re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit

Well it's not like they are going to run out of people

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From just about any perspective imaginable (moral, civil, environmental), China is still dealing with the devastation caused by Mao. Nearly the entire country suffers from a terrible mix of a collective inferiority complex and an "every person for themselves" mentality.

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I agree that Mao ripped that country a new a-hole and really changed Chinese values. The Chinese have had it ingrained in their head to ignore basically any atrocity that's going on around them, and that's almost entirely due to Mao.

A week before I left China for the last time (and I'll never forget this) a 3-4 year old was crying in the middle of an outdoor mall with his mother and father. The kid starts screaming when he's not getting his way on something, and the father kicks the child, and then when the child hits the floor from the kick and starts screaming more loudly, the father kicks the kid again, with the mother hitting the father with her purse. The Chinese people briefly stopped to look for less than a second, but then just proceeded with their day ignoring the deplorable father. I remember just being stunned, and then I looked around the mall and saw 2 caucasian people. We just stopped stone cold in our tracks and looked at each other in disbelief to what just happened. But we knew we could do nothing, since the Chinese by default would have ganged up on us if we tried to stop the father simply due to the fact that we are white and largely seen by the general public as invaders.

It spoke volumes to me on what the Chinese are able to ignore. They can ignore gross violence and death and not even think about it when they get home. Granted, I do think that the Millennials over there are changing and are highly cynical of their government and actively wanting change. There is no comparison between them and Generation X. They are obsessed with American culture and principles and actively seek to emulate us, which is a good thing. You show Millennials the video with North Koreans reacting to Kim Jong Il's death, and they think it's ridiculous. Gen X or earlier though, they think what they're doing is perfectly sane.