It's difficult to explore this question without being accused of racism, but I'd like to better understand why some cultures are so much more economically successful than others. The Chinese are such a great example of this. Wherever they go, they seem to end up being very successful. For example, in the Philippines it's claimed that Chinese are 1% of the population, but control 60% of the economy (http://opinion.inquirer.net/31223/ethnic-chinese-dominate-ph...).
> why some cultures are so much more economically successful than others
They're not. You're falling prey to selection bias. The Indians, Chinese, Bengalis, Nigerians who have chosen to go abroad are unique and special. They're the ones who take this courageous initiative to go into a land of unknown, likely other Chinese who are not travelling abroad - if they would, they probably wouldn't do as well.
I suppose the other part can be explained by culture. I'm a brown guy who came to America sometime ago, my family relatives are right now basically all priming their kids to become doctors. They are so committed to the idea that their kids are going to become doctors that I would bet a good amount of money that the kids will get good MCAT stores, will get residency, and perhaps even open their own clinics (they know this is where the money is, and they let their kids know this too).
The path of lifee I think is more conservatively and clearly defined in India than in America or other Western societies. In America, if your son wants to be an artist, a painter, a musician, you tell him to try his best. Indeed it is socially acceptable both by families and our society for a person to aspire to be anyone he wants to be, to do anything he or she wants to do. In contrast, the strongly knitted social cohesion and solidarity of places like India and Bangladesh impose a certain structure and path: you go to school -- you try really hard, you respect the hell out of your teacher, you go to college, you get married, and you try your darndest to provide as much as you can for your wife and kid. And that is not done by playing with high-risk games -- it is done by going the way that is known and suggested by community leaders, friends, families.
I don't think I've answered your question very satisfactorily or completely, the best I can say is it's the culture that's responsible for this. And I'm totally not happy right now with mainstream culture of America (especially the one lead by corp: misogyny is rampant (have you read the shit Eminem says in interviews? Why is Chris Brown still so celebrated?), math/science aptitude is equated to unattractive geekiness, etc. etc.
(I'll probably get accused of cultural imperialism for this comment, but well, it's the Internet and people can accuse anyone of anything. I'll probably also get some facts wrong, but corrections are welcomed for that.)
I think a lot of it comes down to "culture has consequences". It may not be possible to say that one culture is "better" than another, but that doesn't mean that the collection of habits & worldviews that make up culture doesn't have real effects in the real world. And then when you apply the yardstick of economic success - which itself is a culturally relative value, many cultures don't care about money at all - of course some cultures will do better against that metric.
Some examples:
Many cultures (Indian, Pakistani, everything descended from Spain/Portugal/Latin America) have a very loose notion of time. When you say 6:00 PM, you really mean sometime between 6:00 and 7:30 PM. This is great for social occasions, where everyone shows up relaxed. It's not so great for business deals or transactions, because it makes it very difficult to plan or schedule anything efficiently. Imagine running an airline where every passenger might show up in a 2-hour window after the official departure time.
Some cultures (like the American South, Arabia, or Russia) tend to be very honor-based, where if someone slights you, you have to enact revenge or be seen as weak. Other cultures (like Silicon Valley, Christianity, or some Confucian cultures like China and Japan) are much more "turn the other cheek" - when someone slights you, you refuse to associate with them and instead focus on building up yourself and your relationships so that your personal life improves, figuring that they'll get their come-uppance eventually. The former is more effective in sparsely-populated settlements where everybody knows everybody, because word travels around and a 3rd-parties assessment of you as weak could negatively impact future relationships. The latter is more effective in densely-populated environments with a number of chance encounters, because each new opportunity comes with no memory of previous encounters, and so your time is better spent on activities that are positive-sum for yourself rather than negative-sum for your opponents. The contemporary economic world is much more like the latter than the former.
Some cultures (notably the U.S.) believe that it is the responsibility of the person being offended to speak up and assert their boundaries. Other cultures (notably Japan and China, and historically Native American societies) believe that is the responsibility of the actor to avoid causing offense. Both of these are local maxima within a society of like people; in the U.S. everyone is jostling for position and constantly negotiating what's okay and what's not, while in Japan everyone knows the rules for what's socially acceptable and doesn't step outside those bounds. However, when they contact each other, it's pretty clear that the culture that believes it's somebody else's responsibility to speak up when their rights are violated will run roughshod over the culture that believe it's somebody else's responsibility not to violate rights. Witness how the first American settlers reasoned "Hey, if the indigenous people don't have the concept of land rights, all this land must be free for the taking!" while the indigenous people were more like "You take our land, give us diseases, destroy our way of life, and herd us on to reservations, and all because we greeted you as friends."
(As a side note, I suspect the latter cultural disagreement is behind much of the distrust and criticism of Silicon Valley startups. As a startup founder, you have to believe that what you're doing is making the world a better place, and so you just do things and see how it comes out. If people object, you take their objections into account and see if you can work out a compromise solution that respects their rights too, but you don't specifically try to think of everyone that might possibly be negatively affected and avoid doing it if there's even one such person. However, many people - even in the U.S. - operate under the assumption that "Other people should not do things that hurt me", and so they are somewhat justifiably upset when they lose their job due to technology or their private data is used by advertisers or their favorite product goes away.)
Anyway, bringing it back to China - I think that Chinese culture has a combination of elements that together are pretty well-adapted to the modern business environment. It highly values learning for learning's sake, which is very handy in today's information-focused world. It's pragmatic and engages with the real world. It generally focuses on positive-sum engagements and long-term relationships, placing a high premium on social harmony. It incorporates a strong work ethic and belief in duty as a virtue.
American culture is also well adapted to the modern economic world, but in different ways. American culture places a high premium on risk-taking and pragmatic innovation. It is also a guilt-focused culture rather than a shame-focused culture; the latter is probably Chinese culture's greatest business weakness, as it encourages people to hide mistakes rather than learning from them.
Both of them are significantly more well-adapted than other cultures that focus on personal honor, shame avoidance, male-dominance (one of the U.S's key economic advantages over the last 60 years has been the entry of women into the labor force), or traditional values. These are not bad cultural traits, but they are disadvantages in competing in a system that values rapid adaptation to the needs of others.
This is a very insightful comment. Thank you. I think I saw an article on HN before talking about this different notion of time, unfortunately i cant remember the title.
Indians in Uganda controlled something like a quarter of the economy while being only 1% of the population. That was one of the main reasons they were expelled from Uganda. I find the Philippines number pretty remarkable not so much for the Chinese success but that the non-chinese allowed the situation to continue.
