A lot has been said about outdated scarcity mindset, and those beliefs being difficult to shake in this thread. But honestly, I whole heartedly disagree. The mindset around these kind of Dark Triad behaviors, fixation on social standing and wanting to raise China up stem from the current day reality that China might be the MOST competitive society in the entire world, other then south Korea. To literally just get into a good school and have a good job requires competition and dedication that students here have to do to get into Harvard. And failure along any of the steps up towards these goals in most cases will simply not be recovered: you will be part of the permanent underclass. It is a death battle that takes up every waking moment of your entire life.
I one time was dating a civil engineer who had managed to go to school and work abroad in my country. When I described how I thought the act of helping people, even when your own future was uncertain was a primal act of human dignity and greatness, she began crying. We talked a little bit after as she calmed down, where she explained that she was upset to hear me even talking about helping strangers instead of myself of her. "My whole life has been competition. How can you think about anybody else". It was an eye opening moment to say the least.
The unfortunate thing is that resource and job scarcity I think is increasingly driving everywhere in the world to have more of these mindsets. While people often complain about mass immigration and demographics, at current pace I believe the world will be a lot culturally similar to China 20 - 30 years from now, simply because of economic realities. Especially in a truly AI future where there just aren't enough high paying jobs left for anybody but the intellectual and economic super elite.