I’ve quoted from the book before: it was Lin Yutang who referred to China as “a nation of individualists” in this book, published in 1935. Lin addresses what he calls Chinese “indifference,” which, he argues, is a function of the world’s unpredictability, especially with regard to (lack of) legal institutions to protect citizens:

Chinese youths are as public-spirited as foreign youths, and Chinese hot-heads show as much desire to “meddle with public affairs” as those in any other country. But somewhere between their twenty-fifth and their thirtieth years, they all become wise, and acquire this indifference, which contributes a lot to their mellowness and culture. Some learn it by native intelligence, some by getting their fingers burned once or twice. All old people play safe because all old rogues have learned the benefits of indifference in a society where personal rights are not guaranteed and where getting one’s fingers burned once is bad enough. (pp. 48-9)

This connects directly to what Americans sometimes perceive as an indifference to the “letter of the law”:

In one word, we recognize the necessity of human effort but we also admit the futility of it. This general attitude of mind has a tendency to develop passive defense tactics. “Great things can be reduced into small things, and small things can be reduced into nothing.” On this general principle, all Chinese disputes are patched up, all Chinese schemes are readjusted, and all reform programs are discounted until there are peace and rice for everybody. (p. 56)

No wonder Americans, laser-focused as we are on “honoring our word,” sometimes get up in arms. Contracts are about “honoring our word”; hétong are about reducing differences and working together to create “peace and rice for everybody.”

A caricature, to be sure, but one to bear in mind — and really think through — as you continue to develop your relationships in China.

To a “typical” American a contract serves two purposes. First, it helps ensure that something gets done, regardless of who the parties are and what feelings they might have. Second, the contract ensures that my organization’s interests are protected: should any dispute arise threatening my organization’s well-being, the contract can stave off damage.

A key assumption, far off in the background, underlies this: the deep-seated belief in the ability of human beings to mold the world as we see fit. This is central to the founding myths of the United States: a new land waiting to be created, intentionally, by human beings. Bending the world to our will requires planning, and a key part of the planning process, designed to maximize the probability of success, is the contract.

Given these beliefs, the contract is a way of saying:

“We all know what there is to be done. It’s up to us to do it. And we need a plan to get there. Here is a breakdown of who’s responsible for what in order to get the job done. We know we may want to change things, but we know we can’t, because this is what has to be done, and since we’re all strangers here we’re not really sure we can trust the other guys, and we need a guarantee that they’ll uphold their end of the bargain and not put our organization at risk.”

The Chinese cultural mindset operates from different basic assumptions. If the key unit in the American mindset is the “project,” or “getting something done,” in the Chinese mindset the key unit is the relationship. And if the world is at the whim of humans in the American mindset, in the Chinese mindset humans are at the whim of the world. These two aspects are related: what gets people through hard times is relationships. Things might be going well today, but tomorrow could hold disaster. It’s best, then, to maintain equanimity and keep relationships solid.

These beliefs create a fundamentally different frame of reference for hétong than for contracts. In an inherently harsh and unpredictable world, we must be ready to change our approach on the fly, and to maintain alliances, possibly at the expense of short-term “self-interest,” for the sake of mutual support, even survival, through difficult times. We might “translate” the above statement as:

“We all know what there is to be done. Here is a breakdown of who’s responsible for what. We also know that this is an agreement among people, and as we get things done together we want to be sure we don’t ruin any relationships, because we may need each other later. We also know that circumstances are always changing, and we must adapt. So if we run into trouble we may have to reconsider what we write down here. These are guidelines; what’s more important is that we work together when there are problems, adapting appropriately to changing circumstances, and making sure that relationships stay intact.”

One crucial thing to see about this is that it has nothing to do with what we call “honesty.” Nothing whatsoever. Both views of the contract/hétong are perfectly “honest” in their own ways. But because of all the cultural baggage Americans bring along with our views of contracts, it’s very easy to go from “my Chinese counterpart wants to rework the contract” to “the Chinese are dishonest.”

Will your organization have to deal with cultural differences when it comes to contracts/hétong and their enforcement? Most likely. But it doesn’t have to go down the familiar and unproductive road of finger-pointing and crying foul. Know what you’re dealing with. Expect it and understand it. If you do you’ve got a leg way up on your competition. While they’re busy complaining, you’re working things out and moving forward, solidifying your partnerships, and laying a foundation for a productive and successful future.

The question at the end of the last post looks innocent enough: Are there human rights in China? Given everything we discussed about how language works, though, it seems we’re treading on very unsteady ground here: if we can’t even say that cup and bēizi mean “the same thing,” how can we begin to unravel the complexities of human rights and what a Chinese “equivalent” might be?

Just as with cup, with human rights we forget the separation between form and meaning. We forget thathuman rights is not some abstract, freely floating concept that applies identically the world over. Human rights, rather, is a pairing of form and meaning that is specific to the English language. The form is the sound string (represented in IPA as /hjuːmən ɹai̯ts/) and the meaning is the full set of concepts and images associated with the sound string.

The term human rights exists in the English language. And just as there is a rich set of meanings associated with the English sound string, there is also a rich set of meanings associated with its “nearest” Chinese “equivalent,” rénquán (人权). What we have to keep reminding ourselves of is that human rights and rénquánare not “the same thing.” English has human rights; Chinese has rénquán. The two sets of concepts are related, but not identical.

Some have asked me: Does that mean that the Chinese don’t have the concept of human rights? My answer is: Yes, only to the extent that Americans don’t have the concept of rénquán.

So: Language is not just form (sound), and not just meaning (concepts), but the pairing of form and meaning. Because our native language is so natural to us we forget that the concepts in our native language are not universal. So we naturally assume that other languages encode the same concepts as our native language. And since culture consists of shared concepts, it follows that by default we expect that other cultures will be the same as ours.

What does this mean for you, for us? It means that, as Westerners engaged with China, we need as thorough an understanding as we can get of key Chinese concepts in the Chinese language. In English we have the word contract; in Chinese we have hétong (合同). You can throw out a lot of what you understand a contract to be, because the Chinese don’t know from contracts; they know from hétong. If you want to succeed in China, you’d best know what the Chinese are thinking of when they use the word hétong, because that’s what they’re operating from in their negotiations with you.

It’s hard to talk about the importance of words without sounding trite — a testament to the privileged place of language in our human-ness. The problem is that we can get ourselves into trouble if we’re not clear about what we mean by “word.”

Language is about the relationship between form and meaning. By “form” I mean something perceptible, tangible. In the case of spoken language, “form” means a stream of sound, which the language-comprehending mind breaks up into smaller pieces called phonemes.

There is a way of representing the sounds of any spoken language, independent of the world’s writing systems. It’s called the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA. The English word cup, for instance, is written /kʌp/, with the “wedge” symbol, /ʌ/, representing the short “u” sound. Each IPA symbol represents a phoneme.

As children grow into native English speakers, they learn to associate the form, or sound string, /kʌp/, with a set of meanings having to do with drinking beverages, and with other things. Consider:

• coffee cup
• cup your hands
• brassiere cup
• half a cup of sugar
• the putt missed the cup

This gets at just a small sampling of the rich set of meanings and images associated with the English sound string /kʌp/.

Now the trouble: When we use the word word, are we referring to the form or to the meaning? Depending on the context, it could be either or both. An example of word referring to just the form would be: “The English word cup consists of three phonemes.” Here there is no reference to meaning; just to sound.

Word can also refer to form-plus-meaning, as in: “No language has yet been found that doesn’t have a word for cup.” Here word refers to the combination of form and meaning.

The trouble starts when we treat words as if they were meanings and only meanings, with no form. Consider this sentence:

The Chinese word for cup is bēizi.

In this sentence “cup” could only refer to the meaning or meanings associated with the English-language form /kʌp/. Why? Because we all know, or can at least guess, that whatever the Chinese word is for “cup,” it isn’t pronounced /kʌp/. So “cup” must be referring to meaning alone, not form. We might paraphrase the sentence as, “The Chinese form that is paired with the same meaning as the English form ‘cup’ is bēizi.”

Now we’re in trouble, because bēizi and cup are in fact not paired with “the same meaning.” First, bēizicovers a broader range, including what English refers to using the word glass. Second, images of Chinesebēizi will differ from images of English cup: “teacups” look different, you might not see a “coffee cup” in some parts of China, and there are some types of bēizi you wouldn’t see in the U.S., like the special kind ofbēizi used for toasting with hard liquor.

At this point you might object that cup and bēizi are “close enough” that we shouldn’t be bothered by all this. Fair enough. If intercultural communication were limited to such simple categories, it might not be worth all the trouble.

But what do we do questions like this:

Are there human rights in China?

We’ll take that up next time.