On the superficial level, Chinese may seem to be socially conservative and study math/science to the wishes of parents, etc. But on a deeper level, modern Chinese are extremely selfish, there was a little girl who was hit in a hit-and-run in a major city in central China during mid-day and no one helped her for hours while she laid there dying. This is quite morbid to Westerner values, but the Chinese rationale is "if I help her, the person who hit her has already run away; she might pin me for the hit-and-run because she needs to sue someone for her damage."
Individualism here implies self-protection and ruthless advancement of personal agenda for money and power; it's quite different from the American ideal of individualism of finding and pursuing one's passion and vision. However, my point is that both the Chinese and Americans ideals, are actually the same thing in different dressings, it's just Chinese are more honest about it because of economical scarcities.