Quartz’s Roberto A. Ferdman highlights a recent IPSOS poll’s finding that people in China were most likely among respondents from 20 countries to judge their own success based on material possessions—or, at least, to admit it. By a smaller margin, Chinese respondents were also most likely to report feeling “under a lot of pressure to be successful and make money.”
On the whole, there appears to be a correlation between the stage of a country’s development and its tendency to equate money with success. China, India and Brazil, three of the world’s most noteworthy developing countries, were all among the likeliest to measure success by material belongings. In fact, a deeper dive into the data shows that while Chinese agreed most that success is measured by the things one owns, Brazilians and Indians were actually more likely to “strongly agree” with the statement. Developed countries, like Germany, Japan, the US and the UK, on the other hand, were among the least likely by all measures. [Source]
Chinese were also more likely (46%) than the global average (32%) to express optimism for their country over the next year, lagging behind only Indians (53%), Canadians and Australians (47%). But China ranked 12th in terms of optimism about personal and family circumstances, at 56% to an average of 59%. A Financial Times/Telefonica poll released in June found higher levels of both personal and national optimism among young Chinese aged 18-30.
