Reconsidering The Binary Individualism/Collectivism Dimension: Are Modern Chinese And American Cultures At Opposite Ends Of Hofstede's Line?

This thesis calls attention to first study whether the booming modernization and economy in China has brought individualistic traits to the traditional collectivist oriented Chinese society on the whole and then to examine whether modern Chinese and American cultures still lie at the opposite ends of Hofstede's binary dimension of individualism and collectivism. Among the four dimensions summarized by Hofstede (1980), I/C has been the most widely adopted theoretical concept that has been used to understand cultural differences between groups. It is considered by many researchers to be a bipolar dimension, with individualism on one end and collectivism on the other, while others, like Osyerman, Schwartz, and Baskerville, find this categorization troubling and prone to error. Some scholars assume that individualism is more prevalent in industrialized western societies than in other societies, especially more traditional societies in developing countries. The open-door policy, rapid economic development and widespread globalization bring China the radical urbanization, the concomitant nucleation of families and the weakening traditional values. Therefore, this thesis highlights the impacts that the modernization plays on the traditional collectivism, examines the status quo of individualistic traits in modern Chinese society and further reconsiders Hofstede's binary I/C dimension.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter briefly introduces the background and significance of the study. The second chapter gives an overview of the constructs individualism and collectivism, some criticisms to Hofstede's I/C dimension as well as a brief introduction to the correlation between modernization theory and I/C dimension. Chapter three respectively portrays Chinese collectivism and American individualism to provide a basis of comparison. Next in chapter four the author analyzes some major social changes in modern China and the corresponding transformation of Chinese cultural characters on the whole. The last chapter concludes that although some individualistic traits have become prevalent, especially among the younger generation, the core cultural values of collectivism have not been significantly changed.