Actually, it's more of a conformist than collectivist society. The misconception comes from studies done in China regarding collectivism vs individualism in the 80s and 90s, that were 'Margaret Mead'ed: sitting people down in a formal classroom to take a test being administered by scientists with government permission didn't have the same effect in China and the western countries it was being compared to.
Collectivism is commonly seen as a valuable presentation in conformism-driven social environments.
This isn't killing sometime to save a group, though. This is guilt by association. And it isn't even that (that's just the dishonest justification), it's just a shady hope that by detaining this fraudster's incident offspring, they can lure him back to China to arrest him. It's disgusting and reprehensible.
I don't think the government thinks the kids are guilty, I think the parent is implying something even worse: that they'd be willing to essentially throw these innocent kids under a bus to arrest the parents.
No, I definitely got that (and apparently mistyped "innocent" as "incident"). The issue isn't that I object to "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". I think that is appropriate in some situations. But this doesn't feel like that; arresting this guy won't go and help or save a bunch of people. It's just revenge, and they're throwing the likely-innocent kids under the bus to get it.
The idea of prioritizing collective good means that it's ok to sacrifice one (or more) people if even more people will benefit from that action by a certain threshold amount.
This... isn't that. Arresting this guy won't help or save a bunch of people. The government just wants revenge for his financial crimes, and they're unethically using his kids to try to get it.
Mainlanders firmly believe in collectivism; whereas, western audiences in individuality.
Therefore, Chinese people believe it is okay to kill a person to save the group. Whereas, other countries do not.
Mainlanders think that is being selfish.