Thick and Thin: Traditional Chinese Values and Concepts in Globalization

Global development is constantly witnessing a clash of international cultural values. Through literature review and case studies from a multidisciplinary perspective, this study compares the differences between Chinese and Western value systems and investigates the impact of globalization on traditional Chinese values. This study suggests that traditional abstract Confucianism does directly have concrete applying concepts in contemporary Chinese society: the concept of small-peasant economy in the natural view system; the family-oriented concept in the human ethical view system; and the authoritarian concept in the socio-political view system. They constitute the dominant traditional as well as modern Chinese values. Employing the political-cultural perspective to make distinctions between “thick” and “thin” concepts, this study reveals that these values also follow the “differential mode of association.” “Thick concepts” (i.e., traditional Chinese values) remain stable and do not change with globalization. However, “thin concepts,” which are derived from thick concepts, change with globalization in the individual and micro sense.