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This article discusses the impact of the one-child policy on LGBTQ+ youth in China and one unintended social effect of Chinese family structure.

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Continuing with social relations in China, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge one of the darker aspects of Chinese culture: China's history of anti-Blackness. I don't do this to condemn China as racist, but to acknowledge the lives and culture of Black Chinese residents. Here's another article that gives insight into what China's anti-Black racism looks like in the present day: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/us/politics/african-americans-china-coronavirus.html. This last article has less to do with China as it does Asian Americans in general, but here's a more positive description of African and Asian relations in the US: https://www.vox.com/22321234/black-asian-american-tensions-solidarity-history.

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The recent news of evictions and mistreatment of African students in China during the COVID-19 pandemic is rooted in a history of violence and discrimination.

[W]hat kind of security do we have, if crimes are committed in the eyes of the people responsible for our security and yet nothing is done about it.

- The Nanjing Branch of the General Union of African Students in China, June 1986

The recent wave of evictions and forced detentions of Africans living in China, especially in the southern city of Guangzhou, has shocked most people, especially Africans. While the reporting and analysis of the ongoing situation have been quite widespread, and have even forced a response from the Chinese government, most observers have generally not connected this episode to previous, and even uglier, episodes of anti-black African action in China. In fact, there is a long history of these kinds of violence and discrimination against Africans in China, which are linked to how Africans are viewed there. During the 2014 Ebola outbreak in three West African countries, Africans in China were subjected to forced quarantine episodes too, but they did not capture the popular imagination the way similar episodes of mistreatment do now.

Chinese perceptions of Africans draw from two separate threads: that Africans are dangerous, disease-carrying individuals, and also a tolerated minority subject to the whims of state violence.

It is worth revisiting this long history.

African students have been coming to China since 1960, and violent tensions between those students and the Chinese have been occurring since 1962, when a Zanzibari was beaten by hotel attendants. Still, it would not be until 1979 in the Shanghai Textile Engineering Institute when a pattern of anti-African violence was established by Chinese students, which "culminated in the [Nanjing] 1988-89 racial turmoil." The Shanghai violence began on July 3, when Chinese students complained about the African students' loud music and confronted them. A brawl ensued, and eventually a mob of Chinese students attacked the African students with makeshift weapons, following rumors Africans had raped Chinese women. The police response was insufficient to protect the Africans. According to scholar Barry Sautman, "Sixteen foreign students were hospitalized, but as many as 50 foreigners and 24 Chinese may have been injured." A similar clash took place in Tianjin in 1986, this time over the mostly male African students' relations with Chinese women. They were also reproached for playing loud music. The African students, after being detained by the police, needed protection from Chinese student groups raiding the foreign students' dormitories. It should be noted that African diplomats had no success in trying to work with the Chinese authorities to better protect their citizens in China; some ambassadors suggested their governments send fewer students to China.

Nanjing universities in particular seemed to have problems dealing with African students, and their branch of the African Students Union sent a letter to the authorities protesting their treatment a year before the 1979 Shanghai violence, with no apparent change in policy. In 1980, according to Michael J. Sullivan and Philip Snow, Chinese students put up posters denouncing their government for welcoming African visitors.

There were multiple racially motivated attacks against African students between 1985 and 1986, and the Chinese police would arrive but not protect the students. In 1988, officials in Hehai University built a wall around the foreign students hall, ostensibly to protect against theft, but actually to ensure that African students did not bring Chinese women to their rooms. When the African students knocked down the wall, the university officials informed them that funds from their stipend would be docked in order to pay for the damages, and the students staged demonstrations. It was during this tumult that the university decided on December 24, the day of the Christmas Eve dance, that all foreign students must register their guests at the university gate. Two African students, from Benin and Liberia, wanted to bring two Chinese girls with them to the dance, and went to the main gate at Hehai. After that, what actually happened is bitterly disputed, as illustrated by two passages in Michael Sullivan's article:

[T]he entrance guard asked the two girls to register, the two African students and refused to let them do so. At that point, several other African students came over and started a quarrel with the entrance guard. In the ensuing brawl, eleven staff members were injured, one of them seriously, including a university vice-president who had one of his ribs broken when he tried to persuade the combatants to stop fighting.

The African students ... claim that the security guard permitted them and their guests to enter the campus after he saw the women's Hong Kong passports. When the Benin student later returned to the front gate to wait for another Chinese friend, a group of heckling Chinese students attacked him, chanting "Black Devil, you must respect the laws of China!" and "What do you want, Black Devil?" The African students then ran to the foreign students' hall to inform their friends of this attack after which several African students "began to arm themselves with wooden sticks, empty Jinling beer bottles and stones."

Official accounts stress that the African students were difficult to manage. African student accounts stress the racist provocation of the Chinese students. Regardless of whose "fault" it was (I personally believe the African students' interpretation of events), there was a fundamental hardening of Chinese student attitudes after the incident. Within hours, a rumor of a Chinese woman being kidnapped by the African students mobilized 300 Chinese students to lay siege against the African students' dormitories, and both group of students fought until 4 a.m. on December 25.

Black devils! Kill the black devils!

- from "The 1988-89 Nanjing Anti-African Protests: Racial Nationalism or National Racism?" by Michael Sullivan

On December 25, Christmas Day, another group of 300 Chinese students attacked the foreign students' hall because they believed a rumor that a Chinese man had been killed by an African student the night before, but the authorities had failed to arrest him. Shouting that they wanted to "kill the black devils," they began another melee with the African students, which lasted for over two hours until it was broken up by the police. The General Union of African Students in China (GUASC) requested from the university a police escort to the train station so they could go to Beijing to contact their respective embassies, which was swiftly refused. The African students, after suffering multiple attacks from mobs and being offered minimal protection by the university administrators, decided to go to the rail station on foot. To the Chinese students, it looked like they were fleeing after one of their own had murdered a Chinese man and that the government was letting them go free.

In the evening, 600 students from Hehai University went off to gather support for their cause. They marched to Nanjing University, but as Sullivan recounts, "only a handful of students... responded. The vast majority had been bribed with five RMB and a special meal by the school authorities not to participate." Though Nanjing University did not offer much in the way of student support, other universities had students march in unison with the Hehai contingent, where they eventually made their way to the Jinling Hotel, the largest hotel in Nanjing and where the protesters believed the local officials were hiding the African students. Those African students, in the meantime, made their way to the Nanjing rail station but had no tickets to board any trains, and the security bureau would not allow them to leave because they needed to get to the bottom of what happened during the Christmas Eve fight. The bureau stationed forces to both prevent the African students from leaving and the Chinese students from attacking the African students.

On December 26, as the Chinese students were returning to their universities, a group of 200 went to Nanjing University again to try and muster more support for their cause. A group of white foreigners engaged with the protesters, and when asked why they wanted to kill the African students, a Chinese protester explained that they wanted justice for the Africans' supposed killing of one of his classmates, and that he had no quarrel with white foreigners. Undercover policemen grabbed that student and a few others and hauled them away. Student demonstrators went to the Nanjing Provincial Government Building complex and demanded that the legal system be changed so as not to privilege foreigners, and that the murderers be arrested. The Chinese police dispersed the crowd after an hour. More dark-skinned foreigners went to the Nanjing rail station as they came under attack by racist Chinese mobs, and several non-dark-skinned foreign students from the US, Japan and Europe also joined in solidarity. This group of 140 foreign students was eventually discovered by the Chinese student demonstrators, and they gathered 3,000 supporters to insure that "justice" was meted to the murderers. In the end, the situation was resolved when armed guards forced the African students onto buses and transported them to a military guest house in Yizheng, roughly an hour outside of Nanjing. This protected the African students, removed their presence from the student demonstrators, and allowed the police to hold the instigators of the Christmas Eve incident, whoever it might be.

Beginning on December 27, the police took steps to quash any further demonstrations in Nanjing, and, perhaps most importantly, had a spokesperson at the Jiangsu Ministry of Education inform that public that nobody had died during the Christmas Eve incident. While there were limited pockets of further demonstrations, they had all ended by December 30 in Nanjing. PRC authorities also moved quickly to make sure stories about the incident did not leak to the US or European press, as non-African students came under increased surveillance and the African students were indirectly told that they would face expulsion if they communicated their experiences to foreign reporters.

Also, on December 27, Sullivan writes:

A diplomatic delegation representing the African nations of Zambia, Ghana, Congo, Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Senegal, Equatorial Guinea and Niger were allowed to travel to Yizheng to meet the African students. The diplomats were not successful in winning the release of their students, reflecting the African nations' lack of influence with the Chinese government.

In contrast, the American students that were brought to Yizheng were immediately returned to Nanjing after the US consulate threatened Chinese authorities. While in Yizheng, on December 31 the police forcefully held six African students they believed to be responsible for the Christmas Eve incident, and the Hehai students were taken to a military base while the others were sent back to Nanjing. The remaining Hehai students returned to their university on January 5, though not after new regulations were created to ensure that they could not have Chinese girlfriends sleep with them in the university. Of the six detained students, three were released, and three were expelled.

This marks the end of the incident proper, though there were still flare ups in other cities, including mob attacks on African students in Wuhan-the same Wuhan where African students faced difficult choices some 30 years later. Kaiser Kuo had been in Beijing during that winter and had heard about the protests, and he graciously took to the time to share his recollections in a personal email correspondence, from Washington DC, on December 20th, 2012:

I was actually in Beijing in the winter of 1988-1989, not in Nanjing, but there were some anti-African protests that spread to Beijing as well, and there was (back in those days, without the Internet or any more reliable means of transmission) all sorts of confusion as to where the actual events took place to spark anti-African demonstrations ...

... We kept hearing stories, filtered of course through a very unsympathetic international student crowd, that they started simply because some African students in Nanjing (other versions said Hangzhou, and sometimes these stories were repeated with Beijing as the setting) had taken some Chinese girls to a dance and weren't allowed in, or had trouble with the security or with male Chinese students at the door. These stories escalated into tales about fistfights, about sexual assaults, even about a woman who was supposed to have been (in the exact words I was told) "fucked to death" by African men whose penises were too large for her, so she bled out. I was very skeptical, and was horrified when there were actual marches in Beijing protesting against African students.

Incidentally, there appeared to be a connection between the Nanjing Anti-African Protests and Tiananmen in 1989, as it fused nationalism, racism, gender and youth movement into a powerful force. This confluence is further explored in the important scholarship on Chinese conceptions of race, though Sautman and Sullivan's articles provide excellent backgrounds on the genesis of the Nanjing protests as they related to Chinese racism, nationalism, and perhaps most importantly, the protection of Chinese women. To wit, as noted in Sautman, a 25-year-old Chinese man quoted by John Pomfret in January 1989 said:

When I look at their black faces, I feel uncomfortable. When I see them with our women, my heart boils.

Note that one of the most telling aspects of this incident is that African countries could not pressure the Chinese government to release their students from Yizheng, while the US could. Considering that there were only two students from two countries, Benin and Liberia, who were actually involved in the Christmas Eve gate incident, at minimum the Chinese government could have figured out which countries' citizens were not involved and released them, but that did not happen.

One might argue that African governments exerted similarly weak pressure regarding the crisis in Guangzhou. However, African governments exerted strong public and private pressure on behalf of their citizens in response to the incident, and that did generate statements from various organs of official China. Did this pressure have a material effect of Africans on the ground? That is a more difficult question, and answering it would require an entirely new investigation, but getting official China to make any statement is an achievement. Moreover, African governments indicate that these sort of repeated bouts of discrimination against Africans may no longer be acceptable. As Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission, HE Mr. Kwesi Quartey said earlier this month: "Africa values its relationship with China but not at any price. Further act of brutality meted out to Africans will not be countenanced by the African Union and indeed all Africans."

In conclusion, the Nanjing Anti-African Protests were a defining moment of Sino-African relations because they revealed how people on the ground interacted, rather than what leaders expressed to each other in meetings and in documents. To be clear, Chinese people are not uniquely or irredeemably racist. Americans have their own history of rioting against black students, for example. We must collectively ensure that these narratives are part of the current discourse. To that end, part of maintaining these stories is connecting them to the present when necessary. Africans suffer because of the color of their skin, because of false rumors, because of short-sighted Chinese officials, because of a prickly national government. These underlying issues have not significantly improved in the intervening decades.

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A brief history of anti-black violence in China

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The recent news of evictions and mistreatment of African students in China during the COVID-19 pandemic is rooted in a history of violence and discrimination. The recent wave of evictions and forced detentions of Africans living in China, especially in the southern city of Guangzhou, has shocked most people, especially Africans.

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This essay examines the history and development of feminism and misogyny in China through the lens of various Chinese women throughout history.

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The Science Behind Traditional Chinese Medicine

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The Science Behind Traditional Chinese Medicine

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This study examines the effects of traditional Chinese medicine on a molecular basis and explains how and why it works.

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Aging is a process of bodily change with time, leading to increased susceptibility to disease, and ultimately death. Because reactive oxidant species (ROS) and immune dysfunction are major causes of age-related diseases [ 1- 3], the maintenance of antioxidant and immune fitness is a rational approach to preventive health care. Accumulation of ROS-induced oxidative damage to DNA, proteins, and other macromolecules has been regarded as a major endogenous cause of aging [ 1]. In addition to ROS-mediated cellular damage, aging was found to be associated with immune senescence, attributable at least partly to the loss of T lymphocyte functions [ 2, 3]. Such loss increases the prevalence of infectious diseases in the elderly. With advances in modern medical research techniques, research on age-related chronic illnesses has become intense, in the quest for valuable preventive and therapeutic measures. Humans have been making continuous efforts to fight aging. As Chinese medicine has always emphasized the prolongation of a healthy lifespan, many Chinese tonifying herbs have long been used to safeguard health and to delay the onset of senility.

Under both normal and pathological conditions, ROS are generated in all cells undergoing aerobic metabolism, particularly from mitochondria. The cell possesses two distinct antioxidant defense systems to counteract damaging ROS: (1) enzymatic antioxidants such as catalase, superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase and other related enzymes/molecules, and (2) non-enzymatic antioxidants such as ascorbic acid (vitamin C), α-tocopherol (vitamin E) and β-carotene. To achieve optimal antioxidant fitness, every component of the antioxidant defense system should function optimally because antioxidants must work together in a synergistic manner. Chinese tonifying herbs have been shown to possess both in vitro and in vivo antioxidant activities [ 4, 5].

The immune system fights against 'foreign invaders' such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, yeasts and parasites. The humoral and cell-mediated immune responses show great competence in dealing with intruders. Moreover, the surveillance function of the immune system tends to prevent cancers, particularly in old age. However, an overreactive or imbalanced immune system can cause allergies or autoimmune disorders. A well-constituted and balanced immune system is thus crucial for safeguarding health. Chinese tonifying herbs have been shown to stimulate or suppress the cell-mediated immune response both in vitro and in vivo [ 6].

The importance of disease prevention has been recognized by Chinese medicine through experience accumulated over centuries. Many Chinese tonifying herbs have long been used for safeguarding health and for delaying the onset of senility. According to Chinese medicine theories, tonifying herbs prescribed for various symptoms of ill-health are generally classified into four categories on the basis of their health-promoting actions, namely 'Yang-invigorating', the ' Qi-invigorating', the 'Yin-nourishing' and the 'Blood-enriching' herbs [ 7]. The ' Qi-invigorating' and 'Blood-enriching' herbs are of Yang and Yin characteristics respectively. Chinese medicine theories suggest that a balance of Yin and Yang is essential to sustain optimal body function [ 8]. From a modern medical perspective, the maintenance of Yin and Yang in harmony may be described as the attainment of bodily homeostasis. The long-known antagonistic relationship between parasympathetic and sympathetic neural activities affords an example of both a phenomenon well-recognized by Western medicine and the Yin/Yang balance. A recent psychophysiological investigation in humans revealed an association between decreased parasympathetic or sympathetic activities with deficiencies of Yin or Yang respectively [ 9].

The theoretical framework of Chinese medicine is based on the Chinese cultural fabrics and clinical experience, while modern Western medicine has been established on the basis of laboratory and clinical investigations [ 10]. As the two distinct medical systems are complementary, bridging of the knowledge gap between Chinese and Western medicine is essential for their integration, in clinical practice, for disease prevention and treatment. Expounding Chinese medicinal theories in modern scientific terms to a Western audience facilitates communication between practitioners of the two systems.

In our earlier studies, we found that tonifying herbs with Yang or Yin properties were associated with antioxidant and immunostimulatory activities respectively [ 4]. Recent studies indicated that only Yang tonifying herbs (not Yin tonifying herbs) enhanced mitochondrial ATP generation capacity in mouse hearts [ 11]. We therefore suggest that Yang tonifying herbs enhance mitochondrial ATP generation, while Yin tonifying herbs are associated with immunomodulatory activities. In this mini-review, we summarize the abilities of Yang and Yin tonifying herbs to enhance ATP generation capacity, and to potentiate antioxidant and/or immunomodulatory actions, in an effort to characterize their respective pharmacological properties.

Enhancement of ATP generation by Yang tonifying herbs

In Chinese medicinal theories, Yang is a manifestation of body functions supported by various organs. A 'Yang-invigorating' action therefore involves the enhancement of bodily functions in general and cellular activities that consume ATP in particular. The mitochondrion is responsible for the generation of ATP through oxidative metabolism. To establish the pharmacological basis of 'Yang-invigorating' action, we have recently investigated the effect of Yang herbs on ATP generation capacity in heart homogenates prepared from mice that were pretreated with methanolic extracts of herbs [ 11]. Tonifying herbs from other functional categories were examined for comparison. While Chinese herbs are usually extracted by water for human oral consumption, water was replaced by methanol in our study for convenience in the processing and storage of samples. Yang herbs invariably enhanced myocardial ATP generation, with stimulation ranging from 20-130%. Herba Cynomorii and Semen Cuscutae were the most potent herbs examined. By contrast, none of the Yin herbs enhanced ATP generation; some Yin herbs even suppressed ATP generation slightly (Table 1). A preliminary mechanistic study indicated that Yang herbs may speed up ATP synthesis by increasing mitochondrial electron transport [ 11].

Table 1 Effect of Yang and Yin tonifying herbs on myocardial ATP generation capacity in mice ex vivo

Correlation between enhancement of ATP generation capacity and antioxidative capacity

Mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation generates ROS as byproducts. Highly reactive chemically, ROS attack cellular structures located near the sites where ROS are generated. Mitochondrial DNA, proteins, and lipids in the inner membrane of mitochondria are thus vulnerable to oxidative damage [ 12], resulting in generalized organelle dysfunction, defective mitochondrial biosynthesis and poor energy metabolism [ 13].

Under normal physiological conditions, the mitochondrial antioxidant defense system adequately handles the potentially detrimental effects of ROS derived from energy metabolism [ 14]. When a functional imbalance between ROS levels and antioxidant concentrations caused by various disease states and/or aging occurs, age-related disorders such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, brain dysfunction, or cataract may occur [ 15]. Antioxidant supplementation, particularly from herbal extracts, has become a trend in preventive health care.

Using an oxygen radical absorbance capacity assay, Ou et al. recently compared the free radical scavenging (i.e. antioxidant) activities of Yang and Yin herbs [ 16]. The results indicated that Yin herbs generally possessed higher antioxidant activities than Yang herbs and that the antioxidant potencies correlated well with the amounts of total phenolic compounds in the herbs. The authors suggested an analogy between Yin/Yang balance and antioxidation/oxidation in energy metabolism. These findings of higher antioxidant activities in Yin herbs as compared with those in Yang herbs do not agree with the findings from one of our earlier studies which showed that most of the Yang herbs possessed a more potent 1,1-diphenylpicryhydrazyl radical-scavenging action than other tonifying herbs [ 4] (Table 2). Although the use of different herbal extraction methods and distinct antioxidant assays precludes direct comparison of the two studies, the discrepancy might be due to the selection of almost completely different sets of Yin and Yang herbs for testing in the two studies. Our study focused on herbs used for safeguarding health (i.e. herbs used for tonifying purposes) (Tables 2, Table 3 of reference [ 17]). Ou et al. probably used a selection criterion based on the general Yin and Yang properties of the herbs instead of their Yin-tonifying and Yang-tonifying actions [ 16]. Szeto and Benzie, using the same set of herbs described in Ou et al. to examine possible protective effects on DNA oxidative damage, found that the Yang herbs showed an antioxidant effect superior to that of Yin herbs [ 5].

Antioxidant activities of Yang tonifying herbs

Several Yang herbs have been shown to possess antioxidant activities both in vitro and in vivo (Table 4). In vitro free radical-scavenging activities were detected in herbal extracts prepared from Herba Epimedii [ 4, 18], Radix Dipsaci [ 4, 16], Fructus Psoraleae [ 4], Semen Cuscutae [ 16], Herba Cistanche [ 4, 16, 18], Cortex Eucommiae [ 19] and Rhizoma Cibotii [ 4, 16]. Aqueous extracts of Rhizoma Drynariae and Cortex Eucommiae were found to inhibit oxidant production from rat osteoblasts [ 20], and also inhibited biomolecular oxidative damage [ 21]. Active ingredients (bakuchiol, isobavachin and isobavachalcone) from Fructus Psoraleae inhibited the NADPH-dependent peroxidation of rat microsomal and mitochondrial lipids in vitro [ 22]. An ethanolic extract of Radix Dipsaci enhanced the antioxidant status of blood and liver in rodents [ 23] and a Radix Morindae extract increased blood antioxidant enzyme activities in diabetic rats [ 24]. Phenylethanoids isolated from Herba Cistanche were found to prevent cell damage induced by in vitro and in vivo exposure to carbon tetrachloride in rats [ 25]. A recent study from our laboratory indicated that pretreatment with the methanolic extract of Herba Cistanche protected against ischemia-reperfusion injury in rat hearts ex vivo and enhanced mitochondrial ATP generation in the rat hearts ex vivo and H9c2 cells in situ. The ATP-stimulating action was possibly due to enhanced oxidative phosphorylation caused by increases in the activities of complexes I and III [ 26]. As good body function requires a large amount of energy and antioxidant defense is essential in sustaining mitochondrial ATP production [ 27], the antioxidant activities of Yang herbs may safeguard ATP generation, particularly under conditions of upregulated cellular activities.

Antioxidant activities of Yin tonifying herbs

Methanolic extracts of both Fructus Ligustri and Herba Ecliptae were found to enhance hepatic glutathione (GSH) regeneration capacity in rats [ 4, 28]. The enhancement of hepatic GSH regeneration capacity by Fructus Ligustri was associated with a hepatoprotective action against carbon tetrachloride toxicity [ 28]. Activity-directed fractionation of Fructus Ligustri indicated that the hepatoprotective principle(s) resided mainly in the oleanolic acid-enriched butanol and chloroform fractions [ 28]. Moreover, our recent studies showed that both short and long term pretreatment with oleanolic acid protected against myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury in rats [ 29, 30]. It was suggested that the cardioprotection afforded by oleanolic acid pretreatment was related to the enhancement of mitochondrial antioxidant mechanism mediated by GSH and α-tocopherol [ 29]. Both experimental and clinical investigations indicated that the antioxidant status influenced immunocompetence, particularly under conditions of stress such as physical exercises or chronic diseases [ 31]. The antioxidant activities of Yin tonifying herbs may positively influence immunostimulatory activities.

Experimental studies on a 'Yang-invigorating' herbal formula

A 'Yang-invigorating' herbal formula named VI-28 has been shown to produce 'Yang-invigorating' effects [ 32] and enhance red cell antioxidant status, particularly Cu-Zn-superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, in elderly male human subjects [ 33]. This herbal formula is comprised of Radix Ginseng, Cornu Cervi, Cordyceps, Semen Allii, Fructus Cnidii, Fructus Evodiae and Rhizoma Laemferiae. Recently we investigated the effects of long-term VI-28 treatment on red cell Cu-Zn-SOD activity, mitochondrial functional ability, and antioxidant levels, in various tissues of rats of both sexes [ 34]. The results indicated that VI-28 treatment increased red cell Cu-Zn-SOD activity and mitochondrial ATP generation capacity, increased the levels of reduced GSH and α-tocopherol, and reduced Mn-SOD activities. The enhancement of ATP generation by VI-28 increased mitochondrial ROS production, resulting in the upregulation of mitochondrial antioxidant mechanism. The VI-28-induced increase in mitochondrial antioxidant capacity in various tissues was evidenced by a significant reduction in ROS generation. Given that cellular energy status and mitochondrial ROS generation are factors critically involved in aging, the dual effect of 'Yang-invigoration' produced by VI-28 may have clinical implications in the prevention of age-related diseases.

Immunomodulatory activities of Yin tonifying herbs

It was suggested that the proper functioning of the immune system requires dynamic interactions between Yang and Yin. And while the antigen-nonspecific immune response is associated with Yang, the antigen-specific response is related toYin [ 35]. One of our earlier studies investigated antioxidant and immunomodulatory activities in different categories of tonifying herbs. The results showed that 6 and 7 of a total of 8 Yin herbs tested potentiated concanavalin A (Con A)-stimulated splenocyte proliferation (an antigen-specific response) in mice in vitro and ex vivo respectively. By contrast, only 3 of 9 Yang herbs tested showed a similar enhancement of the Con A-stimulated immune response [ 4] (Table 2).

Among the Yin herbs, the methanolic extract of Fructus Ligustri yielded the most robust immunostimulatory action in mouse splenocytes [ 4]. Differential extraction of Fructus Ligustri by solvents of increasing polarity indicated that the immunostimulatory activity resided mainly in the petroleum ether fraction [ 36]. Oleanolic acid, an immunomodulatory triterpenoid commonly found in herbs including Fructus ligustri [ 37, 38], was undetectable in this fraction [ 36]. Currently, activity-directed fractionation of the petroleum ether extract of Fructus Ligustri is under way in our laboratory. Various immunomodulatory actions of Yin tonifying herbs, and the active ingredients of the herbs, have been reported in other studies (Table 5). An aqueous extract of Radix Asparagi was found to inhibit tissue necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) secretion by suppressing Interleukin (IL)-2 secretion from astrocytes, implicating that the extract might exhibit anti-inflammatory activity in the central nervous system [ 39]. Both the crude aqueous extract and the two active ingredients (ruscogenin and ophiopogonin D) of Radix Ophiopogonis produced anti-inflammatory effects in rodents [ 40]. While the aqueous extract inhibited xylene-induced ear swelling and carrageenan-induced paw edema in mice, it also suppressed carrageenan-induced pleural leukocyte migration in rats, and the zymosan-evoked migration of peritoneal total leukocytes and neutrophils in mice. Treatments with ruscogenin and ophiopogonin D decreased zymosan-induced peritoneal leukocyte migration in mice and reduced the phorbol-12-myristate-13 acetate-induced adhesion of HL60 cells to ECV304 cells [ 40]. Several sesquiterpenes isolated from Herba Dendrobii were found to exhibit immunomodulatory activity by exerting comitogenic effects on Con A and lipopolysaccharide-stimulated mouse splenocytes [ 41, 42]. It has recently been reported that an ethanolic extract of black rice (the fruit of Oryza sativa) showed anti-asthmatic effects in a mouse model [ 43]. Treatment with the ethanolic extract of black rice reduced the number of eosinophils in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, alleviated the airway hyper-response, and decreased the extent of airway inflammation in ovalbumin (OVA)-immunized and -aerolized mice challenged with OVA. Moreover, the ethanolic extract treatment decreased interferon-γ (INF-γ), IL-4, IL-5 and IL-13 levels in the supernatants of cultured splenocytes and suppressed the plasma levels of OVA-specific immunoglobulin (Ig)G, IgG2α, IgG1 and total IgE in OVA-immunized and -challenged mice [ 43]. Clinical investigations indicated that intramuscular injection of undiluted Fructus Ligustri extract at a dose of 2-4 ml once or twice daily could prevent leucopenia caused by chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Fructus Ligustri treatment normalized white blood cell counts, thereby increasing tolerance to chemo/radiotherapy [ 44]. Oral administration of Fructus Ligustri tablets at a daily dose of 50 g equivalence of crude herb was found to ameliorate the symptoms of chronic bronchitis [ 44]. A herbal formula comprising Fructus Ligustri, Radix Scutellariae, Radix Astragalus and Eupolyphaga et polyphae was found to alleviate symptoms and improve immune function in HIV/AIDS patients [ 45].

Ganoderma - A 'Fu Zheng' tonifying herb

Ganoderma, another Yin tonifying herb with immunomodulatory effects, is widely consumed by the Chinese people who believe that it promotes health and longevity, lowers the risk of cancer and heart diseases and boosts the immune system [ 46]. In Chinese medicine, Ganoderma is regarded as a very potent herb for ' Fu Zheng', a Chinese medicine concept comparable to immunotherapy/immunomodulation in Western medicine. While Ganoderma is traditionally used to increase the resistance of the body immune system to pathogens and to restore normal body functions, the herb has now also been used to decrease the side effects of Western medical procedures, such as surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy which often weaken the immune system. The anti-cancer/immunomodulatory effects of Ganoderma were associated with triterpenes [ 47], polysaccharides [ 48, 49] or immunomodulatory proteins [ 50] through mechanisms involving inhibition of DNA polymerase [ 51], inhibition of post-translational modification of the Ras oncoprotein [ 52] or the stimulation of cytokine production [ 53]. Recent studies on the immunomodulatory activities of Ganoderma indicated that Ganoderma extract stimulated the proliferation of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells and raised the levels of mRNAs encoding Th1 and Th2 cytokines in these cells [ 54]. Moreover, polysaccharides of Ganoderma activated mouse splenic B cells and induced these cells to differentiate into IgM-secreting plasma cells. This process was dependent on the polysaccharide-mediated induction of Blimp-1, a master regulator capable of triggering a cascade of gene expression during plasmacytic differentiation [ 55]. In human peripheral B lymphocytes, the Ganoderma polysaccharide fraction enhanced antibody secretion and induced the production of Blimp-1 mRNA, though it failed to induce lymphocyte differentiation [ 55].

In addition to immunomodulating activities, Ganoderma possesses in vivo antioxidant potential, another aspect of Yin tonifying action. Treatment with Ganoderma extract was found to enhance the hydroxyl radical scavenging activity of rabbit blood plasma [ 56, 57]. Ganoderma acted by stimulating cellular and mitochondrial SOD activities, thereby enhancing the antioxidant capacity of the body [ 58]. It was shown that an intraperitoneal injection of Ganoderma extract following a lethal dose of cobalt X-ray radiation caused a marked prolongation of survival time in mice [ 59]. Pretreatment with Ganoderma extract also markedly protected against carbon tetrachloride-induced hepatic damage and the associated impairment in hepatic antioxidant status [ 60].

Cordyceps - A Yin/Yang tonifying herb

Cordyceps, a premium Chinese tonifying herb which replenishes the 'kidney' and soothes the 'lung', is prescribed for the treatment of a host of disorders, including hyposexualities, hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia, asthenia after illness, respiratory diseases, renal disorders, liver and heart diseases [ 61]. Cordyceps is regarded as a tonifying herb with both 'Yin-nourishing' and 'Yang-invigorating' actions. Pharmacological studies have shown that Cordyceps possesses a wide spectrum of biological activities including antioxidation [ 61- 64], immunopotentiation [ 65- 68], anti-tumorigenesis [ 68- 71], anti-inflammation [ 72] and stimulation of testosterone biosynthesis [ 73]. We have recently investigated the effects of wild and cultured Cordyceps on Con A-stimulated splenocytes (an in vitro bioassay for Yin tonifying action) and myocardial ATP generation capacity (an ex vivo bioassay for Yang tonifying action) [ 74]. The results indicated that methanolic extracts of wild and cultured Cordyceps enhanced both the Con A-stimulated splenocyte proliferation in vitro and myocardial mitochondrial ATP generation ex vivo in mice, with no significant difference in potencies when the two types of Cordyceps were compared. While the immunopotentiating effect was associated with an increase in IL2 production, the stimulation of myocardial ATP generation was paralleled by an enhancement in mitochondrial electron transport. When compared with typical Yin and Yang tonifying herbs ( Fructus Ligustri and Herba Cynomorii respectively), Cordyceps was found to possess both Yin and Yang tonifying actions, with a lower potency in both modes of action. The observation of both immunopotentiating and ATP-enhancing activities in Cordyceps extracts further supports the pharmacological basis of Yin and Yang tonifying herbs in Chinese medicine.

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Enhancement of ATP generation capacity, antioxidant activity and immunomodulatory activities by Chinese Yang and Yin tonifying herbs - Chinese Medicine

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Chinese tonifying herbs such as Herba Cistanche, Ganoderma and Cordyceps, which possess antioxidant and/or immunomodulatory activities, can be useful in the prevention and treatment of age-related diseases. Pharmacological studies on Yang and Yin tonifying herbs suggest that Yang tonifying herbs stimulate mitochondrial adenosine triphosphate (ATP) generation, presumably through the intermediacy of reactive oxidant species, leading to the enhancement of cellular/mitochondrial antioxidant status.

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Intergenerational Trauma Resulting from the Cultural Revolution

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Intergenerational Trauma Resulting from the Cultural Revolution

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Along with this more anecdotal article (https://mosaicscience.com/story/trauma-china-cultural-revolution-epigenetics-psychology/), here's a look at how and why intergenerational trauma may manifest in Chinese people.

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As children of parents who grew up during China's Cultural Revolution, there were myriad stories told to us by our families, sometimes in the form of detailed anecdotes, sometimes as passing mentions. Growing up, we heard stories of school teachers publicly shamed and beaten by former students; grandparents sent away to labour in re-education camps in the countryside; relatives, neighbours and friends driven to suicide by the government. Our parents' stories of trauma belong to a larger historical context, and it's not uncommon to find that children of Chinese immigrants connect over what they know of their family histories.

China's longer history of trauma is often forgotten by the West. Our grandparents' generation, too, lived through a tumultuous period of history. The first half of the 20th century was dominated by the decades-long civil war that bridged the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of the Communist state, along with the Second Sino-Japanese War between 1937 and 1945. Diana Lary, a historian of Republican China, has suggested that "violence begets violence, and victims become perpetrators." Thinking about this history of violence reminds us of the ways in which the present is shaped by the past.

Meiwen, a third-year history student at USyd, describes feelings of guilt and anxiety related to her family's experiences during the Cultural Revolution.

"I don't know to what extent I can connect my own experiences of anxiety to the Cultural Revolution. But I think part of being anxious is feeling an absence of trust in the world, and a large aspect of trauma is the betrayal of trust. During the Cultural Revolution people's trust was betrayed on multiple levels, including between the individual and the state. I also feel anxious around wasting food and spending money, because I know how much food meant to my family during that period."

With almost half of all Australians born either overseas or to a parent who was born overseas, it is undeniable that as a nation, our identities are drawn from all over the world. Often, those identities are shaped by stories of war, unrest, repression, and upheaval, creating traumatic threads which weave through subsequent generations, sometimes in ways that are barely visible to us. This phenomenon, in which trauma is passed down through generations, is known as transgenerational or intergenerational trauma.

It's important, before entering into an exploration of transgenerational trauma, to acknowledge that Aboriginal Australians have been talking and organising around their experiences of trauma and their interactions with the destructive forces of colonisation for decades now. Meera Atkinson writes for The Conversation that "Australians, generally speaking, have an inadequate understanding of transgenerational trauma and underestimate the effects of the extreme and sustained traumas experienced by First Nations communities." In the US, too, Native Americans talk of the concept of a 'soul wound', referring to the lasting damage done by colonisation.

There is also a growing awareness of transgenerational trauma in contemporary media. Chinese-American writers such as Shayla Love, Wei Tchou and Jenny Zhang have begun exploring their parents' and grandparents' traumatic pasts in short stories and nonfiction for Western publications. Jennie Shulkin, a third-generation Holocaust survivor, has written about the importance of documenting family history, partly as a path to working through trauma. Referencing sociologist Joy de Gruy's work on 'Post Traumatic Slave Disorder', Lincoln Anthony Blades suggests that, "If the Holocaust caused immense emotional, physical, and psychological effects intense enough to cause trauma to survivors, then the abject horrors and brutality suffered by slaves is more than likely to have the same effects on black slavery descendants worldwide."

The study of transgenerational trauma involves a number of academic disciplines. For psychologists and therapists, it can be a factor in piecing together the origins of mental ill-health or patterns of behaviour. Geneticists see a new field of study looking at the potential for trauma to be genetically encoded and passed on. For historians, it is one way of understanding the lasting impact of historical events.

Amelia Klein is an alumna of USyd and a historian; her work on trauma and healing in Holocaust survivors and their descendants has led to her teaching on the subject at the University of Chicago. "Trauma is so individual; it really depends on the family and the constellation of the family," Klein emphasises. "We all have family history, and we inherit family history and stories, and our identities are shaped by our parents and grandparents and our extended family and the experiences they had."

"I think it's definitely hard to make generalisations in this kind of field," says Avril Alba, a senior lecturer in Holocaust Studies and Jewish Civilisation at USyd. Alba herself is a second generation descendant of a Holocaust survivor.

Asked about how migration might have shaped people's experiences of trauma, she says, "I think you're right in saying there is an interaction between the two experiences [of migration and trauma]. I think that migration is really the culture shock and coming to terms with new languages, new cultures, new systems, all of those kinds of things; whereas the trauma is more a physical, emotional rupture. Do they mix? I think they must."

"My grandfather was in the Polish army and my grandmother ended up in a German workers' camp," says Jessica*, a third-year USyd student. Jessica explains that her grandfather, who was a prisoner of war, "always wanted to move, find new places, new ground."

"When my mum and my aunt were growing up, they moved to a new state or even new country every one or two years. I think that was because my grandfather was involved in the war and he was locked up in prison ... and in response to that I think he spent his whole life trying to exercise his freedom." Jessica's upbringing was much the same; by the time she finished high school, she had lived in nine different houses across two different states. "There was this constant sense of looking for better, looking for more, never settling, never being comfortable in one place or never laying roots."

Stephanie, a history honours student at USyd whose parents immigrated to Australia in 1988 as a consequence of the civil war in El Salvador, describes the way her parents' experiences have shaped her own identity. "I take on what [my parents] brought from El Salvador. They don't really talk about it, but you can tell that there is pain."

For many children of immigrants who escaped conflict and persecution, guilt is a common experience.

"Of course I didn't experience [the conflict], but [as the second generation], you feel like you have to move beyond what happened," says Stephanie. "You feel like ... I was born in Australia, the lucky country, so I have to make something of my life. If your parents had witnessed something so awful, you feel guilty."

Klein is careful to remind us of the ubiquity of trauma. "I don't think it's unique to the Holocaust. There's been trauma since day one, it just wasn't as spoken about in the general population." She also points out that the effects of traumatic family histories may not be immediately apparent. "It's interesting to also look at subsequent generations and ... these histories and memories they've inherited that they might not even know."

Here, Klein mentions Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience who has researched the potential for trauma to be passed down genetically. Yehuda's work at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York found that Holocaust survivors could pass a genetic tag onto their children which affected the production of stress hormones - an example of epigenetic inheritance.

"We always suspected that there was genetic risk, but no one could understand exactly why disadvantage in mental health and illness passed down even when you tried to do something about it, for instance [with] provision of social services. There still seemed to be this ongoing risk," says Mark Dadds, director at the Child Behaviour Research Clinic at USyd.

In 1801, almost 60 years before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, French scientist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed the hypothesis that characteristics acquired by an organism during its lifetime could be passed onto its offspring. Lamarck's ideas were largely dismissed during his life. Even now, we understand that going to the gym and growing large muscles doesn't imply our children will be stronger. The idea would strike us as absurd. Yet Lamarckism continues to be discussed today, largely in the context of a growing field of research referred to as epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression that result from environmental stress and major trauma, rather than changes in the DNA sequence itself. Whilst DNA is largely understood as fixed, it can be regulated and manipulated by a group of chemicals which attach themselves to the DNA. Among the most significant of epigenetic processes is where environmental information leaves a mark on the chemical coating of the chromosomes, known as the methylation. The level of methylation can affect the expression of genes, repressing some and activating others.

"If life screws you over and you don't parent so well, you haven't got as much access to money and resources and jobs, and your children are going to suffer as well. So that's the kind of passing on that we've always been really interested in. But lately it's become clear that there are other more complex pathways," Dadds explains. "For example, a traumatised person then maybe passes on exposure to challenges in the womb for the new generation, so that the new baby might be exposed to much higher levels of stress hormones. The latest one that's incredibly radical and is captivating everyone's attention is that you pass on epigenetic risk. [...] So that what you acquire in terms of your genome changes may be passed on through germline cells to your children, so they're born with a different epigenetic profile."

A study published in Nature Neuroscience by neurobiologists Brian Dias and Kerry Ressler at the University of Emory showed that trauma could be inherited across three generations of laboratory mice. Ressler and Dias trained the first generation of mice to fear the scent of acetophenone by drifting the chemical through a chamber whilst giving the male mice electric shocks. Eventually, the mice came to associate the scent of acetophenone with pain, shuddering at the scent even in the absence of a shock. Three generations down the line, their grandchildren similarly shuddered when exposed to acetophenone. This led Dias and Ressler to conclude that environmental information can possibly be inherited at an epigenetic level.

The idea that trauma can be passed on genetically is certainly a radical one. Among scientists, the theory remains controversial. So far most research, such as Dias and Ressler's study, has been limited to lab animals. Yet mounting evidence seems to support the claim that trauma can be inherited genetically in humans too. In 2009, researchers examining the brains of Canadian men who had committed suicide found that their genes contained a chemical coating, possibly influenced by exposure to abuse during childhood.

Whilst previous research on the children of Holocaust survivors understood the transmission of trauma to occur as a sole consequence of environmental factors - for instance, poor parenting - new research on epigenetics provides a more comprehensive picture of transgenerational trauma, one that incorporates both environmental and hereditary causes.

Research on epigenetic inheritance raises important questions. What are the wider implications of the genetic transmission of trauma? How can the cycle of trauma be broken, if trauma is, at least in part, biologically caused?

Dadds is hopeful. His current research examines the way early intervention and the introduction of positive parenting can reverse the effects of inherited trauma. Besides psychotherapy, an understanding of history, too, can be useful for working through the past. In Klein's postgraduate research, she interviewed Jewish-Australian third-generation survivors of the Holocaust before and after they viewed their grandparents' video testimonies; doing so elucidated the importance of both recording and examining such histories.

"A lot of grandchildren feel responsible to remember their grandparents' story," says Klein; she later adds, "for a lot of the grandchildren, they felt burdened by that responsibility."

The importance of documenting and preserving these pieces of history comes up again and again in conversation; she found in her interviews that "the grandchildren almost felt a sense of relief that they had the story."

"After they viewed the video testimony ... they were able to begin the working-through process, and that enabled them to come to terms with the Holocaust in a new way. They felt they had the space to engage in a positive way and not feel burdened by these traumatic histories."

Klein stresses that creating a dialogue around these records is the crucial next step in understanding familial, collective, and historical trauma. "It's helpful - as a family or as a community - to sit together and watch the tape or listen to the testimony, because conversations arise out of that." Documenting collective trauma is a rising trend, too: "There's testimonies from Rwanda, from Bosnia, from Yugoslavia, even Japanese American internment. [...] I think the movement to collect stories is definitely part of the zeitgeist now."

Alba and Klein both mention the fact that second- and third-generation descendants of Holocaust survivors have tended towards healing or helping professions. "There are a large chunk of second- and third-generation Jews in Australia who are predominantly sort of in the helping professions - who are interested in psychological effects, social effects of trauma, political effects of trauma," says Alba.

Klein affirms this fact: "There are studies on child survivors of the Holocaust and how a lot of them went into the healing professions." Indeed, psychologist Paul Valent writes in the 1998 publication Children Surviving Persecution: An International Study of Trauma and Healing, "Many [child survivors of the Holocaust] joined the helping professions and were otherwise worthwhile and even altruistic members of society." In a 2006 speech, writer and lecturer Helen Epstein noted, "[survivors and their descendants] have gravitated toward the helping professions and toward the healing wings of the arts, education and law."

Jessica's family history also reflects this trend. "My mum left high school at 17 to join the social revolution in the 1970s - anti-Vietnam War protests and all that," she says. "She still sat her Year 12 exams and got a scholarship to uni, where she studied sociology and Russian. There was just this huge drive in her and also my aunt to fight for social justice." Jessica herself feels similarly drawn to social issues surrounding policy, justice, and equality. "Since I've come into adulthood, I've worked for organisations and supported movements that have a human rights focus."

Cultural theorist, Nina Fischer, has studied the way children of Holocaust survivors interpret their parents' experiences in a book entitled Memory Work: The Second Generation. Unlike survivors and their videotaped testimonies, children of survivors frequently make sense of the past through literary texts. Moreover, coming to terms with the past entails turning their parents' experiences into what Fischer describes as "usable pasts". For children of survivors who can only understand the past in terms of family memory, it is often experienced as a burden. However, an adult equipped with historical knowledge of the past is better able to deal with its traumas.

"Being a history student has given me perhaps a more nuanced understanding of the politics behind trauma, as well as social justice - in other words, acknowledging how trauma leads to a sense of collective healing," Stephanie says. "If you have a look at the role of truth commissions in history, on an implicit level - it's all about building a sense of national resilience after [a country or region] having been broken."

Stephanie also emphasises the power of the internet in forming communities through which people are better able to understand transgenerational trauma. "The internet connects to us a lot of different stories, about different sorts of conflicts, wars ... I feel like people will be given a chance to look at their cultural history - their family - in a different light."

Alba and Klein also make a point of bringing up resilience as a counterpart of trauma. "I don't think you only inherit trauma; you also inherit strength, and resilience, and all of those things as well," says Alba. Klein echoes this emphatically, saying, "There's also this notion of post-traumatic resilience - how people coped, and survived, and made amazing lives, and had families, and had children. There's hope in these stories as well, and I think it's really important that it's not just the intergenerational transmission of trauma."

At the end of our conversation, Alba returns to talking about Aboriginal Australians. "I think in general, there is still a lack of awareness around Indigenous communities; we don't allow our Indigenous communities to express their trauma," she says. "Are we as a society prepared to listen to that trauma and to engage with it? I think that's the real question."

"I guess what I'd hope is that in our generation and the generations to come, there's just an increased awareness [that] we're actually a really multilayered nation and we have a huge diversity of stories and experiences [...] Maybe it has trauma in it, but it also has huge wisdom and experience and tradition. That actually maybe something could be gained if the next generation could see their multiculturalism as actually something really complex and difficult, but ultimately rewarding. That, I think, would be a good thing."

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Healing histories: tracing trauma through the generations - Honi Soit

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As children of parents who grew up during China's Cultural Revolution, there were myriad stories told to us by our families, sometimes in the form of detailed anecdotes, sometimes as passing mentions. Growing up, we heard stories of school teachers publicly shamed and beaten by former students; grandparents sent away to labour in re-education camps...

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I found a cool study that looks at where and why individualist and collectivist mentalities are dominant in different regions of China!

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Department of Sociology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

Institute for Advanced Studies in Finance and Economics, Hubei University of Economics, Wuhan, China

Department of Sociology, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey

Department of Psychology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

China has undergone a rapid process of modernization since 1949. The modernization process has accelerated with the development of the market economy and rural-to-urban migration after the 1980s. Nevertheless, Chinese regions still exhibit substantial differences in terms of individualist/collectivist cultural orientations. The rice theory and the climato-economic theory have attempted to explain this variation by analyzing provincial-level data. Based on a quantitative analysis of more granular, county-level variables spanning from the early 1990s until 2010, we offer an alternative account of this cultural variety based on lineage development in different Chinese regions. Using the ArcGIS geographic information system, we first present the regional distribution of individualism/collectivism indicators at the county level through descriptive statistics and spatial analysis. We also run a regression model to analyze county-level data on individualism/collectivism that includes three periods (1990, 2000, and 2010). Our multi-level analysis shows that lineage development is a critical variable that explains more regional variation of culture in China when compared to other variables. While rice farming, the key variable of the rice theory, is a significant variable, its explanatory power is less than the lineage variable. Finally, our analysis shows that the climato-economic theory fails to explain the regional variation of culture.

Introduction

The existing literature identifies industrialization, economic growth, urbanization, and population mobility as leading socio-economic factors behind the rise of individualism in China ( Yan, 2009). China has a history of 5,000 years, and agricultural production and village settlements have remained their defining characteristics for over 2,000 years (termed as the "agricultural era"). Although Chinese society entered the modernization era by the nineteenth century (at the latest), the pace of modernization significantly increased after the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, especially in rural areas that account for the vast majority of the population. Development of the market economy and rural-to-urban migration occurred after 1978 and sped up in the 1990s (a short period compared to the long history of China).

This paper explores whether the significant regional variation of ecology and social history in the pre-modern period has any effect on the regional variation of individualism/collectivism (I/C hereafter) in contemporary China. We argue that the impact of modern individualist culture has been uneven in different Chinese regions due to their long-held differences in the development of lineages. In other words, China's regional variation of I/C has resulted from regional differences in the degree of the lineage development. To ground our argument empirically, we analyze a wide variety of longitudinal historical data from the post-1949 period.

Literature Review

Individualism and collectivism are central categories of cross-cultural psychology ( Triandis et al., 1988). When interacting with others within a community, individuals can take two opposite directions: maintaining personal autonomy or entirely integrating into the community. Each cultural entity is located somewhere between these two poles. Within individualist cultures, values and ethics support personal autonomy and interest. Individuals tend to be self-dependent and do not need emotional support from the community. Conversely, within collectivist cultures, the community takes priority over individuality, and collective interests prevail over individual interests. Personal identities are based on group membership, and groups are responsible for their members' well-being.

Individualism and collectivism constitute two endpoints of the same theoretical dimension ( Triandis et al., 1988; Oyserman et al., 2002; Hofstede, 2011). Different types of cultures are located at different places along this continuum. I/C can be assessed within group dynamics. Following the beginning of humankind, family and community emerged as the first and second collectivities, respectively. Extended family was dominant in some cultures, while the nuclear family was dominant in others. Collectivism develops relatively easily in the former, and individualism develops more easily in the latter. Individuals acquire one of these two tendencies during adolescence, after which it is strengthened through schooling and other organizational experiences. As a result, intercultural differences are gradually solidified.

The conceptualization of I/C as a continuum between extreme individualism and extreme collectivism has helped the scholars of cross-cultural psychology to compare not only individualist and collectivist cultures but also the I/C tendencies within each (collectivist or individualist) group. Psychologists tend to view I/C as two dimensions of analysis. Starting from the individual level, they analyze the relationship between the individual and the community. Based on the individual-community relationships within different cultures, they assess the collectivist and individualist tendencies within each cultural entity ( Triandis et al., 1988; Oyserman et al., 2002).

Hofstede (2011) explains the spatial variation of I/C based on differences in geographic latitude, climate, and wealth. Berry (1976) explains it based on historical, geographical, and ecological variables, developing a theory based on differences in survival methods. Survival theory suggests that some survival methods (such as farming) require more cooperation (e.g., the construction and maintenance of water conservancy systems). Such practices lead to the formation of a more collectivist cultural orientation in the long run. In contrast, since individualized forms of action are more suitable for other ways of survival, such as nomadism and hunting, they contribute to the formation of more individualist cultural orientations ( Berry, 1976).

On the other hand, the causal analysis of cultural differences is a challenging endeavor. One of the problems in existing survival theories is that when explaining cultural orientation from the perspective of survival methods, it is difficult to control the role of religion, politics, history, and many other factors. Analysis of the differences in I/C among different regions within a single cultural and political body has recently emerged as a research frontier in cross-cultural comparative psychology. For example, Varnum and Kitayama (2011) compared the individualist tendencies of different regions in the United States, while Yamawaki (2012) conducted a similar comparative analysis in Japanese regions.

As a large country with a history of 5,000 years and 9.6 million km ², China exhibits vast regional differences in ecology, history, and cultural psychology. A growing body of scholarship informed by I/C theories investigates cultural differences among different regions of China ( Van de Vliert et al., 2013; Talhelm et al., 2014). However, existing accounts of the regional variation of collectivism and individualism in China seriously contradict each other. Hence, further empirical analysis and theoretical conceptualization are needed.

The Climato-Economic Theory of I/C in China

Van de Vliert et al. (2013) explain the regional variation of I/C in China from the perspective of the climato-economic theory of culture. According to this theory, 22°C is the most suitable temperature for human survival; the more it deviates from this number, the greater are the challenges of survival. Resource constraints caused by unsuitable temperatures (too high or too low) compel humans to cooperate in the production of food and other essential items. In contrast, the ease of obtaining food and other necessities keeps the cooperation imperative at a minimum. The situation also changes in areas with inhospitable climates. As long-term cooperation decreases challenges of survival and increases wealth over time, the cooperation imperative correspondingly declines. Based on this theoretical framework and a provincial-level analysis of the survey data, Van de Vliert et al. (2013) claim that collectivism is the weakest in southern regions with temperate climates (irrespective of income), such as Guangdong; is a bit stronger in higher-income provinces with challenging climates, such as Hunan; and is the most robust in poor provinces with challenging climates, such as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, and Heilongjiang.

The Rice Theory of I/C in China

Talhelm et al. (2014) explain the cultural diversity of Chinese regions based on the survival theory. According to this theory, a more collectivist culture has emerged over the long history of rice cultivation in South China because rice requires more irrigation, thereby necessitating greater cooperation among cultivators. In contrast, a significantly lower degree of labor cooperation has been the norm in North China (where wheat has been the dominant crop) because wheat growing does not require much irrigation, leading to a relatively independent and more individualist culture. Based on these observations, Talhelm et al. (2014) claim that collectivist culture has been more influential in southern regions such as Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Shanghai, and Zhejiang. In contrast, individualism has been dominant in northern provinces (such as Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, and Shaanxi) and northeastern provinces (such as Heilongjiang and Liaoning).

The two theories discussed above make squarely opposite arguments with regard to several regions. For example, the climato-economic theory asserts that in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hainan, and other southeastern regions, the collectivist cultural tendency is the weakest. However, the rice theory predicts the opposite, arguing that these same areas (where rice farming is most prevalent) contain the strongest tendencies for collectivism in China. Moreover, the climato-economic theory argues that the three northeastern provinces (Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning) contain collectivist tendencies, while the rice theory views them as regions with individualist tendencies ( Table 1). Apparently, further study is imperative in analyzing regional variations of collectivism and individualism in China, as well as the critical factors affecting this difference. The contradictory conclusions of the climato-economic theory and rice theory are not simply due to problems of measurement but rather likely result from their neglect of important factors that shape regional variations of collectivism and individualism in China.

We provide an alternative explanation of the same phenomenon based on the historical differences in the power of lineage organizations among Chinese regions. Below, we present our findings regarding China's regional differences in individualism and collectivism and discuss the lineage-based theory that accounts for these differences.

The problems of the climato-economic theory and rice theory are partly related to their units of analysis. They use provinces as units of analysis to explain the regional variation of cultures in China. However, this unit of analysis does not explain such variation in Chinese culture because many of the provinces include several sub-regions with significantly different cultural norms and values. Historically, the cultural heterogeneity of Chinese provinces is related to the principle of the jigsaw-like drawing of provincial boundaries occurring since the Yuan Dynasty period (1271-1368). Including different natural regions in a single province was an intentional policy designed to check centrifugal forces, prevent large-scale rebellions, and enhance the power of the central state. Since provincial boundaries, by design, have functioned to hide real similarities and differences among regions, the province cannot be used as a unit to analyze regional variations in Chinese culture.

Lineage-Based Framework of the Regional Variation of I/C in China

In his comparative analysis of lineage organizations in the Fujian and Guangdong provinces, Maurice Freedman (1958) made one of the earliest attempts at delving into the regional variation of lineage development in China. Freedman defined the Chinese lineage as a kinship-based economic and political organization, stressing that lineage power was regionally varied. A single lineage typically encompasses the entire village population in the Fujian and Guangdong provinces; in other words, lineage and village tend to coincide. Lineage organization is less potent in the rest of China, as lineage typically comprises only one section of a village's population. In his comparative analysis of Chinese lineages, Indian castes, and American clubs, renowned Chinese anthropologist Hsu (1963) argued that the effect of these three institutions on people's lives is similar. According to Hsu, family and lineage - essentially indicating a significantly expanded variety of family - are the leading social organizations through which people solve their problems. Both manifest the mutual dependence in interpersonal relations and reproduce the social basis of a collectivist culture. They also cultivate a worldview centered on group spirit. The Chinese people growing up in this kind of environment cherish the companionship, security, and status associated with family and lineage. Even after years of work outside their hometowns, Chinese people are inclined to return and spend the rest of their lives with their family and lineage members. According to Hsu (1963), lineage culture and collectivist behavior are closely related. Notwithstanding the merit of his work, Hsu's most critical shortcoming is the absence of inquiry into the regional variation of lineage development in China.

We argue that the lineage theory of culture explains the regional variation of Chinese culture more accurately than the climato-economic and survival theories. Some academic studies emphasize the importance of lineage development in the cultural diversity of Chinese regions, but, so far, this strand of scholarship has not presented a case based on quantitative data analysis. In a close reading of the historical literature on the subject, Wang, 2006 and He (2012) explain the regional variation of lineage development, taking into account historical factors such as war, migration, and ecological/environmental factors. According to Wang and He, earlier population settlement and relatively stable socio-political circumstances have allowed the development of a strong collectivist culture built around large lineages in rural South China. While population settlement occurred relatively late in North China, where its occupants suffered from frequent wars for centuries, the stabilization of socio-political conditions since the foundation of the Ming dynasty allowed the North to inherit the family culture of the Han people in the Central Plains and develop powerful lineage structures, albeit not as strong as those in the South. Finally, compared to these two macro-regions, the Yangzi River Basin (including southern Anhui, the Dongting Lake Plain, the Jianghan Plain, and the Chengdu Plain) was settled by migrants from various parts of China escaping from economic hardship and political instability. Since the duration of a stable human settlement was relatively short and lineage structures were, for the most part, underdeveloped, a relatively individualist culture prevailed even before the twentieth century but has become even stronger since the 1980s ( Freedman, 2000; Wang, 2006, 2007; He, 2012).

The Chinese are generally believed to have a cultural tradition of collectivism. In the traditional Han culture, the interests and goals of the individual are subordinate to the goals of the family and lineage. The Chinese pay respect to their ancestors by burning incense, which is believed to help the family flourish and protect itself. The practice of "co-residence and common property" - in which different generations live in the same household and share their income - is the primary manifestation of a collectivist culture. Such a collectivist cultural orientation permeates all aspects of traditional Chinese life ( Shiga, 2003), and the culture expresses itself through patterns of reproduction, marriage, and childbirth.

In the family reproduction model, the married child's family is still part of the mother's family, further expanding the definition of family ( Fei, 2001). According to the collectivist principle of "co-residence and common property," adult sons usually live with son's father's home, and the income of all family members is considered as a collective income. If a newlywed child attempts to become independent through separation from the family, it is seen as a sign of family disunity and is often opposed by parents and other brothers ( Wang, 2006). In the fertility model, the inevitable result of pursuing more children and passing on lineages is high fertility and patriarchy. In the marriage model, marriage is not meant for individual happiness but for the continuation of the family and raising children. Unmediated, autonomous marriage based on romantic love between two individuals is not supported, and if a woman is not happy in her marriage, she cannot easily file for divorce.

With the rise of individualism brought about by China's modernization, citizens place more importance on self-realization and the pursuit of individual happiness, and traditional ideas about reproduction and other collectivist goals are increasingly being abandoned. Hence, although there are still many obligations among family members, married children will become more independent from their parents' families through separation so that they can independently control the property of their smaller family without having to live with parents and other siblings ( Yan, 2002).

Due to the rise of individualism in China, the continuation of the patrilineal family and lineage prosperity is no longer relevant, resulting in a sharp decline in fertility. In the marriage model, marriage is increasingly based on romantic love between young men and women. The pursuit of individual happiness leads young couples to reject unhappy marriages, resulting in a sharp increase in China's divorce rate since the 1990s. The individualist tendency, however, is not only manifested in the choice of divorce and having fewer children. It is also reflected in the arrangement of individual property rights, family residence (to protect personal privacy), and the individualization of intergenerational relationships ( Yan, 2012).

Materials And Methods

Hypothesis

To assess the validity of our argument that the regional variation of lineage development is a key factor behind the regional variation of I/C in China, we tested the following research hypothesis:

H1: The regional variation of lineage culture corresponds with the regional variation of I/C.

H1a: The stronger the lineage development, the stronger the collectivist cultural tendency.

H1b: The weaker the lineage culture, the stronger the individualistic cultural tendency.

Measurement of I/C at the County Level

The works of Triandis et al. (1988) and Hofstede (2011) show that family is a fundamental unit used to operationalize and measure the concepts of I/C. In Culture's Consequences, Hofstede frequently stresses that the family is the first inner group that people come into contact with and growing up in different types of families leads to significant differences in the psychological and behavioral tendencies of individuals. Those who are raised in extended families are more inclined to regard themselves as part of the family and adjust their individual goals to conform to the family's goals, thereby maintaining a distinctly collectivist tendency. In contrast, those who are raised in nuclear families tend to think of the family as a combination of different individuals so that individual goals take precedence over family goals, thereby maintaining a more individualistic tendency. Among Hofstede's various scales measuring I/C, the family scale appears the most significant. Hence, we focus on the family as the primary unit used to measure I/C.

Other scholars have also adopted the measurement of I/C from the perspective of family. For example, Vandello and Cohen's index of collectivism in the United States (1999) includes the following eight indicators: the percentage of people living alone, the ratio of people carpooling to work to driving alone, the ratio of divorce rate to marriage, the percentage of elderly people living alone, the percentage of households containing grandchildren, the percentage of people with no religious affiliation, the average percentage of Libertarian votes over the last four presidential elections, and the percentage of self-employed people ( Vandello and Cohen, 1999). They found that collectivist tendencies were strongest in the Deep South, while individualist tendencies were strongest in the Mountain West and Great Plains.

Yamawaki (2012) used Vandello and Cohen's index as a model to develop a collectivism scale suitable for a prefecture-level analysis in Japan. This scale includes five indicators: the divorce-to-marriage ratio, the percentage of elderly living alone, the percentage of nuclear families, the percentage of individuals living alone, and the percentage of three-generation households. Yamawaki found considerable variations of collectivism within Japanese culture. The majority of collectivistic prefectures is in northern Japan, whereas the most individualistic prefectures, although spread across the country, are typically located in the most urbanized areas.

The present study uses Yamawaki's five-index method to measure I/C. To measure each Chinese county's level of I/C, we use the data from China's Fifth (2000) and Sixth (2010) Population Censuses. This data include numbers regarding divorce rates, proportions of individuals living alone, percentages of three-generational families, and family size. To more precisely measure the individualistic/collectivistic tendency within a family, we formulated an "independence of married youth" indicator that measures the proportion of married young people 25-35 years of age who are heads of their families in the corresponding population cohort. In other words, the stronger the independence of young offspring, the more likely they are to become independent from their parents after marriage and establish their own nuclear family.

Our analysis includes two additional variables - fertility rate and preference for sons. The existing literature ( Gong et al., 2013) indicates that collectivist Chinese families have more children and prefer sons to maintain the family. However, with the rise of individualism in China since the 1980s, more people seek individual enjoyment and self-actualization as their main life goal rather than the continuation of the family. Greater individualism, therefore, leads to a decline in fertility and preference for sons.

Measurement of Lineage Development at the County Level

The existing literature measures the degree of lineage development based on surname structure and surname concentration ( Tsai, 2002, 2007; Peng, 2009, 2010; Guo and Yao, 2014). The 2005 national survey conducted on 1% of the population sample provides the county-level surname data of the participants, which enabled us to assess the degree of lineage development in different Chinese regions by calculating the concentration of surnames.

Measurement of the Cropping Pattern at the County Level

In their article advancing rice theory, Talhelm et al. (2014) measure the cropping pattern in China based on each county's rice planting ratio. We measure the cropping pattern in the same way. In a recent article, Talhelm et al. (2018) claims that historical data on rice farming can better isolate the impact of urbanization on I/C patterns and, therefore, has more power to predict I/C. Data on the proportion of rice cultivation in more than 3,000 counties of China are obtainable only from large-scale statistical databases such as agricultural censuses. Therefore, we use the data of China's first agricultural census carried out in 1996 to measure the proportion of rice cultivation at the county level. This census contains the earliest available data on the cropping pattern at the county level. China's rapid urbanization process began by the early 1990s, but according to the World Bank (n.d.), only a quarter of the total population was urban in 1990. Hence, the impact of urbanization on planting patterns was relatively limited at the time of this census. Moreover, China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, so the effect of international trade on planting patterns was also minimal. Therefore, we believe that the 1996 agricultural census data are a better resource for measuring China's planting patterns.

Measuring the Climatic Demands-Income Resources at the County Level

In their article advancing the climato-economic theory, Van de Vliert et al. (2013) use temperature and GDP per capita data. We obtained temperature information at the county level and used the per capita GDP of each Chinese county. Since Van de Vliert et al. stress the interactive effects of climate and wealth, we used the interaction terms between the per capita GDP and temperature of each county in China for 2000 and 2010.

Climatic Demands

In line with past research (e.g., Van de Vliert et al., 2013), climates are considered as more demanding when temperatures in the coldest and hottest months deviate from 22°C. Specifically, climatic demands (CDs) were operationalized as the sum of the four absolute deviations from 22°C for the average lowest and highest temperatures in January and July (data available for the capital city of each county from http://www.resdc.cn/data.aspx?DATAID=288).

Income Resources

For each county, the per capita GDP of 2000 and 2010 was taken from www.stats.gov.cn. Income resources (IRs) and CDs were insignificantly related predictors.

Data

We collected county-level data on the degree of lineage development, the ratio of rice planting, climate demand-income resources (CD-IRs), the rate of urban population, and I/C variables. We used the concentration of surnames as the indicator of lineage development at the village and county levels. We extracted the county-level lineage development data from China's 1% population sample survey (conducted in 2005) that provides data on the surnames of Chinese people. To measure the level of lineage development, we used this database to calculate the concentration of surnames in more than 3,000 Chinese counties. Using the Chinese General Social Survey (2006) data, we measured the level of lineage development by calculating the proportion of the top three surnames in the total population of administrative villages.

Rice Planting Ratio

Rice planting ratio, the ratio of rice fields within all cultivated land in a given region, is the primary explanatory variable of rice theory and is obtainable for over 3,000 Chinese counties from the national agricultural census data. The earliest national agricultural census was conducted in 1996 and provides data on the proportion of rice, wheat, corn, and other crops in the total cultivated area. We believe that the ratio of arable land used for growing rice is close to the proportion of paddy fields in each county because rice is a staple crop in China. We mainly used the statistical yearbooks of various provinces and statistical yearbooks of prefecture-level cities to collect data on the proportion of rice cultivation in each county at the time of the first agricultural census in 1996 ( Tongji Nianjian Fenxiang Pingtai, n.d.a).

Climate Demand-Income Resource

To calculate CD at the county level, we needed to obtain temperature information in January and July for more than 3,000 counties in China. We, therefore, purchased 12-month temperature information from more than 3,000 counties for the year 2000 from the China Meteorological Administration. To calculate the CD factor, we first calculate the absolute value of the deviation of each county from 22°C in January and July and then sum up these two values. The IR factor data comes from the data on GDP per capita in the regional statistical yearbooks of various regions in China for 2000 and 2010. The statistical yearbooks of various provinces and prefecture-level cities are accessible online ( Tongji Nianjian Fenxiang Pingtai, n.d.a).

Urban Population

We calculated the data on the proportion of the non-agricultural population based on the original data from the 2000 and 2010 censuses ( National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2000, 2010).

The fifth and sixth census data also include many variables that measure individualism and collectivism at the county level. The variables such as divorce rate and the percentage of single-person households measure individualism, while the variables such as the preference for sons, the percentage of three-generation families, fertility rate, and family-size measure collectivism.

We utilize 1990, 2000, and 2010 population census data ( Tongji Nianjian Fenxiang Pingtai, n.d.b; National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2000, 2010) to measure divorce rate, fertility rate, sex ratio at birth, proportion of three-generation households, and young children's level of independence at the county level. Similarly, we also measure the degree of lineage development at the county level - the primary explanatory variable of this study - and control variables such as per capita GDP, rice farming, CD, income sources, and the rate of urbanization. We used the method of Van de Vliert et al. (2013) to measure CD factors. Since there are more than 3,000 counties in China, we also go beyond county-level analysis. For the convenience of discussion, we have divided China into four macro-regions: South China, North China, the Yangtze River Basin, and Northeast China. We discuss the characteristics and influencing factors of collectivism-individualism in each region.

We collected county-level data from 31 provinces of China. We dropped some counties due to missing data. Overall, we analyzed data from 1,907 counties. We also collected district-level data for Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing. There are more first-tier cities in China, such as Wuhan and Guangzhou. We plan to collect and analyze more data on such cities in our future research.

Results

Our analysis contains two parts. In the first, based on I/C variables, we discuss the regional variations of I/C and explain its characteristics of spatial distribution.

Regional Differences of I/C Reflected in the Divorce Rate

We use the ArcGIS geographic information system to explore the regional variation of divorce rate. We calculated "the logarithm of the number of divorced couples per 1,000 married couples" in the regions located to the east of the Aihui-Tengchong Line, where the Han Chinese constitutes the vast majority of the population (see Figure 1). The regional variation of divorce rates appears consistent in 2000 and 2010. Counties having similar divorce rates are adjacent rather than irregularly scattered. These neighboring counties form regions of considerable size, and the sex ratios at birth are also similar within each region.

Figures 1, 2 demonstrate that the boundaries between regions containing different divorce rates often do not fit the provincial boundaries. A single province usually includes sub-regions with different characteristics; for instance, the northern and southern parts of Anhui, Fujian, Jiangsu, Hubei, and Hunan provinces have different divorce rates.

Regional Differences of I/C Reflected in the Family Reproduction Model

The family reproduction model is a useful indicator for assessing the regional variation of I/C in China. A married son's choice to either continue living with his extended family or set up his own nuclear family is critical for both his own life and the lives of his extended family members. The more independent the offspring, the more likely he is to begin his own household after marriage. If there is a stronger collectivist orientation in the family, the offspring is more likely to remain in the mother's family long after marriage, abiding by the collectivist principle of "coresidence and common property."

Figure 3 shows that the children's degree of independence after marriage varies between regions. In the early 1980s, before the rapid marketization and urbanization of Chinese society, married offspring living in the Yangzi River Basin and the Northeast (where individualist culture had been historically influential) were more inclined to separate from their parents' families and establish their own independent nuclear families. In contrast, married offspring living in South China (where collectivist culture had been historically prevalent) were more inclined to continue living with their extended families, conforming to the principle of "co-residence and common property." Analysis of the Fourth National Census (1990) data (see Figure 4) yields almost identical results with those of 1982, confirming the reliability of the household reproduction data for the analysis of regional variation in Chinese culture.

Regional Differences of I/C Reflected in the Fertility Model

The fertility model includes two main dimensions: preference of the number of children and preference of gender, both of which are measured by the Chinese National Census. We analyze the national census data from 2000 to 2010 to illustrate the regional differences in fertility models (see Figures 5, 6).

In areas with a strong individualist culture, such as the Northeast, the Yangzi River Delta, the Jianghan Plain (southern Hubei), the Dongting Lake Plain (northern Hunan), and the Chengdu Plain, the fertility rate is the lowest in the country, and the preference for sons is weak. In areas with a strong collectivist culture, such as Guangdong, Fujian, southwestern Jiangnan, Henan, southern Hebei, southwestern Shandong, northern Anhui, and northern Jiangsu, the fertility rate is relatively high. These latter regions also have the highest sex ratio at birth in the country, reflecting the strong preference for sons.

Regional Differences of I/C Reflected in the Intergenerational Relationship Model

Regional differences in I/C are also manifested in intergenerational family relationships. The traditional Chinese model of intergenerational relationships emphasizes the integration of father and son. The father provides all family resources to his children to help them to establish their own houses and businesses. In return, after their parents get old and retire, their children take care of them. Fathers and sons generally do not separate - that is to say, parents may separate from one or some of their sons, but they will not separate from all of their sons. It is rare for the elderly to live alone, especially in families with only one child; however, the rise of individualism has significantly changed this pattern. The concepts of individual property, personal privacy, and independent living have become popular. As a result, more parents live alone, and families are getting smaller.

Based on the data of the Sixth National Census conducted in 2010, we explore the regional variation of these transformations by using data on average family size to measure the degree of intergenerational cohesion and the nucleation of family structure. Figures 7, 8 show that the regional variation of family structure and intergenerational relationships are similar to those of divorce and fertility rates. Northeast China, the Yangzi River Basin, the Jianghan Plain, the Dongting Lake Plain, and the Chengdu Plain have relatively smaller family sizes. They also have the highest level of individualization of intergenerational relationships. The average family size is the largest in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, and other provinces in South China. This region also has relatively high intergenerational cohesion. Families in Henan, Northern Jiangsu, Northern Anhui, Central and Southern Hebei, Shanxi, and Shaanxi provinces in North China are similar to those in South China.

In short, we show that cultural differences among Chinese regions are reflected not only in divorce rates but also in fertility rates and model of intergenerational relationship. More specifically, we found that the spatial distributions of all three variables consistently overlap (see Table 2).

As shown below, the degree of lineage development that emerged in the long history of pre-modern China is a critical factor in explaining today's regional differences in I/C. A strong individualist culture prevails in regions, where lineages are underdeveloped (such as the Northeast and most of the Yangzi River Basin), whereas a strong collectivist culture prevails in South China, where lineage culture has been influential.

The regional distribution pattern of I/C in China described above is different from that explained by the rice theory and the CD theory. One reason for this difference may be that using province as a unit of analysis (as these theories do) does not effectively illustrate regional variation in countries as large as China. Therefore, more micro-level units of analysis are needed. Based on large-scale data, our county-level analysis shows that counties in South China (Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, southeastern Hubei, and southern Hunan) tend to have a collectivist cultural orientation (see Table 2). Second, the collectivist tendency, although not as strong in the South, is strong in North China (Henan, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and northern Anhui). In contrast, counties located in the Yangtze River Basin (the western part of the Sichuan Plain and the middle Yangtze river areas including Shanghai, southern Anhui, southern Jiangsu, the Dongting Lake Plain, and the Jianghan Plain - the core areas of Hunan and Hubei) have strong individualist tendencies. Similarly, individualism is strong in the Northeastern provinces (Heilongjiang, Liaoning, and Jilin).

Measurement of Lineage Development in Different Areas

The most direct method to measure lineage development in different regions of China is to measure the proportion of the number of people carrying the same surname in the total population of a specific area. Decreasing the spatial scope increases the accuracy of this measurement. Increasing the spatial range increases the possibility of distortion because people with the same surname in a vast region may not have descended from a common ancestor. For example, the proportion of the population with several surnames in the total population of a village can accurately measure the development level of lineage because the population with the same surname in the village is most probably the descendants of the same ancestors. The earlier the first ancestors settled in the village, the higher the number of his children and grandchildren and consequently the higher the proportion of people with the same surname. Hence, the time period when the current pattern of population settlement was formed is closely related to the development of lineage organization and culture. Conversely, if the village's settlement history is short, mature lineages are absent, the number of households with the same surname is small, and the distribution of surnames is relatively scattered.

The database of the Chinese General Social Survey (2006) contains variables that measure the degree of lineage settlement - that is, the proportion of the three largest surnames in the village to the total population and total number of village households. The data show that, at the administrative village level, lineage groups in South China (Guangdong, Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangxi) are significantly larger than those in North China, which are in turn larger than lineages in Northeast and Southwest China. As Figure 8 illustrates, the concentration and power of lineages in South China are stronger than in North China, and those in North China are stronger than in Northeast China and the Yangzi River Basin. However, the micro-level data cannot directly represent the regional differences in lineage development.

To assess the degree of lineage development across China, we expanded our unit of analysis, calculating the concentration of surnames in different regions based on the 1% sample survey in 2005. In China, the county has been a relatively stable administrative unit since the Qin and Han dynasties. In a typical core region of Han culture, there are more than a dozen surnames within the borders of a single county. The number of surnames found within its borders is often large if the county received a large number of migrants. Even if people with the same surname gathered in a county only by chance and without sharing similar descendants, the specific surname would not comprise a high proportion of the local population.

The analysis results illustrated by Figures 8, 9 show consistency in the spatial distribution of surname concentration, both at the county and the administrative village level. When the surname concentration is high at the county level, it will also be high at the village level. That is, in South China counties with a high concentration of surnames, a typical village community often contains residents who share the same lineage. Most of the counties in Northeast China and the Yangzi River basin have relatively low surname concentrations, mainly because they received migrants from different regions and with different surnames.

Figure 9 also shows that the concentration of surnames in each county is not randomly distributed across China. Counties with similar surname concentrations are connected and form a relatively large area. For example, the three northeastern provinces and the Yangzi River Basin make up an area with a relatively low concentration of surnames, while areas with relatively high concentrations of surnames occupy large parts of North and South China. This finding confirms the long-term effects of regional variation in lineage development due to varied historical patterns of migration and settlement in China. The population settlement in Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Jiangxi provinces occurred earlier than in other areas, before the Song Dynasty. Those settlers often belonged to large families and nobles. A relatively peaceful and stable socio-political order in the following periods - marked by fewer wars and rebellions - was conducive to the development of lineage groups with identical surnames in South China compared to other Chinese regions. The higher concentration of surnames in North China (when compared to the Northeast and the Yangzi River Basin) can be explained by the North's earlier population settlement. The Northeast and the Yangzi River Basin have the lowest concentration of surnames and the weakest lineage culture because of comparatively late population settlement, which did not allow the full development of lineage-based communities.

The spatial variations of lineage culture and I/C are consistent. The spatial distribution of the divorce rate (see Figures 1, 2), independence of young offspring (see Figures 3, 4), fertility pattern (see Figures 5, 6), family structure and intergenerational relationship pattern (see Figures 7, 10), and lineage development (see Figures 8, 9) consistently support this conclusion. Northeast China and the Yangzi River Basin have been more susceptible to the individualist culture of the west since the 1980s because their cultural orientation was generally individualist long before that. In contrast, North China's more developed lineage systems significantly weakened the influence of Western individualism. Finally, the historically strong lineage-based collectivism of South China was the most formidable obstacle to Western individualism.

The spatial correlation analysis of the spatial differences in lineage development and variables representing individualism establishes a firmer empirical basis for the above argument. We use all I/C indicators of each county located to the east of the Aihui-Tengchong Line as our dependent variables, and each county's concentration of surnames (the population share of people with 20 most frequent surnames) as the explanatory variable. The spatial correlation analysis through the ArcGIS system demonstrates the strong explanatory power of surname concentration in accounting for the regional variation of I/C in China.

As the correlation coefficient matrix shows (see Table 3), the relationship between lineage and I/C variables is clear and significant. The lineage variable is positively correlated with family size and the proportion of three-generation families. As the level of lineage development of a region increases, family size and the proportion of extended families within all families also increases, and divorce rates fall. The lineage variable also has an interesting relationship with fertility patterns. The higher the lineage development, the higher the fertility rate, and the more likely people are to have more male children. The higher the lineage development level, the more likely the traditional family model is passed on from generation to generation.

Comparing the Explanatory Power of Different Theories

In order to compare the explanatory powers of the rice and lineage theories of I/C more systematically, we conducted additional quantitative analyses. After controlling for rice farming, CD/resource, and urbanization variables, we analyzed the lineage-related variables' influence on I/C variables.

Comparison Through a Regression Model

In the simple correlation matrix in Table 3, we find a significant correlation between the lineage factor and the variables that measure I/C. To further confirm the influence of lineage factors on I/C, we controlled factors that may significantly affect I/C. Existing studies have found that various factors, including pathogen, planting pattern, climate-demand, IR, and urbanization, cause regional differences in I/C. Models 4 and 5 are regression analysis models based on 2000 and 2010 county-level data on these critical factors. Although pathogen factors are essential, collecting county-level pathogen data in China is currently difficult. Therefore, the models mainly control rice, CD-IR, and urbanization factors.

Rice and CD-IR variables are highly collinear because climate affects both. Our collinearity test found a mean VIF = 3.65. At present, there are two main methods of resolving the collinearity problem. The first is to directly remove the less important factors in the regression equation. This approach, however, is not suitable for this study because we assess the validity of theories stressing the significance of rice and CD-IR factors. The second method uses variables that have collinearity. In time-series data, this can be done by subtracting the average value in a specific time range from observations. In space-series data, the average value within a specific spatial range is subtracted from observations ( Rabe-Hesketh and Skrondal, 2008). We addressed the CD-IR factor by subtracting the average value of the provincial CD from the CD value of each county within the province, resulting in the differential value of the CD factor. We then incorporated this new value into the regression equation. We subtracted the provincial average from each county's values because climate factors share strong similarities within a province. We could have also subtracted each prefecture-level city's average value from each county's CD value, but this would have been too cumbersome. Moreover, it may not significantly reduce collinearity because the range of prefecture-level cities is too small. After subtracting the provincial average values from counties' CD values, the collinearity factor among the explanatory variables decreased significantly. The data analysis results (see Tables 4 and 5) show that, after controlling rice, CD-IR, and urbanization factors, the regression coefficients between lineage and I/C variables result in the following:

1. There is a negative correlation between lineage factors and the divorce rate (divorce rate representing individualism). Hence, the higher the region's lineage development, the lower the divorce rate, and the lower the lineage development, the higher the divorce rate. We found this negative correlation for both 2000 and 2010, supporting our hypothesis (see Models 1 and 7).

2. Lineage development and the percentage of single-person households (such households representing individualism) tend to show a negative correlation in the 2000 data, which also supports our hypothesis (see Model 2). However, the correlation coefficient in the 2010 model does not support our hypothesis (see Model 8).

3. The degree of lineage development is positively correlated with family size (family size representing collectivism) for 2000 and 2010, which supports our hypothesis (see Models 3 and 9).

4. There is a positive correlation between the degree of lineage development and the proportion of three-generation direct families (such families representing collectivism). This correlation passed the significance test for the 2000 data (see Model 4). The correlation is also in line with the research hypothesis but did not pass the significance test for the 2010 data (see Model 10).

5. The positive correlation between the degree of lineage development and the fertility rate (see Models 5 and 11) and between lineage development and preference for male children (see Models 6 and 12) supports our hypothesis and also passes the significance test. As the degree of lineage development increases, people tend to have more children and are more inclined to have boys. This finding underlines the close relationship between familism and collectivism.

6. In the regression model, rice and CD-IR factors also have a certain degree of explanatory power. Rice theory argues that as the ratio of rice planting increases, the collectivist tendency increases. Models 1 and 7 show that the higher the proportion of paddy fields, the lower the divorce rate. In other words, the ratio of rice planting is negatively correlated with individualism. These findings are consistent with the rice theory. The rice factor also positively correlates with family size (see Models 3 and 5) and the ratio of three-generational families (see Models 4 and 8), variables representing collectivist tendencies. The rice theory can also explain fertility rate (see Models 5 and 11) and preference for male children (see Models 6 and 12). Hence, as the rice planting ratio increases, the fertility rate and preference for sons increase. However, like the lineage factor, the rice variable cannot predict the proportion of single-person households in a region. The regression coefficient does not conform to the rice theory's assumptions. The CD-IR factor negatively correlates with the divorce rate (see Models 1 and 7), a factor representing individualism. It also exhibits a certain degree of positive correlation with other variables representing the collectivist tendency. However, after controlling for lineage and rice factors, most of the regression coefficients are relatively small.

7. Compared with other factors, such as divorce rate, fertility rate, and preference for sons (which all have a strong relationship with lineage factors for both 2000 and 2010), we find that variables measuring family structure and lineage factors do not have a stable relationship. For instance, Table 4 shows that the correlation coefficient between the proportion of three-generational households in 2000 (see Model 4) and the lineage factor is not significant. This may be explained by the fact that, with the help of census data, it is possible to accurately measure factors such as divorce rate, fertility rate, and preference for sons. However, it is not easy to measure family size and ratio of single-person and three-generational households in China, a country experiencing a rapid process of population migration and urbanization. Since family structure is continually changing, an accurate measurement of family size is difficult to obtain. For instance, measuring the ratio of three-generational families is challenging, because in many cases, the level of cohesion between parents and their married children may be high even when they do not live together. In other words, rapid rural outmigration makes measuring I/C based on family size and structure challenging. In contrast, measuring I/C based on the divorce rate, fertility rate, and preference for sons is easier and more reliable because migration does not affect these factors in the same way it affects family size and structure. In short, lineage, rice, and CD-IR factors can explain specific dimensions of I/C more accurately than others.

We conducted a factor analysis to comprehensively measure the explanatory power of these three factors. We generated collectivism and individualism factor scores through the principal component analysis of variables including family_scale, pro_of_three_gen, RSB, fertility, pro_of_single, and divorce. The data analysis results (see Table 6) show that the lineage factor has a statistically significant positive correlation with the collectivism factor (see Models 13 and 15) and a statistically significant negative correlation with the individualism factor (see Models 14 and 16). These findings support our hypothesis that the higher the lineage development, the higher the collectivist tendency and the lower the individualist tendency.

Our lineage-based framework explains the differences in I/C scores for the year 2000 (see Models 13 and 14) and the regional differences in collectivism scores for the year 2010 (see Model 15). In these models, the lineage factor has relatively strong explanatory power, and the correlation coefficient is significantly greater than that of the rice factor. On the other hand, when explaining the individualism factor score for 2010, the correlation coefficient of the rice factor is slightly higher than that of the lineage factor (see Model 16). As shown in Table 6 models, the regression coefficients of the CD factor are the lowest. Hence, we found that the explanatory power of the CD factor is weaker than rice and lineage factors.

The correlation coefficients and directions of lineage and rice factors are highly consistent. Both factors explain I/C variation in China in a North-South axis. However, unlike the rice theory, our lineage-based approach separates the individualist Yangzi River Basin from collectivist South China. It also separates the individualist Northeast from the relatively collectivist North China. Therefore, compared with rice theory, the lineage theory provides a more detailed and optimized interpretation of regional variation of I/C in China.

The regional variation of I/C in China is not merely a North-South (or, more precisely, Qinling Mountains-Huai River) divide. There are significant cultural and psychological differences between North China, Northeast China, the Yangzi River Basin, and South China. This 4-fold regional variation has the potential to inform future studies of culture and psychology in China. It is in this sense that we believe that the rice theory is not wrong. Indeed, it should continue to inform us, though regional differences in Chinese culture and psychology should be further specified and related to the historical trajectories of migration and settlement of various Chinese regions.

Conclusion

We began by pointing out the paradoxical conclusions of the rice theory and the climato-economic theory in their attempts to explain the regional variation of individualism-collectivism in China. Unlike existing studies, which use provinces as the unit of analysis, our study uses large-scale census data and social media data in order to analyze the regional distribution of individualism and collectivism in China from a more microscopic perspective at the county level. We find that the spatial distribution of I/C has apparent regional characteristics. South and North China are generally more inclined to collectivism, whereas the Yangzi River Basin and Northeast China are more inclined to individualism. These findings are significantly different from the claims of rice theory and climato-economic theory.

We offer the alternative explanation that different degrees of lineage development can account for the variation of individualism and collectivism in different Chinese regions. We show that regional cultural differences are related to regional differences in the degree of lineage development. Different regions in China have different lineage development trajectories due to their varied social and political histories, as well as migration and population settlement patterns. China's historical background has resulted in significant regional variations of cultural orientations in recent decades, during which Western individualist values have affected China more than ever. While collectivist culture has resisted Western-style individualism in some regions, others have adopted it without much resistance. Collectivist culture has been strongest in South China and relatively strong in North China because of earlier population settlement, which allowed full development of lineage organizations. In contrast, the Yangzi River Basin and Northeast China have maintained a fairly strong individualist culture due to the relatively late population settlement and weak lineage organizations. This lineage-based framework makes a novel theoretical contribution to cross-cultural psychology, particularly in studies of Chinese culture.

We want to point to some limitations of this research. Talhelm et al. (2014) measure the rice farming ratio at the provincial level. We carry out a county-level analysis. There are more than 2,000 counties in China, and it is almost impossible to find data on the ratio of paddy fields to total cultivated land for all counties. Therefore, we used the indicator of the ratio of rice sown area to grain sown area provided by the first agricultural census (1996) to calculate the rice farming ratio for each region. This procedure is slightly different from the measurement method in the paper by Talhelm et al. (2014). This difference may have a specific impact on the research conclusions. However, we think that the level of capability of these two measurement methods is not very different.

There are certain disagreements between the rice theory and the climato-economic theory. Although our conclusions are different from both approaches, overall, we agree more with the rice theory. For example, similar to Talhelm et al. (2014), we also found that rice farming region to the south of the Qinling Mountains and Huai River is an area with a relatively high level of lineage development. Moreover, both our lineage-based approach and rice theory describe the Yangzi River Basin as a cultural region that is different from both North China and South China.

Like the rice theory, our analysis is significantly different from the findings of the climato-economic theorists. Our differences may be due to our different units of analysis. While the climato-economic scholarship examines the regional variation of I/C in China at the provincial level, we carried out a county-level analysis, which is more granular. However, this is not the end of this debate. More data sources will become available in the future, especially with the further development of the collection and analysis of big data. Hence, we need to continue testing our theories by using these data sources.

Further research is required to explore various dimensions of this issue. Multiple factors affect the cultural-psychological orientations of modern Chinese society, the lineage development in the ancient period being just one of them. Existing studies have revealed that differences in ecosystems, wealth levels, and other factors are critical in explaining contemporary cultural orientations. This study does not analyze these variables due to space limitations. I/C is only one among the five dimensions of cultural variation formulated by Hofstede (2011). The other four dimensions are power distance, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term vs. short-term orientation. Similarly, in addition to the I/C dimension, the three-dimensional perspective Triandis et al. (1988) includes tightness/looseness and cultural complexity ( Chua et al., 2019; Talhelm and English, 2020). The effects of lineage development should be explored from all these dimensions. The relationship between lineage development and different styles of thinking (analytic/holistic) also deserves further research.

Finally, the effects of migration on cultural change should also be taken seriously. The ratio of the urban population in China rose from 35.8% in 2000 to 60.3% in 2019 (World Bank, n.d.). Moreover, there are 291 million migrant workers in China who left their villages to work in urban areas within their home province or other provinces ( National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2020). Recent studies of domestic educational migration in China show that cultural differences along the North-South axis significantly shape the coping strategies of young people who migrate from/to the North/South for university education. These studies stress that coping strategies based on change of environment (primary coping) are prevalent in North China, and those based on fitting into the environment (secondary coping) are prevalent in South China. Chinese youth who do not cross the North-South border do not experience significant acculturative stress ( English et al., 2019). However, those crossing the North/South border for university education do. Coping strategies learned from home are highly important when coping with this stress ( English and Worlton, 2017; English and Geeraert, 2020). Hence, future studies of regional variation of culture in China should seriously consider the effects of migration.

Author Contributions

All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.596762/full#supplementary-material

Footnotes

References

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The Lineage Theory of the Regional Variation of Individualism/Collectivism in China

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China has undergone a rapid process of modernization since 1949. The modernization process has accelerated with the development of the market economy and rural-to-urban migration after the 1980s. Nevertheless, Chinese regions still exhibit substantial differences in terms of individualist/collectivist cultural orientations. The rice theory and the climato-economic theory have attempted to explain this variation by analyzing provincial-level data.