一些德国人（欧洲人）为什么那么傲慢，他们的傲慢来自于哪里？ 第1页

Please let me answer as a German (and European)

I apologize; I am not able to write my contributions in Chinese. Believe me, I would love to do that. I am learning Chinese, but I am bad at speaking, and completely unable to write. My mother tongue is German. I am also close to mother tongue in English and French, and
fluent in Spanish, all including oral and writing. I learned 6 years of Latin and speak a little Polish. So I try to bridge the language gaps. But in Chinese, I am just not there yet. I
still think that speaking in the wrong language is better than not speaking
with each other at all. With modern translation tools, I can read your website
and questions, and you can read my answers. One of my employees translates some
things, but she can't keep up with all. You can find her under Janny

非常抱歉我不会用中文作答或写作。如果可以的话我也希望自己能用中文交流。我现在正在努力学习中文，但是还完全不能书写，也说不了多少。我的母语是德语，并且能够非常熟练地使用英语和法语，能够比较熟练地使用西班牙语（包括口语和书写），并且我学了6年的拉丁语，还会说一点波兰语。我在尝试减少语言障碍。

但是我的中文还不行。我总觉得用不同的语言交流总比相对无言好。多亏了强大的翻译工具，让我能看懂你们的网站和问题，你们也能看懂我的回答。我的一名中国员工会翻译一些我的回答或文章，但是她赶不上我的速度，你们可以在她的知乎账号（https://www.zhihu.com/people/janny-16-13/activities）下面看到一部分翻译

First of all: I don't doubt your experiences, and they make me sad. I thank you for writing about them in a very reasonable way, e.g. saying that "some" are arrogant, not "all" or "THE Germans". That is really good.

I have made similar experiences with my own countrymen and -women.

I was born in Hamburg (port city in the north, partner city of Shanghai). I spend most of my high school in Dortmund (many know the football club Borussia Dortmund). I studied in Aachen (on the border to Belgium and Netherlands), and then lived 10 years in Munich.

In 2004 I came to China for the first time. Since ~10 years now my own German top management consulting company also has a 100% daughter company in China with local staff only. I work with these Chinese nationals on a daily basis, and we get along really well. The loyalty is very high, there is almost no turnover of employees.

Before, I worked 6 years for Siemens, and was also sent to China. Once in China, I was really shocked how some German colleagues treated the local Chinese employees. "Arrogance" is actually even a nice word for what they did.

So where does / did that come from? I offer 3 hypotheses

1. Lack of knowledge
2. Stuck in the past
3. Traditional German self confidence

1. Arrogance usually is coupled to a lack of knowledge. How can you feel superior, if you know many areas where you lack behind?
   I can say with confidence that my Chinese employees know a great deal more about the West, Europe and Germany than what the average colleague in Europe knew about China. It's different for those who were sent to China as expatriates of course. But what I mean are the college graduates and young professionals.
   How much does their education system teach about history of other countries?
   The French for example are totally focused on France only (my wife is French, I have lived in France for 10 years).
   Germans are very much focused on the 3rd Reich part of history, so they spend much less on World history. And if so, then it is oriented towards Western countries, such as Italy, France, USA...
   Then there is the interest of the people, and language:
   While all Chinese learn English in school, which opens up to you to read and experience European culture, in Germany (or Europe), hardly anybody learns Chinese, and if so than it's a full time study, nothing besides it.
   This is also very much true for the German managers at Siemens who were working in China. Even if they had long term delegations (3-4 years usually), they would learn only a little or actually no Chinese at all.
   The reason probably is that especially the written Chinese is very hard to learn for us at an adult age. I try to learn Chinese, but my aspiration would be to speak and have listening comprehension. I don't think I'll ever be able to write, even though I would love to learn all. Besides German, I am close to mother tongue in English an French, and I am fluent in Spanish. So I am really not somebody who can't learn a language. But I can see that the hurdle is very high.
   Without the language, you miss a lot. You can't really inform yourself. If you are in China, it gives a feeling of insecurity. Some expatriates gave me the impression that they were overplaying this insecurity with extra arrogance.
   
   Yet informing and learning about China would be key, because China is changing at such a breathtaking speed.
   
2. So many Germans are stuck in the past. I don't want to say as far back as the Opium Wars (few will really know what that was). But maybe as far back as 1980, and you all know what that means.
   We still call China an "emerging economy". Yet, if you use purchasing power paritity, it is is already the worlds largest economy. That does not fit. And I remember that until a few years back, Germany paid "Entwicklungshilfe" = development aid to China. This money is typically given to 3rd world countries.
   Germans still associate with China what China represented 10 or 20 years back. This is natural to a certain degree. The news needs time to travel and to be digested. And the lacking communication abilities of the Germans don't help.
   
   It is not only China's role that is changing. Also Germany's in the global context: It is shrinking. When I was a child, Germany was the 3rd largest economy, after USA and Japan. And the No 1 in exports, which it actually is again now, after having been temporarily overtaken by China. But overall, the importance of Germany is shrinking relatively speaking. It takes time to accept that fact, especially because people don't WANT to understand it.
   
3. Germans traditionally are rather arrogant. Well, all nations are, more or less. The USA are "ONE nation under GOD", the French are "the GREAT Nation", and China is basically the middle of the cosmos, and so on.
   But what I want to say: Germans feel sometimes superior, not just to Chines, but anybody.
   It is hard to say why that is so. Germany has been an exceptional country. Formed only 1871, it felt like it needed to catch up with powers such as England and France, e.g. to gain own colonies. So the national feeling was exaggerated on purpose.
   
   Germany has achieved unusual successes (e.g. around 1900-1930 or so, the main global language of science was German, because there were so many talented and success physicists, chemist and so on). The Nobel Prize winner lists of those years are full of Germans, such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg etc.
   
   Today, people identify more with Mercedes, BMW and Audi. They feel they are "world class".
   Unfortunately, the step from "I love my country, we are really great" to "We are actually even better than others" is a very slippery slope.
   
   Germany got this terribly wrong in the 3rd Reich. On the one hand, we are more willing to talk about that part of history than practically all other nations: take Japan as example, and its stubborn refusal to stop worshiping war criminals. Or the USA where hardly anybody talks ever about the fate of the native American Indians. On the other hand, we found a way to differentiate between US, the Germans, and THEM, the Nazis.
   So this does not slow down the self esteem of many people.

I hope this helps, and that you meet more nice Germans. Some can even be a pain because they try so hard to be extra nice and do everything extra well (typical German problem....). Tibet is such a case. Most don't even know what they are talking about, but they are very convinced to do the right thing and only want to help.