Good, informative post Turnoi. But I do think you may be sharing it with someone with an agenda that is not too great. Seems like he already has me and others in his crosshairs and would like nothing more than to marginalize my experiences as that of [edited] a limited scope of how things work. But he only exposes himself for his own narrow mindedness the more he talks.

For me, the desire to be loved or AMAE as you have stated it can be interpreted in another way. I have come across articles from Sinologists (and possibly scholars who study East Asian culture in general) who have stated that the Chinese have little to no internal locus of control(definition can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control). The belief that their own lives are controlled almost completely by external factors stems from the fact that they are taught to obey outside sources completely and the ability to use their own conscious to tell right from wrong isn't nourished by parents or teachers. This can be seen with young Chinese people who talk about a top 10 school they attended or an award they received. This does not bode well for creating a morally stable culture as people who see little value in themselves by themselves cannot possess the confidence to speak about the right from the wrong. It makes it easy for those in power to say anything they want and create a paradigm of inequality that nobody really wants to touch due to fear of being rejected.

It has nothing to do with moral as far as I can see. Morale is a very arbitrary, insecure and weak indicator for what we should discuss and view more in sociocultural and perhaps psychoanalytic, and perhaps even empirical, terms.

In my opinion morals cannot reach and become anything "higher" unless the person is put into the situation, but at the same time societies who teach their own people better can attain a certain level of acceptable morals. I do know there are factors which can derail the person from making the ethical choice and there still could be the chance that it wasn't necessarily the person's fault totally. However morality is a useful tool to see and indicate the integrity of a group of people as you yourself might have a vested interest to protect yourself. For example, I mentioned that some older people who live in Shanghai wander around purposefully in expat heavy places so if they were to collapse from poor health or fall down they believe they would have a better chance of being helped by strangers. While morals are hard to measure, it doesn't mean they don't exist. Societies that are better to live in have attained a certain level of self sustaining morals amongst a good portion of its respective populations, once you get to that point you need to maintain rather than improve. But the problem with talking about China is that morally the population has not even obtained maintainable levels yet. Rule by man is still how things work there, and that can be viewed as nothing but barbaric.

I also will not make the claim that "all" Chinese/Korean/Japanese etc. people are like that; I merely say that this topic has been discussed by Japanese and Chinese scholars with reference to individualistic societies as we know them from the West and the implications it may have for cross-cultural dialogue between for example FTs in China and their Chinese partners.

How these cultures are interpreted by their own people hundreds and thousands of years ago we will never know. If the society's values changes vastly you'll be getting new interpretations again. The opinions of how Eastern scholars see the West is also important to factor in as one can tell how questioning or non-questioning they are of their own culture.

It is a "hot" topic because such a cross-cultural dialogue will not be free from controversies, misunderstandings, and even conflicts. Your input as well as that of others on here shows that we are in the midst of such a process, and only my crocs are free from that....LOL

Yes, people will not give up ground easily. But so as long as there are the people who want to disregard the fact that if a society has a large amount of good things, then it can also have a large amount of bad worthy of being discussed then the controversies, misunderstandings, and conflicts will continue and I will gladly participate. Calling people out on their flaws is not something I have a problem with, especially those who cannot seem to come down from their high pedestals.

I do think a croc's tail could swipe at that pedestal and knock it down :)