> the "We here in the Maker movement could not be more pleased with ourselves" vibe.
This is another of way of saying that we enjoy making here beyond earning a living. Yes it's work, but it's also recreation and art. In places like SV and NY, people make because mainly it's fun.
Over there, 'making' is not really something you enjoy; it's a means to an end. It's something you have to do to make money or save money, which in turn provides for your family and increases your reputation the more money you accumulate. The key point is that there's no love for a trade because nothing else really matters aside from family including your personal hobbies. Therefore on a whole there's no 'maker culture'. If something doesn't make you money for your family, there's no point. There's no doing something just because it's cool and not practical. It must be practical. (This imo is another reason why Chinese open source is anemic.) Add to this the repression of free expression and the work and school hours that are the longer than here, and what you get is a focus more on making copies and knockoffs of name brands (something safe) instead of something truly Chinese like say this:
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/robots-of-wu-yulu The main reason I've always remembered this man is because he's one of the few Chinese people in China (that I'm aware of) who actually enjoys making for the sake of making, and not just as a livelihood. You can see the pride in his work.
In general their dreams aren't to change the world with something cool. It's to make enough money to send their family off to the US or Canada, where the water and air are cleaner...
I can go on and on with this subject. Yes maybe things are slowly changing in small pockets of places like Shanghai where there's a lot of Western expats, but on a whole what I've described is accurate.