China and the U.S. are exact opposites

In today's second consecutive tongue-in-cheekily titled post, we take a look at a different scenario from the one discussed in the last post:

The government passes a law doubling the income tax without consulting the citizens. Is the government right to do this? What would citizens say? What would they do? What should they do?

For the Surprise Arrest scenario discussed in the last post, the Chinese responses were, to me, shockingly severe. This caused me to question some preconceived notions of mine. In the case of the Tax Hike scenario, however, my expectations were met: in general the Americans reacted much more strongly (again, the same coding system — C for Chinese, E for English):

E-19     What would the citizens say?

E-20     They'd be very pissed off. Like, really pissed.

E-13     “What would they do?” They would probably rebel…

E-14     Yeah, violently maybe.

E-13     Yeah, mobs.  I can totally imagine that.

E-21     The citizens’ response to this would be to somehow combat the government.

E-22     Anarchy.

E-21     Anarchy. [laughter] Um, maybe not anarchy, but maybe to not pay the income tax would be one way.

E-24     So I think they would definitely speak out.  They would form rallies and protest.

E-23     Yeah, I agree that would happen.

E-26     There’d be rioting.

E-25     Major backlash, yeah.

E-26     Yeah, I mean if they did something that huge…

E-25     You would get failure to comply, distrust of government, people would be voted out, or forced out by the media, or by just the general public.

E-19     Should they work like within the laws already set down by the government, or should they do their own thing?

E-20     Well, I don't know, if the government doubled their income tax without consulting the citizens first, I think there's something wrong with the government. Anarchy, anarchy! That's exactly what's gonna happen.

Contrast this with the Chinese responses:

C-21    Just doubling the income tax wouldn’t cause much anger.  But society in general would oppose this if there are many, many problems in society, and if everyone is extremely dissatisfied. Then they may actively stand up and oppose it.  But if everything else is good, and it’s just the doubling of the tax, there won’t be a very big reaction.

C-10    I think the reaction…of course people will have opinions, but also might leave the matter unresolved.  But they will complain.

C-11    Yes, I think this is how it is.  There won’t be too big a reaction to this problem…. Many places of work, with regard to this matter, they will take all sorts of measures to sidestep it, I think.  So there would be a reaction.  As for actions, I imagine there aren’t any actions to take. How to you think the people should respond to this situation?

C-10    There’s nothing to be done.

C-19    The people would complain.

C-18    They would complain, but only in the moment. There wouldn’t be people hitting the streets to resist, or marching and demonstrating.…That is, if people can keep living in a relatively comfortable and stable environment, no one will we willing to hit the streets, hold up a sign, demonstrate, march, and so on.  “What sort of actions would they take?”  I think there would be people publicizing their opinions in the media or in public places, saying they think this method, this method of doubling the income tax is extremely wrong.  What specific actions…I think there wouldn’t be anyone doing anything too extreme.

My own experience of hearing these responses, interview after interview, was one of growing confusion. I got exactly what I had expected from the Americans: anger in response to both the Surprise Arrest and Tax Hike questions. In the Chinese population, why was the response to Tax Hike so different from the response to Surprise Arrest?

Any ideas? Obviously I have a lot to say about it, and will in the next post.