Chinese values are shifting.
A University of California at Los Angeles study assessed Chinese values by analyzing the words used in more than 270,000 Chinese-language books and found that China’s social core is undergoing a major transformation. The psychology researchers focused on word usage in books published between 1970 and 2008. Among the findings: the word “obedience” was used three times as much as the word “autonomy” in books from 1970, while the ratio flipped in 2008 books, with “autonomy” dominating.Book authors used words like “choose,” “compete,” “private,” “autonomy” and “innovation” with increasing frequency as the nearly four decades progressed. The usage reflects greater individualism and sharp rises in “urban population, household consumption and education levels,” the study says.