China has experienced rapid changes over the past five decades. From 1979 to 2015, Chinese GDP per capita increased from 2.7% of U.S. GDP per capita to 23.6%. Average wages increased sixfold, while absolute poverty declined from 41% of the population to approximately 5%. While the economic change is undeniable, what about cultural change? In three studies, we have documented a rise of individualism in China.

A Chinese given name usually consists of one or two, and sometimes three, characters. In the first study, we tested whether babies’ given names increasingly consist of unique (or infrequently encountered) characters. We used the latest version of the Modern Chinese Character Frequency Statistic Dictionary as a reference to identify the uniqueness of each character. Then we ran a word frequency analysis to test whether parents are more likely to use unique Chinese character to name their babies. The chart below documents the average frequency of all the characters used over the last 50 years. Clearly, just as Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin gave their daughter, Apple, a unique name, Chinese parents are becoming more likely to use atypical and obscure characters to name their babies.





The second observational study is based on word frequency analysis of the lyrics of popular songs. We sampled the 10 most popular songs every year under the Chinese National Radio Billboard from 1970 to 2010. Then we counted the frequency of two types of words: first-person singular pronouns (I, me, and mine) and first-person plural pronouns (we, us, and ours). As the chart below shows, the singular pronouns are used more frequently over the last four decades, while the plural pronouns are used less frequently. Indeed, in the 1980s, while we were growing up, it was not uncommon to have songs that start every sentence with “we” (e.g., “We’re the flowers of the country. We’re the future of the country.”). One can hardly hear any songs like this nowadays.

For our last study we drew on the World Value Survey (WVS). The WVS is currently the largest investigation of people’s attitudes, values, and beliefs around the world, and it has been conducted since 1989 across 65 countries. The first question on the WVS asks participants to rate how important they find family, friends, leisure time, politics, work, and religion.

In previous research we’ve conducted, we have found that the importance of leisure time is a critical indicator of individualistic values. Our analyses of the WVS revealed that over time Chinese participants have rated leisure time as increasingly important, while the importance of work has decreased. We categorized the respondents into three age ranges and tracked the changes in respondents within a given age category over the last three decades in China.

We wanted to see how these changes compared to other major world economies, so we looked at WVS responses from Japan and the United States as well. As the chart above shows, the increasing importance of leisure time and decreasing importance of work are specific to China. These findings also demonstrate that even though China and Japan are typically perceived as exemplar collectivistic cultures, they have important differences. These differences have become even more evident over the past decade in the domains of leisure time and work. Meanwhile, there is an increasing convergence between Chinese and American preferences in these two domains.

When we presented these results to a group of business leaders in China, a CEO shared an insightful comment: “I have three distinct versions of Chinese in my company — 1990s, 1980s, and 1970s. These three generations have contrasting preferences, are motivated by different types of rewards, and have distinct work styles.” While the overall level of individualism in China might not have surpassed that of the United States, the increasing individualism among Chinese people marks a major shift and will have significant implications for the future success of business in China.