Asian values are frequently contrasted with American ones. This is not because they are opposites - all value systems have far more in common than otherwise. No, Asians compare themselves to Americans for the same reason other regions do: the United States represents the cultural benchmark.
So what are these famous contrasting values? To some extent, that depends on whether you subscribe to an 'eastern' or 'western' point of view. Easterners play down categorical contrasts. They conform to type on the subject: high tolerance for complexity and a capacity to accumulate observations without the immediate urge to sweep them up into tidy conclusions. One hilarious illustration of this was cited in Richard Nisbett's Geography of Thought. When communist-era premier Zhou Enlai was asked whether he thought the French Revolution had been a success, he replied: 'It's too early to tell.'
Westerners, on the other hand, parody themselves in their enthusiastic belief in scientific methods. In order to impose intellectual control on the slippery subject of cultural difference, they tend to treat the world and its many cultures like a giant experiment, commanding cultural idiosyncrasies into military order with battalions of definitions, categorisations and systematic measurements. However, whether convincing or not, western theories dominate the field of cultural analysis. So it is informative for people in multicultural settings like Hong Kong to have a notion of the prevailing conventional wisdom.
One taxonomy often bandied about by people who sell across borders - whether it is political ideas or washing powder - was devised by psychologist Shalom Schwartz. His system was based on the 'guiding principles of one's life' gathered from 60,000 participants in 63 countries. It notes broad differences in perspective, most of which have parallels in other theories of culture.
One division is between hierarchy and egalitarianism. That is, the acceptance of unequal distribution of power, as is traditional in Chinese culture, as against a greater emphasis on equality, more common in Anglo-American cultures. The Schwartz system also confirms another east-west split: respect for tradition versus openness to change.
Schwartz's study suggests that many people influenced by Anglo-American cultures see life in terms of power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation and self-direction. That is, they live their lives guided by the belief that it is important to have control and dominate other people, to be personally successful and admired, to seek personal pleasure and self-gratification, to be independent, creative and to feel free.