One of my closest friends is Chinese, and what you are saying confirms my observations and what he has anecdotally told me.<p>After finishing college here in the US, he got a very lucrative job at a consulting firm and was doing very well. Yet his parents (especially mother) kept pressuring him to go back to Hong Kong because, according to him, that&#x27;s the rightful place of a family&#x27;s only son. Keep in mind that such a move would mean upending his life and also taking a big pay cut (he compared salaries).<p>He also told me that Chonese schools reward conformity above all else and strongly discourage (sometimes with physical violence) sticking out or taking initiative.<p>That&#x27;s not to say the author&#x27;s observations and opinions are wrong. In fact what he shared is very valuable - people who come from middle class or above families tend to take their privilege for granted, and in fact can&#x27;t even imagine what it is like to be poor. I myself only learned it by volunteering at homeless shelters and soup kitchens. It&#x27;s very heartbreaking that the world&#x27;s richest and most powerful country has so many struggling people, but it can also be instructive in terms of what one can do to help fix it. So I commend the author for writing this piece.