Is China growing because it has a growth mindset, while the US is closing up and becoming isolationist because it has a scarcity mindset?

It is the other way around. Most Chinese people actually have a “scarcity mindset” that allow them to grow, while the US is stuck in a “growth mindset” from the 50s instead of focusing on today’s issue of bringing stability.

The whole Chinese population went through a lot in the last 50 years and is very aware that we live in a world of limited resources. This scarcity mindset applies not only to material (sparing instead of spending) but also to relationships. Low trust between Chinese people lead to the creation of all sort of mechanisms (including technology) that increase the resiliency of the society as a whole. As it was almost inexistant before, we can witness it developing (it’s fascinating). For organisms and human organisations, growing is not a will but the result of the fact they are alive - and young. After growing very fast for a while, organisms and organisations gain stability (homeostasis) before transforming into something else (we call it death). Growing is a very dangerous period and that is why parenting exists.

I don’t know much about the US, but it looks to me that it does not possess the “scarcity mindset” to develop the resiliency required for such a large group to keep growing. Society is divided and not many people seem ready to make concessions. Instead of focusing solving the real problems to bring more stability, the overarching interest is to keep growing as fast as possible. For instance, the sharing economy is just concentrating capital faster without sharing any non-marginal benefit with the population. Vertical dynamics are so strong that they even substitute to horizontal ones without anyone intervening. Seems like everyone is too busy competing for a place of leader that is long gone, so they don’t see the riots coming. This whole “growth mindset”is fostering internal competition on completely unfair basis which lead to the actual isolationism - and possibly catastrophe.

This text was originally published in quora.