[notoriousjpg]

> Too much deference to authority is not a good thing (in my opinion the weakest part of asian culture).

Yes, the homogeneous entity of Asia and its culture.

How do you even have a productive conversation about this topic when people are this ham fisted and uninformed?

Have you actually been to Asia? Try traveling there and see if you still think there's "too much deference to authority". If anything the opposite is closer to being true, this stereotype is a western cliche.

And yes, I'm Asian and grew up in "Asia".

[seanmcdirmid]

There are strong Confucian cultures in Korea, Japan, and to a lesser extent (ironically enough) China. In those countries, you can really feel the authority deference. Samsung especially has trouble with this when opening branch R&D offices in the USA.

You really have to work in these countries to feel it though, just visiting isn’t good enough. When I was working tech in China, expats had lots of war stories about working in japan or Korea, which sounded a lot less appealing than working in China (though working for an American company, the culture was necessarily mixed). I’m sure SE Asia and South Asia/India would be fairly different in many respects.

[trhway]

>to a lesser extent (ironically enough) China

i heard people attribute that to Mao who explicitly encouraged the younger generation to challenge established authority (which was a way to turn and use them against the rest of the state and the Party power who became critical of Mao blaming him for the failures and disasters of the Great Leap Forward) as part of the Cultural Revolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Red_Guards...

"At the Red Guard rallies, Lin Biao also called for the destruction of the "Four Olds"; namely, old customs, culture, habits, and ideas.".

[chris11]

The Cultural Revolution was highly anti intellectual. Academics and artists were imprisoned, or even killed. In 1956 Mao did start the Hundred Flowers Campaign, which encouraged criticizing the government. But that was followed in 1957 by a campaign targeting people who had the wrong opinions.

[notoriousjpg]

I get what you mean but i think there's different types of authority. Your boss, your parents, your elders, the government. They all get treated very differently. So deference to authority isn't quite specific enough to be applicable imo.

[mastazi]

I disagree. I’m a westerner but I have lived in South East Asia (Indonesia and Thailand), and my wife is Thai, I regularly visit her parents and relatives and we are pretty close to her family.

Obviously every individual is different and I can think of people I met there that don’t conform to that stereotype, but in general, yes I think that on average South East Asians have a tendency to avoid criticising anyone in a position of authority, or at least they do that less often than westerners. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing but it’s definitely there. When I speak of westerners I should point out that I was born in Italy and I now live in Australia and these two countries, rather than the USA, make up much of my idea of “western” (even though Australia is geographically located in the Asia-Pacific region!).

[tathougies]

Have you considered that Thai are unlikely to criticise authority because criticising the government can fall under lese majeste and result in severe prosecution?

[mastazi]

I don't think that's the case because:

1. I was talking about authority in general, you are not accused of lese majeste for criticising your teacher or your parents.

2. The other country that I mentioned (Indonesia) is a republic.

[n4r9]

I think some Asian countries have this a lot more than others; Japan and Korea probably among the most. One example that springs to mind is that Korean Air had a major problem with plane crashes until nearly 20 years ago. A crucial exacerbating factor was the culture of deference from the flight attendants to the pilot:

https://thediplomat.com/2013/07/asiana-airlines-crash-a-cock...

Deference is often baked into Asian language - using different heirarchical expressions for someone based on their age, status and so on. We used to do something similar in Western countries but its nowhere near as marked.