So I’ve had two recent encounters that have bothered me a little bit and reminded me of exactly where I’m living.

First, one of my colleagues at work who has been here from China on a temporary  (8 month) training assignment is leaving to go back to Shanghai.  So, I offered to take him out to lunch.  Since he was a pretty popular guy and made a lot of connections here, he also had an offer for lunch from someone else, who I know, so we decided to go out together.  During the discussion, the topic of democracy in China came up.  My Chinese colleague, let’s call him Howard, said that he didn’t think a western-style democracy would work in China right now.  My other colleague, let’s call her Pamela, was flabbergasted and couldn’t understand why not.  She couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that Chinese citizens were not clamoring to have a “one person, one vote” system where they could elect their president. Howard and I tried to impress upon her that the philosophical and cultural differences in China were too great to create a western-style democracy and have it work right away.  I made the argument that the effort to create something like that in Iraq and Afghanistan is failing due to cultural differences and that each country has its own unique philosophical and cultural challenges to consider before we force an American/western democracy down their throats. Howard went on to say that a poor Chinese farmer, given a choice between having the right to vote for his/her president vs. having a month’s worth of food, will choose the food every time. And that can lead to quite a bit of manipulation.  The right to vote doesn’t hold as much value for these people – if someone told them, “If you vote for me, I’ll give you a month’s worth of food,” they are more than willing to do that because they don’t value the right to vote – they value the food.

It reminds me of a movie I saw recently, “Please Vote For Me,” which was a documentary about an experiment in Chinese grade school where students were allowed to vote for who their class monitor was.  In the end, it turned out that the kid who gave out the most presents wound up winning the election.  I just think on a cultural and philosophical basis, China just cannot support a western-style democracy as of yet. Not saying that I believe that they can’t eventually have a similar style government, but I think significant changes need to occur before that happens.

Regardless, the thing that struck me the most out of this conversation with my colleagues was that Pamela clearly couldn’t understand why anyone else wouldn’t want to have a system like the one in America.  It was such an American point of view, and one that surprised me a little, since I know Pamela’s traveled around a bit.  However, I should’ve been tipped off when she asked that her seared tuna be fully cooked instead of seared.

The second incident that struck me just happened this morning.  I was asked to participate in a staff meeting, and one of the things that was on the agenda was a presentation by someone who had gone to our China facility.  I inwardly winced because I had a feeling I knew what was coming next.  Jokes and negative comments about Chinese being short (“if you take a picture in front of the building, security guards will come out to confront you, but you’ll probably be bigger than them), Chinese food (“I thought I’d wind up losing weight when I got there” and “I had pork fat, but when I discovered it had the skin still attached I stopped eating.”), among other things.  At least there weren’t any jokes about eating cats and dogs, which I’ve run into before here.

But what bothered me the most was the slide that he put up on “Training the Chinese”.  It was a typical run down of: “Chinese are not confrontational.  I didn’t know how much English they really understood, since they don’t want to interrupt you,” and those types of comments.  He also said that there were HR resources in place to help the Chinese workers become more assertive and speak up.

Now, I’m not against becoming more assertive, but again, here’s a cultural thing.  Why do we have to train our Chinese workers to be more assertive and speak up, versus teaching our people who go over there how to properly speak to workers and learn Chinese first?  I realize that it’s a tall order to train anyone who goes over to China to speak Mandarin, but why must we make it the case where we have to teach Chinese workers how to be more American in China?  Granted, they’re working for an American company, but they’re doing the vast majority of their work in China, so why do we have to force them to be more American?  Why not make the Americans who go over there more Chinese?

It’s this type of narrow-mindedness that bothers me the most.  I can totally understand if a Chinese worker comes over here to America to work for a time – I believe that he or she should learn how to interact with Americans on American terms since they are living here and learning to work here.  However, when Americans go over to China, why do we have to force them to be more American?  It’s a colonialist attitude and sadly, one that is all too common, especially here in Indiana.

It makes me upset, angry, and sad all at the same time.  I’ve found that people here aren’t consciously racist or consciously ignorant, but they are ignorant.  It’s not necessarily their fault, I suppose – ignorance begets ignorance – but it is disheartening and upsetting.  I realized as I stood in that room, that of about 40 people, I was the only minority in there.  And there were only 9 women there.  It’s not a very diverse place, and because of that, you have these attitudes which permeate through the area.  I’m not sure what I can do about changing some of those attitudes.  I know I have a different point of view, and I feel like I should open people’s eyes to them.  However, I know it’s a huge obstacle and I’m not sure how much effort I really want to put into it.

Sad to say, mostly, it just makes me want to get out of here.

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