This chapter presents an overview of the relevant background to the social environment in which foreigners may expect and be expected to work with the Chinese, whether at home or in China, under three headings:

• 1.First the relevant aspects of the geography and history that have moulded China’s cultural heritage.
• 2.Then the domestic environment in which the Chinese of today have been brought up.
• 3.Finally the relationship that, consequently, the Chinese enjoy with foreigners.

It complements the preceding overview of the corresponding business environment in general, referring to the following influences in particular:

Underpinning influences	See chapter
Big brother	1
Face (mianzi)	3
Filial piety	1
Iron rice bowl	1
Modesty and humility (keqi)	3
The superior man	1
Unemployment	1

Like the previous chapter this one attempts to give a sufficient underpinning knowledge to allow a better understanding and, consequently, practical implementation of the ‘how to do what’ more effectively when working with the Chinese.

CULTURAL HERITAGE

One certain way of failing at business with the Chinese is to ignore their cultural heritage, as moulded by China’s geography and history, which helps explain their attitude to foreigners, described below.

Geography of China

Western cartographers have traditionally described the world around the Greenwich 0° meridian (in London), with the Americas to the left or West and Asia to the right or East.

Whilst the original purpose of this practice (i.e. to standardise navigational aids for seafarers) is entirely honourable, unfortunately it still:

• gives the impression that the world revolves around Europe – which may have been true during the heyday of the various empires (e.g. Roman, Spanish and British), but is no longer so in the twenty-first century
• relegates China to the far-right edge or Far East of the world map.

Thus, in Western eyes, China is geographically ‘off centre’ thanks to a quirk of early maritime map-makers.

However, in the Chinese mind, China lies almost at the centre of the world – with Europe to the left or West and the Americas to the right or East – as illustrated by the following map (China Tour.com):

Strange as this may appear to Westerners, it does represent the view that the Chinese have held for millennia that the world revolves around China – as emphasised by its Chinese name Zhdngguó’ meaning ‘The Middle Kingdom’, the first character of which is a pictogram of the world with a vertical axis.

This world-view (whatever its merits) has been a stumbling block to China’s relations with the West in the past, as explained below – and may still be for foreigners who choose to work against, rather than with, it.

History of China

China is one the world’s oldest civilisations, with a recorded history of nearly 4,000 years; and boasts the following inventions:

• paper
• printing with movable type (c.995 AD)
• gunpowder (c. 1000 AD) – but, in accordance with Confucian pacifism, purely for recreational purposes (i.e. fireworks)
• the compass (c.1000 AD), a giant leap forward for navigation.

In literature. Confucius’Analects (c.500 BC) pre-date by about 1,200 years some of the earliest written literature in English (Beowulf), French (Serment de Strasbourg and Cantiléne de Sainte Eulalie) and German (Hildebrandslied), all attributed to the eighth or ninth century AD. In other words: on a time-line between Confucius and today, the earliest post-Latin texts of the so-called ‘civilized’ Western world appear only at the mid-point.

If this surprises today’s reader, no wonder that Marco Polo was called the Man of a Million Lies when, at the very end of the thirteenth Century AD, he returned to Venice after visiting the court of Kublai Khan, where he discovered paper money, paddle-boats and a black stone which burns: coal.

The Opium Wars

According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (World Factbook: China, www.odci.govcia.htm 2002):

‘For centuries, China has stood as a leading civilisation, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences. But in the first half of the 20th century, China was beset by major famines, civil unrest, military defeats, and foreign occupation.’

However, I beg to differ and, albeit uncomfortably for Western readers, prefer to:

• date the change in China’s fortune to her last 160 years (at the time of writing), or 4% of her recorded history, starting in the nineteenth century AD
• attribute the cause to not only internal forces; but also the invasion of China by Western traders, as epitomised by the Opium Wars (summarised in Appendix 2.1).

Relations with the West

Even the most cursory study of nineteenth century history will reveal the following key insights into China’s past relations with the West:

• 1.China’s attitude to the West was based on the inability of its ultra-conservative Imperial Qing dynasty to conceive of a community of independent and equal nations. In their view, the world comprised China on the one hand, and the rest of the world on the other – a view that:
  • was so pervasive that Chinese who promoted greater flexibility in China’s dealings with the West were accused of being ‘Westerners with Chinese faces’
  • still persists today, to a certain point.
• 2.The West’s attitude to China in general, and of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the USA in particular – as the key players was contradictory, as they simultaneously tried to:
  • undermine what they deemed restrictive trading practices, by imposing punitive Unequal Treaties, described below
  • support the Imperial dynasty, weakened by its defeat in the Opium Wars. Paradoxically, their:
  • objective was to carve up China for their own purposes
  • strategy had to be to keep China together. However, they were thwarted by the outbreaks of the Chinese Revolution (1911) and First World War (1914).
• 3.By means of such Unequal Treaties,the West humiliated China by:
  • reducing her to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country
  • forcing her for approximately the next 100 years to replace Confucianism with Western science, technology, industry and management practices
  • relegating her to being just one more backward country under the heel of imperial powers (especially Britain, France and the USA).
• 4.The continual demands by foreign traders for ever-increasing concessions gave rise to anti-foreign popular uprisings in China most notably the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions (1851-1864 and 1898-1900, respectively).

The common link then, as sadly now, is ignorance on both sides.

The Unequal Treaties

All the treaties that the Chinese were forced to sign by the Western powers during and at the conclusion of the Opium Wars – known in China collectively as The Unequal Treaties (summarised in Appendix 2.2):

• prohibited China from isolating herself from the rest of the world
• dictated her relations for approximately the next hundred years with the West both at home and abroad
• changed the course of China’s social and economic development
• handicapped the Qing dynasty permanently
• down-graded the Chinese to second-class citizens in their own country – for example by:
  • banning them and dogs from Huangpu Park in Shanghai’s former British Concession
  • subjecting them to local courts presided over jointly by Chinese and foreign judges.

The Chinese looked upon such treaties as unpleasant but necessary concessions dictated by unruly barbarians – who today, sadly, either are unaware of, or choose conveniently to forget, their inglorious colonial past, much to their shame and China’s chagrin.

Is it any wonder then that, having been treated so badly, the Chinese may still be cagey about doing business with foreigners; and try to exploit Westerners’ remorse for damage their forefathers did to China, as one of their negotiating techniques (described later in Chapter 5).

DOMESTIC ENVIRONMENT

Relevant aspects of the environment in which today’s Chinese are brought up are their attitudes to sex and gender, privacy, family and friends and education.

Sexual mores

According to Confucius:

‘There are three things which the superior man guards against: in youth, when the physical powers are not yet settled, he guards against lust.…’ (Analects 16.7a):

which injunction I believe applies to men and women alike, based on the Confucian concept of the soul as sexless.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the Chinese official attitude to sex is still quite puritanical, disapproving of pre- and extra-marital relations. Thus, in the event of a birth outside wedlock, the:

• parents may be expelled from the CPC and excluded from the ‘iron rice bowl’
• child may be denied a birth certificate and hence condemned to a lifetime as an illegal – rather than illegitimate – ‘non-person’.

Similarly, and paradoxically, some Chinese may still:

• refrain from and disapprove of public displays of heterosexual physical contact beyond a handshake – even between foreigners
• indulge publicly in same-sex physical contact without there necessarily being any homosexual overtones (which is repulsive to most Chinese).

In practice, however, there is increasingly greater sexual freedom than meets the eye, if not a sexual revolution. Thus, in 2002 (Shanghai Talk, Feb 03, 8-9):

• some 45% of working class males in China report being sexually active before marriage, according to a professor of sexual sociology at Renmin University
• pre-marital sex in Beijing reached 70% to 80%, compared with 15% in 1980, according to a researcher at the China Academy of Social Sciences
• sexually transmitted diseases were increasing annually at the rate of 30%

and (Beijing Review, 23 Jan 03, xv):

• hymen reconstruction is becoming a popular means for brides of restoring their lost virginity

all of which were practically unthinkable only a few years earlier.

Formerly, only some past members of the Chinese leadership reputedly enjoyed dalliances; whilst, as explained later, some interpreters still may be lovers by another name.

Foreigners, on the other hand, are perceived to be extremely permissive in this area, as explained below. Suffice it to say that they should not take sexual relationships with Chinese citizens lightly; and even be prepared for rough justice.

As a general rule – to avoid being misunderstood and/or compromised: steer clear of situations where you might be alone with a member of the opposite sex (unless your spouse).

Sexually provocative clothing

True to their distaste for public immodesty, the Chinese also object to provocative clothing.

Thus women should not wear clothes that are excessively revealing – such as plunging neck-lines, see-through blouses, tank tops, hemlines above the knee and shorts.

Modesty applies equally to men’s clothing.

When in doubt: use your common sense.

Sexual equality at work

When it comes to sexual equality at work, in my experience China is a model of equal opportunities.

Nevertheless, although a wife is considered to share the rank of her husband, Chinese spouses seldom show up at social occasions in China.

This has not always been so.

As elsewhere in the world, Chinese women have been subservient to men in a patriarchal and sexist society. But to blame Confucius, as some commentators have, on the basis that there is no evidence that he had any female students is just as specious, in my view, as the arguments for a celibate, male-only Christian priesthood.

Vestiges of the patriarchal society do still linger, however, in the way that, for example: Chinese women who drink alcohol and smoke in public are ‘not nice’ and drivers still open the car door for the man before his wife.

Women are also usually the first to be laid off from economically hurting businesses and few business leaders are women.

For example: according to China Daily (19 Feb 03):

• of the registered urban unemployed for 2002 of 4%, over half were women
• amongst female adults under 50 years old, unemployment has risen bye. 16% since 1990.

Who wears the trousers at home?

In the home, however, legislation now protects the wife and favours the virtuous, in that she is entitled to:

• after four years of marriage: half her husband’s estate
• on divorce: additionally, 50% of her husband’s half-share – i.e. 75% of his estate in total.

Should the grounds for divorce be his co-habiting with another, however, she is entitled to the whole of his estate and the husband has to leave the marital home – as the Chinese put it – ‘only with his trousers’.

Privacy

The Chinese are comfortable with shorter personal distances than many Westerners; and may, therefore, stand a bit too close to you for comfort.

This is because the Chinese – especially those from large and poorly educated families – have little concept if any of privacy or personal space, since it is alien to their home experience.

Another explanation for the Chinese apparent disregard for privacy is the alleged big brother regime. Paranoid foreigners may, therefore, be excused perhaps for wondering what those service and security personnel who burst into their hotel room unannounced are really after.

Family and friends

The importance of loyalty to family and friends is enshrined in the Confucian concept of filial piety.

Erosion of traditional values

Nevertheless, as intimated earlier in the context of the ‘one child policy’, a new set of social values is being embraced by the so-called ‘Chuppies’ (Beijing Review, 23 Jan 03, xvi):

‘Now a yuppie class has emerged in China. Young urban professionals, with a handsome income, working like dogs in multinationals and lingering in discos or bars until midnight. They marry late, mostly in early thirties or even older; they prefer DINK (double income and no kids) families; they drink coffee, watch Hollywood movies and listen to Western R&B or hip-hop music, which may be condemned by their parents though. But they don’t really care; the older generation is a little out of time (sic). Most of all, fashion is above everything else, because that’s the soul of being modern, being a yuppie, at least in appearance.’

By the same token [ibid]:

‘With China’s reform and opening up to the outside world, more and more people are celebrating Western festas (sic) while ignoring traditional Chinese festivals. Many young Chinese celebrate Western Saint Valentine’s Day on February 14, but few of them know the traditional valentine’s day of their own country on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. In fact, many traditional Chinese festivals are meaningful…Each Chinese should have the responsibility to spread Chinese culture to the world.’

And again (op cit, 16 Jan 03, xvi):

‘Chinese tradition is disappearing among Chinese youth. Some are westernised; some prefer Japanese or Korean lifestyles and some even wear clothes with national flags of other countries… Many Chinese children like McDonald’s or KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) while cannot even use chopsticks well (sic). I have visited many countries and noticed that their children are patriotic and proud of their motherlands. Being Chinese, it is time for us, teachers and parents, to take our responsibilities to educate our children in proper ways, to save our valuable traditions, and to save our country.’

Education system

The Chinese still tend to:

• learn by rote
• be examined by multiple-choice tests

methods considered by Western pedagogues to:

• impart and demonstrate knowledge
• stifle powers of reasoning and understanding

respectively.

Such an education system may, therefore, explain why – as foreigners will soon discover during their negotiations and meetings with them, described later in Chapters 5 and 6 – the Chinese:

• possess phenomenal memories
• show little individual initiative
• prefer collective decision making.

RELATIONSHIP WITH FOREIGNERS

As a result of their cultural and domestic environments, the relationship that the Chinese enjoy with foreigners is characterised by their attitude to and perception by foreigners which one Chinese commentator (Beijing Review, 23 Jan 03, 48) has summarised as: ‘Americans are from Mars, Chinese are from Venus’ which does not necessarily mean that they are opposites, only different. As the same commentator so aptly puts it: ‘We [the Chinese] are ready to be your friends while keeping our characteristics. How about you?’

Attitude to foreigners

On account of their centrism and isolationism, explained above, many uneducated Chinese still hold the following outdated attitudes to foreigners:

Foreigners are:

• 1.Judged by Chinese norms.
• 2.Not treated as equals, just because they are not Chinese.
• 3.Considered ‘devils’ or ‘barbarians’.
• 4.Stereotyped – such as bowler-hatted men stumbling around in the London fog.
• 5.Stared or shouted at in rural areas – a practice that I, contrary to other commentators, judge deliberately hostile.

For example: according to various surveys carried out in 2002 amongst China’s ‘successor generation’ (aged 16-35, educated and urban) (City Weekend, 13-26 Feb 03, 28):

• ‘many believed the UK to be:
  • populated by a stiff and reserved people
  • a nation stuck in the past
• some saw:
  • the Britons as men in bowler hats walking at a clip with noses in the air
  • doffing servants living below stairs in large country houses
  • regal pomp and circumstance by every turn’.

Nevertheless, as a general rule, most educated Chinese are superficially hospitable and pleasant to, but may be wary about befriending, foreigners – since any deeper relationship (such as friendship) would imply mutual obligations, according to the extended Confucian concept of filial piety.

Should a Chinese person befriend you, therefore, beware that their sole aim is not just a ticket or passport to the West.

The Chinese view of the West is schizophrenic, perceiving it as technologically highly advanced, but morally corrupt.

Attitude to foreign women

Thus although Chinese men are not attracted to Western women, they do believe them to be promiscuous and thus fair game, so that drivers may ‘try it on’ while the boss is away. (By the same token, Chinese maids may ‘come on’ to Western men, while the wife is away.)

In business circles, however, for reasons intimated above, the Chinese show more respect and hold the following attitudes to foreign women:

• 1.Foreign businesswomen are accorded the respect due to their positions.
• 2.Wives of foreign businessmen are welcomed at social occasions (and accorded the same rank as their husbands).
• 3.Foreign women are expected to wear sober clothing, in accordance with Chinese sexual mores, explained above.
• 4.Female foreign guests may drink and smoke in public, even when their Chinese counterparts may not, as intimated above.

This last concession is indicative of the fact that the Chinese expect foreigners to behave strangely!

Perception by foreigners

In the same way as, mentioned above, some Chinese view the West as portrayed by Dickens and Conan-Doyle, so many foreigners’ concept of contemporary China is still based on the films of Fu Manchu or The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.

For example: according to a Harris poll conducted as recently as September 2002, 56% of Americans considered China ‘an unfriendly country’.

I shared this misconception; and was, therefore, pleasantly shocked to find (in 1997) a country in some respects more advanced than elsewhere I had lived in the world – with, inter alia: imposing architecture; attractive shops with high-quality goods; smart clothes; excellent food; luxury cars; and modern technology, with computers and mobile-phones galore!

Above all, I found that people have time for each other. The streets of Beijing were full of people strolling and walking, making the most of every minute – not rushing headlong from A to B to save seconds, as is typical in many Western capitals

That is not to say that all is sweetness and light, despite the best efforts of the foreign-language Chinese press: far from it. Neither is it all doom and gloom, as the Western media would often have us believe. Rather: the truth lies somewhere between, and can only be truly appreciated by an extended stay in China, mingling with the Chinese.

This last point is important. China is not found in foreign housing compounds, bars and club-houses, international hotels, restaurants and shops; sanitised package holidays and city tours; and expatriate-dominated enterprises.

Thus, from my experience in China and elsewhere in the world, beware of the following and avoid expatriates:

• 1.Whose favourite pastime – especially on a Friday evening in their expats-only club, staffed by Chinese – is China bashing, deprecating their Chinese colleagues in no uncertain manner. Bigoted, uninformed, arrogant and wholly out-of-touch with reality – that is why they cannot get on with the Chinese (rather than vice-versa, as they would claim). As explained in later chapters, lording it over the Chinese leads nowhere, except eventually back home. Indeed, one wonders why foreigners choose to interact with the Chinese if all they do is complain about them to other foreigners.
• 2.Who have gone native and spend their Friday evenings running down the home country – do they have a hidden agenda for working abroad?
• 3.Who say they are going to learn Chinese and about China when they return home: far from being Sinophiles, they display rank ignorance.

Overseas Chinese (huáqiáo)

Although not strictly foreigners, huáqiáo (the overseas Chinese) in general, and those from the Province of Taiwan (aka the Republic of China), Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macau) and Singapore in particular, may nevertheless be treated as such and hence not always regarded as truly Chinese in mainland China.

Neither side is without fault – some:

• huáqiáo: may not always understand modern Chinese culture, especially as it has developed in China since 1949
• mainland Chinese: may disapprove of their overseas cousins’ affluence, especially if it is flaunted.

Thus it would be erroneous for foreign companies to assume that – for example – by including overseas Chinese in their negotiating teams and/or appointing them as their Chinese CEOs instead of their own country(wo)men, they will enjoy more favourable treatment. In some cases, the result may be quite the opposite.

If this is surprising, just bear in mind the parallel of the UK and USA: two countries divided by a common language!

POSTSCRIPT

Those foreigners who persist in treating China and the Chinese as a ‘third world’ or developing country that has much to gain from the ‘civilised world’, should consider the following eight uncomfortable truths about China:

• 1.If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery: does not the adoption by Western countries of the Chinese imperial model of the civil service, including the word ‘mandarin’ for a senior or powerful government official, hold up China as an example to others – in this respect, at least?
• 2.If China is apparently ‘backward’ by Western standards: to what extent are those same Western powers who plundered and reversed her ancient civilisation to blame?
• 3.If China has already ‘bounced back’ from the aftermath of Maoism to establish herself as the second world-power (after the USA), thanks to a whirlwind pace of change akin to the German post-war Wirtschaftswunder: how long until she ranks Number One? After all, she is one of only five permanent members of the UN Security Council, having been the very first signatory of the UN Charter. Moreover, at current growth rates, she will catch up the US economy by 2020.
• 4.If you think that the Chinese are ‘inscrutable’, as many foreigners do, just remember: they may find you equally so!
• 5.According to 1421: The Year China Discovered the World (see Bibliography), it was the Chinese who first:
  • discovered what is today the USA (for further details see: Appendix 2.3)
  • occupied the Falkland Islands (aka Las Islas Malvinas) some 560 years before Argentina and the UK disputed their sovereignty.
• 6.In the same spirit of adventure and discovery, China successfully completed 4 unmanned space flights between November 1999 and January 2003; and should launch her first manned flight in late 2003, according to an announcement by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation shortly after the loss of the US space shuttle Columbia (in February 2003).
• 7.Before the announcement of the redevelopment of the World Trade Center in New York (on 27 Feb 03), China had expected to build the tallest building in the world by 2007, the 492 metre high Shanghai World Financial Centre. Meanwhile, it is home to the third tallest, the adjacent 420 metre Jinmao Building.
• 8.In education, the Shanghai-based China-Europe International Business School MBA programme was ranked amongst the top 50 in the world by The Economist in October 2002.

APPLICATION

The following topics are specifically referred to again in subsequent chapters, as follows:

Topic	See chapters
Attitude to foreign women	6,7
Attitude to foreigners	3, 5, 6, 10
Education system	3, 6, 10
Family and friends	3, 10
Overseas Chinese	10
Privacy	3
Relations with the West	5
Sexual equality at work	6, 7, 10
Sexual mores	3,6
Sexually provocative clothing	6, 7
The Opium Wars	5
The Unequal Treaties	5