China Needs To Wake Up To Inconsistencies
By Paul Ding & Greg Hallberg, Waymark Shanghai
Published March 22, 2010
China has already discontinued access to You Tube, Facebook, and Twitter, and the rampant paranoia doesn’t end there. Indeed I have great respect for this ancient, still-mysterious at times, and in most cases sincere culture. Most importantly I love the people there and call Shanghai my “second home.” As I write in my essay entitled “Doing Business in China” within the Publishing Section of our website, I adore just about everything about mainland China – with a few notable exceptions. Okay, quite a few exceptions.
While China has loosened up on religious freedoms, including, as an example, my own free-will participation in a local Christian-Protestant style non-denominational church in the wonderful old French Concession area of Shanghai. The services are very similar to such a house of worship in America, and the gorgeous-but-time-worn building has tones of glory days from the distant past. The odd thing remains the fact that the “local” Chinese can exclusively go there for Sunday morning services, in Mandarin, however we “foreigners” (non-Chinese passport holders) must attend our church services at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Sundays, so as to not mingle with the locals in a perceived (or God knows what…) illegal assembly or some such nonsense. And one day during the service’s obligatory announcements of in-house activities and social functions, the American pastor had to say that this was a “safe place to come together,” a particularly odd pronouncement I thought – what did he mean, and why did he feel compelled to say that? Also once in awhile, mention is made of the concern over inviting locals to our services, where perhaps plain clothes police might detect their presence and close down the church, similar to hundreds of home churches and established houses of worship bulldozed to the ground for no apparent reason, widely reported in many newspapers.
As a local expatriate in China, we all hear stories about romances gone bad, between a local gal and a Western man, in happy hour bar chatter. While some intercultural relationships do indeed prosper, and I personally know of several, there are legendary tales of the Chinese girl with the Chinese boyfriend, also a man from the West in tow, and she gladly takes his money and affections for a ride, while funneling funds to her Chinese male companion. Just like intellectual property infringements, the credo too often still seems to be: “Lie, cheat, steal, whatever it takes.” Never trust a foreigner, under any circumstances. Even among Chinese family members, the idea of loaning money for home improvements and marriages, child birth assistance, and the like usually involve fights over who got paid – how much – and then reneging on repayment. And we wonder why it is that business deals go sour, as word of honor and faithful negotiations are consistently made to be broken.
As recent as a March 22, 2010 article in The Wall Street Journal, American firms do indeed feel that they are totally shut out of lucrative contracts and new business deals in China. “A growing number of U.S. companies feel unwelcome in China, illustrated in a new survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China,” according to newspaper reports and from my own business experiences also as a long time member of Am Cham China as it is called. I can further personally attest through on-going committee membership involvement and work experiences that the chatter around tables at Am Cham clearly reveals a deepening sense of frustration and outright betrayal in further commitments to foreign firms in China. There is clearly a darkening mood as the article states, among multi-national companies in China, and it comes at the worst possible time for not only China but the global economy.
Unlike almost completely closed off Japan and South Korea, where market restrictions and trumped-up bogus regulations have kept foreign companies out of Asia, China welcomed us in with open arms and got immediate access to technology and modern management ideas. Then began the process of throwing all of them out, to return to the hollow shells of what were once thriving economies back home. An ancient Chinese proverb and battle story document this prophetic transgression. And the CEO of Boeing recently said publicly that they should relocate their corporate headquarters to China – he is completely insane and irresponsible to shareholders, their employees, and the United States! And he is not alone in this assessment of lucrative markets, with minimal know-how as to what is really taking place behind closed doors.
Yes, I have heard and read voraciously all about the century of humiliation suffered by the Chinese people. And some of it is true. Yup, I know all about their interest in global travels, the incredible learning of their young kids in highly disciplined schools, artistic accomplishments in music and cinema, the dramatic rise of 300 million poor inhabitants and gleaming cities on the rise. All a sight to behold and China deserves a most hearty congratulations for these accomplishments, not to mention the magnificent Beijing Olympics. Their desire to build upon home grown talent is understandable, but most of what they have done also is due to the stampede of foreigners to China to help out during the last 30 years. And they seem to have forgotten that part of history. The Chinese people are wonderful historians but often maintain an opaque historical perspective of convenience with a heavy dose of saving face. The British burned down the new United States capital city of Washington, D.C. a couple of hundred years ago, but as Americans we are not still seeking revenge for centuries old disagreements and conflict. Foreigners burned and looted Beijing’s Summer Palace. Time has passed – get over it!
I am not a social psychologist, merely a trained observer of human character and overseas businessman for a very long time. It seems clear that the Cultural Revolution and inherent behavioral tendencies have taken a serious and immeasurable toll on the Chinese mindset. There appears to be – and many in China also suggest strong opinions to verify this conclusion – an epidemic of mental illness so widespread and pervasive so as not to be ignored. Social services, welfare assistance, and mental health professionals are almost completely non-existent in China, yet to be developed and understood. Maybe therapy is in complete conflict with a Confucian way of thinking. Shoddy management infighting, incredible bullying, sexual harassment, and very caustic inter-personal workplace relations are the norm in Shanghai as an example. Many Chinese strongly prefer to work for Westerners as opposed to Asians, especially other Chinese (most notably of Hong Kong heritage), due to the West’s ideals of employee empowerment and professionalism which are often a trademark of foreign workplace supervision methods, but I realize also not perfect either. China needs to at last look into their own mirror.
I cannot imagine living through Mao’s era and all of the depravity that came with it, or the occupation of Japanese forces during the mid-20th century. But enough already! Learn from the past, move on, gracefully accept change and enlightenment, begin to appreciate foreign help and cooperation from the outside. And play by the rules present day. Get rid of this suspicious emotional baggage and stop hiding behind the ever-present excuse of saving face – that is not reciprocal in any manner when addressing foreigners, who are regularly slammed in meetings, the media, and personally. Wake up and join the rest of the world in trying to completely understand each other, no games.