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You are describing what appears to be a pan-Asian thing: that lying is just considered to be "clever." We see this in East Asia as well.

This is why you don't just open borders and think that large increases of people from other cultures don't severely affect our own. Small numbers of immigrants must assimilate. When numbers are strictly controlled, immigrants must and will learn the accepted moral and ethical codes of their new nation.

But when there is no enforcement, and immigrants from these "lying = cleverness" nations just flood in, they ride over the existing moral and ethical code structures of our society like a steam roller.

I think a lot of Americans are still naive even after 9/11--we think that the rest of the world looks through the same eyes that we do. Many don't look at stealing the way we do. Many don't look at lying the way we do. Many don't look at death like we do. They aren't disgraced by the same things. What would be no big deal to us, would be a major insult to them.