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By Root 5460 0

is not a strong suit in Chinese culture. Discipline is the first thing people learn in life, not happiness. In traditional Chinese philosophy, emotions damage your body. Anger hurts your liver, too much happiness hurts your spleen, worry hurts your lungs. Kids are taught not to cry. Adults are supposed to suppress, suppress, suppress. The saving grace of China and the allowable release valve is that the people have a fabulous sense of humor. When I was a reporter visiting different cities, I would sometimes seek out and drink beer with migrant worker peasants. They typically lived ten or more to a room in plywood hovels as they worked twelve-hour days building luxury high-rises. Instead of complaining to me about the unfairness of their lives, they would tell me jokes and tease one another. One of the first expressions a foreigner will learn in China is chi ku, or “eat bitterness,” because the Chinese take great pride in their ability to endure hardship. Many hardships are endured today because rapid economic improvements of the past twenty-five years have made Chinese people optimistic that life will continue to get better.

Great Atmosphere

Some foreign businesspeople in China are very deeply integrated into the Chinese business scene. Foreign businesses are no longer an oddity, but a part of the fabric of Chinese commercial life, though the foreigners themselves are still outsiders in the eyes of Chinese society. A young man I met a few years ago from my hometown of Duluth, Minnesota, learned this at a wedding. In the mid-1990s, Mark was an English teacher at a Chinese school in the coastal city of Quanzhou in Fujian province, across from Taiwan. One day a student invited Mark to attend his brother’s wedding, to be held in a village in the mountainous interior of Fujian, about an eight-hour bus ride from Quanzhou.

On the day of the wedding, Mark was a little nonplused when he arrived at the banquet hall to find the bride, groom, and entire wedding party waiting at the curb to greet him. When he was escorted into the banquet hall, Mark was even more surprised when everyone in the room rose and applauded. He was seated at the head table, then invited to accompany the bride and groom as they made the rounds toasting each table. By the end of the banquet, Mark was more than a bit drunk and reveling in his inexplicable celebrity status. As they walked out of the banquet hall, Mark’s student put his arm around Mark’s shoulder and said into his ear: “Thanks for coming, you really added great atmosphere.” Now Mark understood: he was nothing more than an exotic decoration. As foreigners living and doing business in China, we really should remember that in the eyes of many Chinese, we are here only to add a bit of atmosphere—and some technology, know-how, and money, of course.

In viewing China as the world’s biggest startup and turnaround, and considering the role of foreign business and Chinese tradition in the process, it is helpful to remember a slogan from the Qing Dynasty that was often quoted by Mao: Gu Wei Jin Yong, Yang Wei Zhong Yong, which means, “Make the past serve the present, make foreign things serve China.”

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The Grand Bargain

Two hundred years of foreign domination and duplicity have left a residue of suspicion and distrust. Understanding that history is essential to doing business with the Chinese.

THE NEGOTIATIONS THAT BROUGHT China into the World Trade Organization in 2001 began in 1793 when Lord George Macartney landed his fleet of British ships on the north China coast. One of King George III’s most experienced diplomats, Macartney was intent on opening China’s vast market to British business. It was a simple matter of fairness. China exported such exotica as silk, tea, furniture and porcelain, yet bought little or nothing from outside its own shores. Money flowed into China—some twenty million ounces of silver each year—but none flowed out. So Macartney brought along the best that Britain produced. It took ninety horses and three thousand coolies to transport Macartney’s gifts for the