 1800s, there was huge and deep poverty then too.

Just like with most Empires, that wealth was heavily concentrated with the rich and powerful, a very small group of elites.