RoR: Forum

Post 0

Thursday, August 14 - 8:24pm

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In an Empire of Pull, to coin a phrase, where the rule is "If you have power, you can get anything; if you lack power, you will lose everything," the thing of key importance is to have power - or at least give that impression. In fact, from the terracotta army, to the "Art of War," or the "36 Strategies," or "Thick, Black Theory," or the '08 Olympics, the essential lesson is that the impression of power is the object of highest regard.

One might naively ask the question, "Why cheat, (morals aside) when you have every chance of winning anyway?"

That misses the point. The point is not to win, but to show that one can get away with cheating. To win gets one polite applause and admiration. To win fairly and take losses with grace shows that one is part of a world community and recognizes that any particular contest is far less important than the integrity of the game and what it implies.

To get away with blatant cheating, however, implies that one has the power. It puts one at direct odds with the rest of the world - except perhaps for those brothers in the cause, like the raving murderers running the Sudan or Zimbabwe.

In fact, in all the preparation for the Olympics, the Chinese government has consistently and blatantly followed the principle of FIRST demonstrate power, THEN be nice - where it might enhance your image. After all, it does no good to portray yourself as an unmitigated DEMON, which is pretty close to the truth, BTW. Even cowards will resist immediate certain destruction.

So, you violate virtually every agreement about not persecuting people to clear the streets, or providing unfettered internet to journalists in Beijing, and then, you back off - a little, where it doesn't really matter, after you've already arrested thousands of people who were in Beijing to present perfectly legal petitions for redress to official channels - just because they are unsightly. (Note that these were not even political protestors.) So, that shows you can be negotiated with. (Perhaps only half of your family needs to die. Or, just give us Poland and we'll be nice...)

My suspicion. While those little girls posing as women gymnasts were bad enough, for the purposes of preserving the ideals of the Olympic spirit, if I were the doctor on the American team, I would be doing some careful blood work on the American gymnasts who dropped the ball, so to speak. A culture that will put ethylene glycol in children's cough syrup and melamine in pet food will not cringe from putting something in the water or the food of a direct competitor who threatens one's desired world image.

And, on that note, once you start ignoring the bully, giving him extra treats in the hope that he will be nice, where do you stop? The time to pull out of the Olympics passed long ago, when China demonstrated again and again that agreements were convenient pieces of paper. Where is Chamberlin now that we need him? Whatever gains in power and prestige China makes out of this will have the stamp "Made in America."

I wonder about the fallout in other regions now, as well. The Russians might have invaded Georgia anyway, but the symbolism of China cheating in the Olympics while everyone in power looked the other way, to avoid annoying the bully of the East, surely was noticed in the Kremlin, certainly by athlete Putin. Making hay while the sun shines...

Post 1

Friday, August 15 - 10:31am

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Phil,

I find your post unsettling because it appears to be entirely based on a narrow view and selective perception. I disagree with what seems to be your main point - that the Chinese are purposefully cheating just to show that they can get away with it.

Your post leads me to believe that you have little exposure or understanding of Chinese culture. I suggest you look into the Chinese concept of "face." This is a very important concept. One would not cheat to show off - this would cause a loss of face (I think "Diumian-zi" in this case). It is much more likely that one would cheat, hoping to get away with it, in order to save face from losing.

In the Chinese collectivist culture, all (including the referee) are supposed to have a stake in another member of the society. If an American beats a Chinese person in a boxing match, the entire country loses face. This is closely related to Chinese ultra-nationalism. It is far more likely that a Chinese referee would cheat out of extreme societal pressure to be regarded as a superior group. To be seen as having played unfair or not treating others with respect would cause one to lose face.

There is an important distinction, which you touch on. The goal is to be seen as fair. To be clear, one is still expected to actually BE fair, but the perception of others is terribly important - so important that it often eclipses the actual being (vs. being seen as). It is important for the powerful to be seen as benevolent. To have face one must have kind or good deeds known, give others respect, have others talk about how good you are, and show wisdom and prudence.

Do you remember the whole opening ceremony fiasco? It came to light that some of the fireworks were pre-recorded and touched up with special effects, and that the girl singing in the opening ceremony was lip-syncing. Almost immediately, the Chinese censors were patrolling the web, censoring outside pages and deleting Chinese pages that mentioned it at all. Did they do this to prevent a revolution? No, they did so in an attempt to save face as a nation.

Many people think that the government only censors things because it wants to prevent people from speaking out against the government. They certainly do that. I think you have a good handle on collectivist cultures, and that I don't need to go into the "doing what's best for all of China" mentality. But there is much more to it than that, as the above example illustrates.

I'm not particularly defensive about this or other similar cultures - there are some things that drive me absolutely insane. Let's be reasonable though. Your theory about the American gymnasts is... interesting. This seems unlikely, as I'm sure they are very careful about what they eat and drink (ie only bottled). Most of it would be provided by the USOC.

Post 2

Friday, August 15 - 1:23pm

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Joseph, Phil,

Believe last week's issue of Newsweek had a very good article germane to this discussion. It essentially pointed to China's sense of 'national embarrassment' related to past subservience foreign countries over the years, and the sense that they needed to prove themselves. Certainly, this is part of the "face" issue.

Of the two items mentioned - the fireworks and the lip-syncing - I don't know these should be called cheating, as much as perhaps 'fudging' to look a little bit better. As to Phil's supposition that China just wants to show they can get away with cheating, that makes little sense to me. I think instead that - as a closed, totalitarian culture - they are just so accustomed to controlling public images that it never quite occurred to them that anyone would question them.

jt

Post 3

Saturday, August 16 - 2:19pm

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I have worked for a Chinese-American company for almost twenty years, and have read "The Art of War," select portions of "The Thirty-Six Strategems" ("36" is actually used to mean "many"), "Thick Face, Black Heart," portions of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms," and have had converstations with Sidney Rittenburg, author of "The Man Who Stayed Behind." So, I do know a little about Chinese culture.

The people who make it to the top in such a culture - and virtually all of them at the top date back to the Mao years - got there by being better at deception and manipulation than their competitors. Consider what this says about their psychology. To them, cheating is an end in itself, proof that they are as powerful as they like to pretend to be.

Where I work, at one point in the early '90's the Chinese company president put me on a special assignment, to find the lowest price for an IBM printer cartridge with a particular set of fonts. I spent several hours on this project and finally found a local business that offered a price of $300, which was less than half what any competitor asked - AND they were Chinese owned. So, I took the information to the president and he nodded happily and dismissed me.

For the next week or so, he repeatedly called me back into his office, always with variations of the same question:

~"How we can get money back if return cartridge?"

He asked it about if the cartridge was unused, box unopened, still in shrink wrap, with all kinds of variations concerning time and other variables. Each time, the salesman informed me that under NO CIRCUMSTANCES would they provide a refund, as IBM would not reimburse them under any circumstances. The most they would do was an exchange on a defective unit.

Didn't matter. The company president sent me back with new variations, over and over and over, until finally the store bumped me up to the head manager, who told me, ~"We sell these cartridges by the dozen to large companies, which is why you get such a low price. You know, we've never had anyone pursue this kind of line of questions before, and, frankly, it makes me very uncomfortable. So, I would prefer that you take your business elsewhere."

When I took that message back to the company president, he got up from his desk, turned his back on me, and said, "I go to back office now. I have no face to show world."

It was totally clear to me that his intention had been all along to rush the cartridge to Taiwan in his luggage, give it to some pirate operation for copying of the ROMs, and then return it to get his money back. Winning AND cheating is clearly better than just winning.

He was later busted bigtime - I believe to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars, for allegedly providing his buddies in the industry with pirate copies of Lotus 1,2,3, I think, as well as DBase, Clipper, Wordstar and Pagemaker. I know that every time they would get a new piece of software in, the origianl disks and manuals would disappear coincident with the president's regular trip to Taiwan, and I would have to do my computer work by deducing what the new features were. He dictated letters to me in which he informed his buddies that he could get them copies of software "very cheap."

After he was busted, of course he blamed the employees, none of whom were actually involved, and issued a written memo to the effect that no employee was allowed to exchange data with any other employee, which was interpreted to mean that no computer files could be exchanged, which meant that people would write a report or create a spreadsheet and then print it out, after which, the next person would take the printout and type it all back in. This went on for two years.

Post 4

Saturday, August 16 - 10:00pm

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Phil, I have heard you repeat this story many times. What shocks me most is that you still seem to work there. Do the have you chained to the desk? Are they filling your cubicle with opium smoke? Do you want us to call INS, or the DEA?

Post 5

Sunday, August 17 - 1:58pm

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Ted: It's hard to find good paradyme examples for principles in the real world. I'm working on a book - "Working for the Enemy" - and this place is perfect for source material. Please note that I am NOT anti-Chinese, per se - certainly not on any genetic/racial basis. I have seen equally outrageous behavior in ethnic European companies, but not systematized or justified in terms of a cultural viewpoint or underlying philosophy.

Sad to say, the only way to really know someone is to watch them for a LONG time, observe the regularities and find the commonalities that can be shown to imply principles at work.

Our culture is overwhelmingly based on the short-term. People change jobs frequently, move, divorce, etc. If they screw up really badly, they move to a new neighborhood or city. Professional con artists of all kinds depend upon that kind of anonymity, and people are used to the idea of simply leaving any bad situation. All this prevents people from having the kind of observations that would enable them to formulate principles, and this lack of principle or lack of the ability to recognize a principle in action makes them easy targets for the next bad guy. I'm out to raise that awareness a little...

Post 6

Monday, August 18 - 11:07am

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"To them, cheating is an end in itself, proof that they are as powerful as they like to pretend to be."

Again, Phil, I strongly and respectfully disagree. My opinion is that cheating is generally a means to an end. Being exposed as a liar or cheater is disastrous to the image in Chinese culture. Chinese culture is obsessive about what other people think. There are many examples and exceptions to the contrary - no culture is monolithic - but we are speaking generally.

My opinion is based on personal experience, combined with readings from texts on international business, organizational behavior, and social psychology. I would recommend "Organizational Behavior" by Robbins and Judge (go 11e or later) and especially "Managing in the Global Economy" by Steers and Nardon. You might be able to pick these or similar books up and just find "China" in the back.

The irony in your last post is that the US is consistently ranked near the top of short-term orientation, while China would be at the top of a long-term orientation culture.

Business As Usual - China Cheats for a Reason