The original Chinese Esquire series referenced in the Time piece is here (in Chinese only). It seems Chinese Esquire is using the power of dreams, along with fashion photography, to narrate a thoroughly modern Chinese man.

This kind of “modernity” highlights the shift, in certain young and “fashionable” circles in China, to a more future-based orientation. Dreams are by definition grounded in the future. The “pragmatic” aspects of Chinese culture in which we find resistance to dreams are, in contrast, based in the past: long and bitter experience has shown that the whims of the world can and do thwart the best of human intention and effort.

In an earlier post I wrote of Hoftede’s concept of “time orientation.” I mention it here because the drag of China’s deep past upon dreams can be formidable. And still we have the portraits in Chinese Esquire of China’s modern dreamers. No wonder so many Westerners return from China scratching their heads at the contradictions and the complexity. And while what I’m about to say is to some degree true of every place, and while I’m not nearly the first to say it, China defies all our efforts to put it into tidy boxes.

Today, a bit more building on last week’s discussion of “individualism.” This time not my thoughts, but those of Lin Yutang, one of the most famous interpreters of China to the West.

His most famous book in the West is My Country and My People. He wrote it in 1935, before the full occupation of China by the Japanese, before the rest of World War II, before the Communist revolution and Mao Zedong and the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and Deng Xiaoping and Tian’anmen and Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. He wrote the book in English, after having lived in the U.S. for several years. Nobody before or since has written with such clarity and wit about fundamental aspects of Chinese society.

He kicks off Chapter Six, “Social and Political Life,” like this:

The Chinese are a nation of individualists. They are family-minded, not social-minded, and the family mind is only a form of magnified selfishness. It is curious that the word “society” does not exist as an idea in Chinese thought.…

“Public spirit” is a new term, so is “civic consciousness,” and so is “social service.” There are no such commodities in China. To be sure, there are “social affairs,” such as weddings, funerals, and birthday celebrations and Buddhistic processions and annual festivals. But the things which make up English and American social life, viz. sport, politics and religion, are conspicuously absent.…They play games, to be sure, but these games are characteristic of Chinese individualism.…Teamwork is unknown. In Chinese card games, each man plays for himself. (Lin Yutang, My Country and My People, Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000 [orig. 1935], p. 169)

To me this rings a lot of bells around Chinese responses to the “fallen tree” question: it’s not about “right” and “wrong”; it’s about getting my truck where it needs to go. And with the “rich person” question, recall for a moment the interviewees who commented that the question is too general, and that we can only ask what you would do with your money. Lin Yutang writes: “To a Chinese, social work always looks like ‘meddling with other people’s business.’” (p. 171)

Of course this is one man’s opinion. All grain-of-salt warnings remain in force. At the same time, this was a particularly insightful person.

And he’s not alone. Observers East and West, as well as a great many social scientists (chiefly psychologists, but also anthropologists and linguists), have provided further evidence for an enduring Chinese mindset roughly along the lines sketched out here by Lin, and echoed in my research.

For your own China explorations, thinking of China as “collectivist” and the West as “individualist” is helpful, as far as it goes. Maximizing your success in China requires that you go further. The more you’re able to nuance your view of the Chinese cultural mindset, and how it relates to the U.S. and the West, the better off you’ll be.

In their own words:

Universalist, or rule-based, behavior tends to be abstract. Try crossing the street when the light is red in a very rule-based society like Switzerland or Germany. Even if there is no traffic, you will still be frowned at.…There is a fear that once you start to make exceptions for illegal conduct the system will collapse.

Particularist judgments focus on the exceptional nature of present circumstances. The person is not “a citizen” but my friend, brother, husband, child or person of unique importance to me, with special claims on my love or my hatred. I must therefore sustain, protect or discount this person no matter what the rules say.

Business people from both societies will tend to think each other corrupt. A universalist will say of particularists, “they cannot be trusted because they will always help their friends” and a particularist, conversely, will say of universalist, “you cannot trust them; they would not even help a friend.” (taken from Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner, Riding the Waves of Culture, 2^nd Edition, 1998, pp. 31-32.

In a survey distributed to tens of thousands of managers worldwide, the following question was asked, in order to probe this distinction (from pp. 33-34):

You are riding in a car driven by a close friend. He hits a pedestrian. You know he was going at least 35 miles per hour in an area of the city where the maximum allowed speed is 20 miles per hour. There are no witnesses. His lawyer says that if you testify under oath that he was only driving 20 miles per hour it may save him from serious consequences.

What right has your friend to expect you to protect him?

1a            My friend has a definite right as a friend to expect me to testify to the lower figure.

1b            He has some right as a friend to expect me to testify to the lower figure.

1c            He has no right as a friend to expect me to testify to the lower figure.

What do you think you would do in view of the obligations of a sworn witness and the obligation to your friend?

1d            Testify that he was going 20 miles an hour.

1e            Not testify that he was going 20 miles an hour.

It’s a tough question. The title of this post is taken from the title of another book by Trompenaars. People from particularist cultures have asked if the pedestrian died, in order to help them think through their response — though it’s hard for a hardcore universalist to see why it would matter.

Responses to the scenario were aggregated from national cultures the world over, with 100 representing 100% of respondents from that culture choosing c or b + e. In other words, the higher the number, the more universalist. China comes in at 47, the U.S. at 93. Of the 31 cultures listed, only four are more particularist than China (Venezuela, Nepal, South Korea, Russia), and only one (Switzerland) is more universalist than the U.S.

With the usual caveats about too-broad brush strokes, this is a stark finding. It sets a rich and fraught stage for Chinese and Americans to do business together. It fits in well with many of my research findings, discussed in previous posts (look under the Cultural Models category), as well as with observations I’ve made earlier about contracts/hétong. It touches so many aspects of the differences between American and Chinese cultural mindsets that it’s hard to overstate its significance.

And it’s in an area where nerves can be raw: deeply-held beliefs about loyalty and principle. This is where our leadership will be most direly tested, and where we need to be most on guard for our automatic reactions winning the day. Definitely time to breathe deeply, detach, and refocus on why you’re in China in the first place.

Recall the following from the “rich person” discussion, said by Chinese participants:

C      How should he use his money,” “should”, this word, maybe I’m a little bit…uncomfortable.…“Should” has a bit of a feeling of morals, or preaching.

D      We should let everyone choose for themselves…how they should use…not “should.” Let everyone choose how to use his money.  We can only say if I were rich what would I do with it?

C      Right.

C         “应该怎么样用他的钱,” “应该” 这两个字我可能有一点…不舒服。”应该” 还有一点道德, 说教的感觉。

D     我们应该让每个人自己选择…应该去怎么用…不是“应该”…让每个人自己选择去用他的钱。  我们只能说如果我有钱的话我会怎么办。

C     对。

And:

E      This, I think…this question is different for each person.  Your saving or spending money depends on your own worldview, on the direction of your ideas about value.

F      I think this question should ask, “If you were rich, how should you spend your money?”

E      Yes.  In reality you’re just expressing your own view, right, about how you should use this sum of money.

F      It should be asked this way.

E     这个我觉得…这个问题就是因人而异的。  你这个钱的省花, 取决于你这个人的一种世界观啊, 价值意识的指向。

F     我觉得这个问题应该问, “如果你很有钱, 你应该怎么样用你的钱?”

E     对。  实际上你就是表达你自己的看法嘛, 应该怎么样去使用这笔钱。

F     这样问。

Here’s my question to you: In their responses to this scenario, between the Americans and the Chinese, who would you say is more individualistic? To me the answer is clear: the Chinese are hands down the individualists here.

How could this be? Especially for these two cultures, which are often presented as opposites based on the U.S. being “individualist” and China being “collectivist.”

No neat answers here. Instead, a healthy reminder that our generalizations and simplifications can come back to bite us when we least expect. And also a reminder that, as I discussed last Friday, there’s plenty about each culture contained in the other. There’s nothing inherently American or Western about “individualism,” and nothing inherently Chinese or Asian about “collectivism.” We can all comprehend both, and will call on some version of one or the other at different times.

In essence time orientation has to do with patience: how quickly do we expect results? The higher the score, the longer-term the time orientation.

Here the difference between the U.S. and China is staggering. The U.S. comes in at 29. China is literally off the charts at 118. (The 100-point scale had been fixed before the Chinese data came in.)

Apocryphal or not, there’s a famous story that tells this tale perfectly. It goes like this: In 1972, when Nixon was visiting China, one day he was strolling the grounds of the Forbidden City with Premier Zhou Enlai. Kissinger had told Nixon that Zhou was an avid student of French history. Looking to make conversation, Nixon asked: “What has been the effect of the French Revolution on Western civilization?” Zhou’s answer: “It’s too early to tell.”

If you’ve never visited China, it’s hard to convey just how thoroughly this deeply long-term orientation permeates the culture. The sense it leaves is that “We’ve seen it all before. We’ve been here 5,000 years, and we’ll be here 5,000 more.” Contrast this with the get-it-now mentality in the U.S., and you’ll begin to see how vast this discrepancy truly is.

Neither way is better than the other. But the yawning gap demands our attention. So many woes of Americans doing business in China have stemmed from a failure to understand this one dimension.

Perish any thoughts of a “fast buck” in China. It’s just not going to happen. Gird yourself for the long haul. Discipline yourself to be patient. Only then do you stand a realistic chance of success in China.

As the wording suggests, a strong achievement orientation means that when work-related goals come into conflict with other areas of life, the desire to achieve will win out. In the world of “work–life balance,” the balance is tilted towards work.

Those with an achievement orientation also tend to prefer chain-of-command reporting structures, while quality-of-life adherents lean toward discussion and consensus.

China and the U.S. come out almost the same: 66 for China, 62 for the U.S., where 100 means pure achievement orientation. As an American, you can expect your Chinese counterparts on average to be as concerned as you are with getting the job done, and roughly as willing as you are to make sacrifices in non-work aspects of their lives in order to do so.

Be careful, though: a relatively high achievement orientation does not mean that the Chinese divide the professional from the personal in the same way Americans do. Yes, the Chinese are concerned with achievement; but that doesn’t mean the Chinese spend as much time at the office and away from non-office social settings as Americans do. What might look to an American like “personal” activities — most notably dining out — are often strictly business affairs. You’ll be expected to attend dinners, karaoke parties, and weekend getaways — none of which are considered must-do business activities in the U.S.

You can rest assured, though, that by and large, like you, your Chinese colleagues remain focused on achieving business goals, and, like you, are willing to make sacrifices in other areas of their lives in order to make it happen.

Hofstede characterizes uncertainty avoidance as follows: “Extreme uncertainty creates intolerable anxiety, and human  society has developed ways to cope with the inherent uncertainty of living on the brink of an uncertain future. These ways belong to the domains of technology, law, and religion….In the same way human societies at large use technology, law, and religion to cope with uncertainty, organizations use technology, rules, and rituals.” (Geert Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences, 2^nd Edition, 145-7). These ways of dealing with uncertainty vary from organization to organization and from culture to culture.

China and the U.S. differ on this dimension, with China coming out at 30 and the U.S. at 46 on a 100-point scale, with 100 being the highest need for certainty. In other words, China is in general somewhat more tolerant of uncertainty than the U.S.

How might this show up for you? If you are American, you are likely to find, once you’re on the ground in China, that there is a vast set of assumptions you bring about the trustworthiness of established laws, rules and procedures. You probably expect rules to be explicit, and mostly followed. In China, though, you may find that “rules” aren’t really rules in the same way they are in the U.S. You may be accustomed to having your plans follow a certain predictable path, whereas in China there is often less planning, and even when there is planning, the plan is much looser.

This may sound like no big deal, but in the context of conducting business American-style, with outcomes and timelines that we expect will be adhered to, the more uncertainty-tolerant Chinese style can be frustrating in the extreme. It is here that partnerships that started off promising can turn ugly in a heartbeat, and ventures can disintegrate. Be ready.

The second cultural dimension of Hofstede’s that we’ll discuss is individualism. A common stereotype of “the East” versus “the West” is that the East is more “communitarian” and the West is more “individualistic.” Now, there are plenty of problems with the stereotype, but Hofstede’s research has shown that by and large — that is, statistically speaking — the stereotype is valid.

What does Hofstede mean by individualism? In his own words, individualism “describes the relationship between the individual and the collectivity that prevails in a given society. It is reflected in the way people live together — for example, in nuclear families, extended families, or tribes — and it has many implications for values and behavior.” (Culture’s Consequences, Second Edition, p. 209) Think of it this way: when the desires of an individual come into conflict with the collective desires of a group, where does the culture lean in resolving the conflict?

On a scale from 0-100, with 0 representing an extreme group orientation, China comes out at 20, the U.S. at 91. That’s a pretty stark contrast, and one best heeded by Americans venturing into China. ITAP International, a management consultancy with special expertise in intercultural matters, puts it this way: “In countries with high group orientation, recognition and rewards are given to a team or group as a whole. Feedback to an individual is often given indirectly or through a member of an in-group. Decision-making takes into account the best interests of the group. Consensus, cooperation and harmony are valued, and direct confrontation is avoided.” (Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire, ©2009 ITAP International, Inc. All rights reserved.)

That’s a rich mix, and one that runs counter to many deeply intuitive ways Americans have of doing business. To succeed in China you’ll need to become acutely aware of your own default ways of thinking and acting, and to expand your repertoire to include mindsets and behaviors that fit well within a more communitarian culture.

The framework Hofstede created from his findings has become one of only a few standards for intercultural training worldwide. He discovered four “dimensions” along which cultures vary. Years later a colleague in Hong Kong, Michael Harris Bond, discovered a fifth. The dimension we’re talking about today is “power distance.”

Power distance refers to a how a culture treats differences in power. Think of the power distance score as an answer to the question, “How egalitarian (or hierarchical) is this culture?” Or, “How accepted is distance between those with more power and those with less power?”

Not surprisingly, China and the U.S. come out far apart, with China near the hierarchical end, and the U.S. toward the egalitarian end (though many cultures turn out to be more egalitarian than the U.S., e.g., Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden and others).

This is a big issue for you in your dealings with Chinese people and organizations. Leaders in China are respected because they are leaders. To some extent they are in the U.S. as well, but in the U.S. leaders tend more to be respected because of some combination of charisma and ability to produce results. If results are primary, then everyone has the right and duty to speak up, regardless of rank; if the leader is primary, you need to be more subtle and tactful in your dealings with those who outrank you.

More on the other Hofstede dimensions in future posts.