A society with strong citizenship must have three signs that can be dubbed the “Four Rs:” Its citizens respect truth, respect rules, respect others and respect self. The problem with these signs is that they can be highly abstract and hard for everyone to relate to.
Yesterday when I was driving the passenger to work or to wherever their destinations are, it suddenly came to me that we can see all Four Rs on the road. First of all, respecting rules means you stop whenever the signs direct so, or more generally follow signs closely. If you try to run through the red lights, your Uber or Lyft passengers would most likely complain or report you to the ride share platform and you would get a followup message asking you to confirm the facts reported. In the US even minor violations like changing lanes suddenly would invoke reports of passengers. Although I was liked by most of my passengers and received so far $1 tip on every trip I have had, there had been one passenger reporting me for sudden change of lanes. Although in my case it was a false alarm because the passenger could not see the pothole on the pavement and I was just switching my wheel away from the hole to avoid discomfort of the person in my car. Nevertheless, it strikes me how people take rules seriously.
The second R is respecting truth. In conversation with my passengers, I recognize that most people are really honest and they would not lie about their history of traffic accidents, even if they were the one causing them. In China, on the other hand, it is fair to say that people lie all the time and even for fundamental things like marriage (many citizens don’t mind to have a fake divorce just so they can buy another house, under the policy that everybody can buy one house or flat with favorite down-payment and favorite interest rates, but not second house, so couples would divorce so each of them can buy one and two for the family). The other bad consequence of rampant lies of citizens is the damage it made to the impartial judicial system: You would have a hard time finding people reporting truth as eyewitness, if they were biologically or socially related.
Respecting others is more clear when you receive positive comments from the passengers praising you yielding to pedestrians, even if that means to delay your trip sometimes significantly. As a ride sharing driver, I clearly felt the positive impression made on my passengers when I stopped and yield for pedestrians. In other words, you have extra incentive to obey rules and respect pedestrians, above and beyond the incentive provided by rule related penalties. China on the other hand has the biggest problem respecting each other. They only respect people with more power or money (or both) but look down people with lower status than their own.
Finally people have self respect. This shows when I slow down for street speed bumps and potholes for them, most likely they would tip me or give me five star ratings. Ironically, you may think that everyone has self-respect but not so in China. There people respect power and money more than themselves. Treating them nice is less rewarding than treating their child nice, and more importantly, treating them not so nice but giving them more money, they would happily accept the latter and overlook the former.
In sum, in contrast to the US, Chinese citizens are mostly holding opposite values and therefore it is extremely difficult for the country to be similar to the US. State is the biggest beneficiary of citizens not respect truth, not respect rules and not respect other fellow citizens. It is easy for China to have big skyscrapers, roads and bridges and bullet trains, but the intangibles would have take generations of efforts to get installed.