I've been to China a few times and I guess you start to get an understanding of why this happens when you're there.

The trend is that quite some people have little regard foreach other. It becomes really annoying when standing in line and someone trying to get ahead of you in the queue (there always is someone trying to do it, in crowded places). But don't forget that situations where someone cuts in line will be noticed and remarked upon quickly instead of all the other people who didn't cut in line.

I've felt great annoyance about this as well and at one point it turned into some weird kind of amazement where you are observing behaviour from another planet.

I've deduced it to a few things.

1) The rushed lives in the big cities. The streets are full of people, the roads are packed (it can take up to 1 hour just passing by the 500 meter in front of a busstation with a taxi). People work ridiculous hours there (well some of them) so they are really tired when they move around

2) Also taking into consideration the enormous amount of smog / sand storms which pollute the city, you get a place where people just want to get out of as soon as possible.

This kind of explains the cutting in line and the spitting.

3) The 'one child-policy'. Chinese people tend to take an extreme amount of care of their children and it's not uncommon for parents to go to great lengths just to provide their child with everything it needs. That also goes for spending just about everything they've saved, just so their kid can go abroad to study and find work.

In some cases it goes well, but there are a lot of completely spoiled kids around. They actually think they own the world. For a change, I've been to a few more exclusive restaurants and what I found there was obviously good food (they've got that covered), but also young people with an enormous sense of entitlement. Really young, chubby kids ordering waiters to recook their meal, because it wasn't tender enough and giving the waiter all kinds of orders or just people taking off their shoes and put their feet on the table.

4) The enormous amount of competition. It's part of Chinese culture for parents to show off their kids and that tradition is largely ingrained in the new generation. People strive to own 4 apartments, a new car, a beautiful wife and a respectable job. This of course doesn't happen to everyone one.

Live on campuses is equally hard. Students who want to get somewhere need to study nearly every waking hour of the day from when they are 12 until they graduate from university.

The competition leaves people feeling estranged from each other, since there is no time and mental space to actually care about someone else.

5) China is mostly a rural country. Almost all parents had something to do with the cultural revolution. That meant pretty much everyone had to do some labor on the country. What we see now is a transition from a rural society to a modern one.

Well, I'll stop here. It seems like to me there are a lot of factors in play on why the Chinese do the things they do.

I guess it's mostly a state of transition (and I hope), I've seen great things happen in China. And well, with that many people there not all goes well.