If Chinese parenting is so good, why has China been a backwater for centuries?
That kind of rigid, no-fun approach makes very efficient workers, but leaves zero room for creativity. And creativity is the key to wealth creation. I’m all for m ore discipline in parenting, and we could learn SOME things from the Chinese model. But aping it would just create a generation of very efficient kids that were very good and making sterile copies of other people’s work. What’s the last original thing the Chinese created? Hmm?
Actually, for most of its history China was intensely creative, with many if not most inventions originating there. Gunpowder, compass, crossbow, stirrups (debated), windmills, paper, paper money, printing (block), rockets, a great many irrigation methods, etc., etc., etc. It's a very, very long list, though not quite as long as some sinophiles claim.
Then sometime between 1600 and 1800 China just stopped being inventive, with very rare exceptions, even dropped many of the technologies they'd already developed.
Why this is the case has a long history of debate, with no real agreement reached. It's known as "Needham's Question" for those who are interested in looking into it.
RE: If Chinese parenting is so good, why has China been a backwater for centuries?
I can think of many reasons.
1) ARROGANCE. For many centuries ( especially during the Manchu dynasty ), the attitude was this — We have LITTLE to learn from the West, We are the Middle Kingdom, THEY LEARN FROM US, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
Well, that did them a lot of good — even as Japan was already learning and absorbing Western technology during the Meiji era ( mid 1800’s ), the Chinese were still rigidly clinging to the old Literati style examination system made formal during the Song Dynasty 800 years before.
2) Clinging to old Confucian traditional style of education is not a bad thing. But the moment you cling to old habits and ignore progress from the rest of the world, you guarantee that only the literati and the elite bureacurats prosper and the rest of the peasants don’t.
It is not a surprise that the Chinese who LEFT China during the dynastic periods to trade and learn from other countries were the ones who prospered.
3) Eventually, the Chinese themselves noticed their backwardness after they were unable to defeat the British and even the “inferior” Japanese who occupied a large swath of their territories in the late 19th and early 20th century.
This gave rise to the New Culture Movement ( Shin Wun Hwa Yin Tong ) that swept away the old educational order and opened China to Western style education.
Of course, we had the disastrous 30 year period from 1949 to 1977 with China again becoming enslaved by a Communist Regime ( which gave rise to the disastrous Cultural Revolution ) that impoverished and starved millions of Chinese and purged millions of intellectuals.
The Chinese have looked back at their history and are determined not to let that happen again. They are slowly getting there.... BUT... are till in effect CONTROLLED by one party.
That too, will slowly change. It is not a closed world and anyone can learn from everyone else ( both the good and the bad ).
Hmmm Chinese Food!
I have some Chinese kids I work with. One 4th grader — no one speaks English as a first language at home, AND he studies Chinese on the side — has finally gotten out of Extra Help in English (or whatever it is called) and into the mainstream. He got a B- on a report he didi recently, which was his lowest score this fall. Dad was SO UPSET about it. Here he is, finally mainstreamed, immersed in English at school but not at home. This evidently is very common — finding fault vs encouraging.