In an impressive 2011 study of psychological and moral change in China over the last six decades, Arthur Kleinman from Harvard University and a group of colleagues looked at one of the most fascinating, but illusive issues – how have the Chinese people changed over the period of dramatic transformation from Mao’s era into the “reform and opening up” period. After all, few countries can have been through such epic disruption. A person in their late 50s or early 60s (the age of most of the Chinese political elite) would have been a teenager during the collectivization mania and red guard chaos of the Cultural Revolution. They would have seen fervent, unquestioning worship of Mao; then they would have seen all this debunked, and unthinkable things like foreign capital, markets, and private enterprise rise to dominance. In their lives, the change has been 180 degrees.[Source]
