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236 DIMENSIONS OF NATIONAL CULTURES

improve gradually year after year and there will be no more of those long
periods of neglect followed by bursts of feverish activity when things have
been allowed to get out of hand. Secondly there won’t be the spoiling and
wastage we get at present. Thirdly the women themselves will gain a little
extra to add to their incomes, which will compensate them for the hard
work they put in throughout the year. And fourthly, there’s no reason why
we shouldn’t use the money we should otherwise have spent on nurserymen,
rockery specialists, horticultural cleaners and so on for other purposes. 1

As the story goes on, Tan Chun’s privatization is successfully carried
through. Cao has described a society in which entrepreneurial spirit could
be taken for granted, among old women as much as among others. It was
in the software of their minds.

National Values and the Teachings of Confucius

In Chapter 2 we described why and how Michael Bond asked his Chinese
colleagues to develop what became the Chinese Value Survey (CVS). In
1985 his international connections administered it to students in twenty-
2
three countries around the world. His analysis of the CVS database pro-
duced four dimensions, of which three, across twenty common countries,
were each significantly correlated with one of Geert’s IBM dimensions.

The fourth CVS dimension was not correlated with the fourth IBM dimen-
sion: uncertainty avoidance had no equivalent in the CVS. Instead, the
fourth CVS dimension contrasted values unrelated to anything in the IBM
database. However, to our excitement, this dimension correlated strongly
with recent economic growth; as it turned out later, it also predicted future
economic growth. From the IBM dimensions, IDV and to some extent
3
PDI correlated with national wealth, but none correlated with growth—

that is, increase of wealth. Nor did we know of any other noneconomic

index that correlated with growth. This discovery was sufficient reason to

add the new dimension as a fifth to our model.
The fourth CVS dimension combined on the one side these values:

1. Persistence (perseverance)
2. Thrift
3. Ordering relationships by statusand observing this order
4. Having a sense of shame