| The transformation undergone by China in the post-Mao era has been, by most accounts, modernization. Demands for this kind of widespread change---which included state reforms, different approaches to science and technology, and socio-cultural visions strongly influenced by the Western experience---can be located in the late 19th and early 20th century. In the present-day, individualization of the Chinese people, as one of the many processes that make up China's modernization, deserves greater attention. Western history looms large as the model of individualization, and is here treated in two general periods: ambiguous and unambiguous individualism. Emancipations from church, state and god marked the West's eventual transition to unambiguous individualism. Analysis of China's long-term socio-cultural trends, the 1980--2000 Chinese Youth debates and fieldwork amidst present-day Shandong university students, however, illustrates a different historical trajectory taken by China. The Chinese Youth debates show a process which would not have been of significance in Western society, or possible in China's imperial past: the rapid and extensive adoption of individualism. Present day survey data from university students adds further depth to this conclusion.; In contrast to Western developments, the Chinese have experienced emancipations that are better described as the delegitimization of (or, emancipations from) 'traditional' values, proletarian ideology and home consciousness. Owing to a long history of these discourses---which were articulated through a social formation analyzed as "collectivist" in relation to the Western experience---individualism in China is still ambiguous. Variations of collectivism continue to be put forth as official ideology by the state, while the data presented here suggest that the most modern sectors of the Chinese population maintain (in comparison with the West) some collectivist values. But it is also clear that in the last two decades the attitudes of this group have undergone a massive transformation. Despite the political and economic convergence that China is experiencing with the West, the lived experience of "modernization" continues to exude, as this paper attempts to show, Chinese characteristics. |
