The standard Chinese view is best summarized by three words, uttered by one of the Chinese interviewees: “Money makes money. (钱生钱)” It’s so plainly obvious on some level that what you do with money — the quintessentially useful stuff called money — is invest it, so that you can get more of the stuff, creating the ability to solve more and more problems, and to deal with more and more of life’s nitty-gritty practical issues.

After the moralistic agonizing of the Americans, the absence of any sort of moralistic tone in the Chinese responses created is, in turns, alarming and refreshing. Alarming because my American mind is trained to think of money in moral terms. Refreshing because there is no pain in the discussions, no agonizing, no navel-gazing about what people should do versus what they actually would do.

Not only is the moralism absent. In two cases the Chinese participants actually claim that the question itself is moralistic. Here’s the first case:

C-17 Saying a person has money, how should he use his money, that give you a completely generalized sort of feeling.  Its seems that as for you…

C-16 He should have a lot of ways to use his money, and should choose a way for him…a way of using his money that he likes.  If the money was made through normal, suitable means.

C-17 If you answer this way it’s like speaking about morals or preaching…which ways of using your money are better ways.

C-16 Right.

C-17 But I can only answer how I want to use my money.

C-16 The premise is that we’re rich. [laughter] I don’t have enough money to pay rent.

C-17 Also, for this part, “How should he use his money?” should, this word, maybe I’m a little bit uncomfortable.

C-16 Awkward, right?

C-17 Right.  “Should” has a bit of a feeling of morals, or preaching.

C-16 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-17 Right.

They are essentially saying: We’re on to you, self-righteous American researcher, and we aren’t going to play your game. We are not interested in your moralistic pursuits. Please leave us alone to discuss for ourselves how we might imagine our fictional selves enjoying our fictional money, unencumbered.

Another pair of Chinese respondents have this to say on the matter:

C-18 This, I think…this question is different for each person.  Your saving or spending money depends on your own world view, on the direction of your ideas about value.

C-19 I think this question should ask, “If you were rich, how should you spend your money?”

C-18 Yes.  In reality you’re just expressing your own view, right, about how to use this sum of money.

C-19 It should be asked this way.

Just as we saw in responses to the Surprise Arrest and Tax Hike questions, once again the Chinese are looking like the individualists and Americans are looking like the collectivists. And just as before, if we add some nuance to our analysis, we can make sense of this by looking at where Americans and Chinese draw their ingroup/outgroup boundaries.

For this we have an interesting bit of data: in no Chinese interview is charity mentioned without the qualification that one should take care of oneself and one’s family first. In six of the nine American interviews, though, the idea of philanthropy is offered up before the suggestion that one meet one’s own material needs first. And in a seventh interview, even though philanthropy is ultimately rejected, it is at least addressed by them, while taking care of one’s own financial needs isn’t even raised.

It once again seems that the Chinese ingroup is relatively small: oneself and one’s family. For the Americans, members of “broader society” qualify as ingroup members. That is, at least, in theory: Americans like to think of themselves as caring for everyone in society, even though in reality their actions might not match this ideal. Hence the agony and self-doubt expressed by so many of the American interviewees.

In guilt cultures, such as the United States, behavior is internally and individually regulated through fear of judgment by some form of deity. Punishment for transgressions could come in this life or after death.

One aspect of the psychology of members of guilt cultures is that there is no freedom from internal assessments of actions and possible actions. In a shame culture, as long as a person is reasonably sure of not being caught, there can be some measure of peace of mind. In a guilt culture, no such luck: God is always watching, assessing, judging, and ultimately, we fear, punishing.

This gives tremendous energy and power to our thoughts: if God knows even our thoughts, then “bad” thoughts alone can be grounds for punishment, as in Jimmy Carter’s famous quote in his 1976 interview with Playboy magazine:

The Bible says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Christ said, I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery. I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.…This is something that God recognizes, that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it.

The former President believes he has been forgiven, but the fact that he has to say so only provides further evidence for the belief that unsavory thoughts alone can be punished.

The knowability of our thoughts by a perceived omniscient deity has a significant consequence when it comes to answering questions like the Rich Person question: it matters not only what we might and should do, but also what we might and should think about what we might and should do.

Two of the American interviewees address this at length:

E-9 A common answer to this question would be, you should give to charity, you know, but there’s the problem of, if someone goes to help somebody while if they help them, you know if someone goes to a soup kitchen or something like that to help out and serves them food, no matter what their motives are in doing so, the person gets to eat, right?

E-10 Right.

E-9 But you know then there is the idea that if you go there with the idea that you’re helping them only so that you can feel good, that’s not necessarily the best idea, versus if you go there with the intent of helping someone.

E-10 Sincerely help.

E-9 Right.  So I have a rich godfather who is highly rich and gives a lot of his money to charity, but he always tells me, he’s an absolute capitalist and he thinks I’m not exactly, I don’t know I’m not really a socialist, but we always have this discussion and he tells me that, I’m not bad, and, capitalists aren’t bad, see I give my money away.  And so, I don’t know.  I believe they should give it away, but the motives behind it…

E-10 Yeah, yeah.  I don’t know, it’s like they justify all their bad things by giving away part of something and not, I don’t know, there’s no sincerity in it.

E-9 I mean that’s not good, however…

E-10 It does help someone.

E-9 It helps someone yeah.

E-10 I don’t know.  Well like this question though, it’s not the motive for doing whatever, it’s what you should do with your money.

E-9 Yeah, but I mean, what I’m saying is, what you should do with your money is, in theory you should give it to charity…

E-10 But do it for a good reason.

E-9 But do it for a good reason, and if you don’t do it for a good reason, like I was just saying, should you do it or not? So, if the person’s motives are good, then they should definitely give them to charity.  If their motives are not good then I think maybe I don’t know, maybe you should give it to charity, maybe you should be selfish with it. I mean you’re being selfish anyways, I don’t know exactly what a person with bad intent should do with their money.

As an American I can understand and appreciate the logic here. Hypocrisy is awful. Intentions should match words, which in turn should match deeds. It makes complete sense.

On the other hand, I’m offended by the logic: at the end of the day, if someone has food in their belly, or a roof over their head, what does it matter what the intentions are of the person who provided the food or shelter?

The tension between these two logic systems is palpable in the discussion. We saw another version of this tension earlier, in the American fascination with the “should”s of giving away or not giving away money, or of moving or not moving the tree that is blocking the road. This last discussion is probably the most extreme example of how God, or whatever invisible entity we imagine to be judging us, is constantly in the background, influencing our choices, and our evaluations of our choices. This is an American obsession.

If a person is rich, what should he/she do with his/her money?

How would you respond to this question? If yours is typical of any of the American responses, then:

1. You probably have some fairly clear ideas about how this rich person should use his or her money.
2. These ideas have something to do with the public good: donating to good causes, setting up foundations, investing in technologies to better the world.
3. Despite the clarity of your preferences, you feel uneasy stating them too strongly, for fear that, were you the rich person, you’re not sure you’d do what that real you is saying the hypothetical rich you should do. Nobody likes a hypocrite.

The following, rather long, excerpt contains a number of gems:

E-13 Okay, this is “should” and not “would,” so…I think the person should give a large chunk of his money to some kind of charity. Not just one charity, but different charities, ’cause I think there’s a lot of people who are living in poverty, not just in the U.S. There’s a lot of people in third-world countries who don’t get anything, you know.  And, I think, just out of philanthropy, you know?

E-14 Yeah.  I don’t necessarily agree with this, but a lot of rich people believe that once they’ve made their money it’s theirs and they have no obligation to give it to anybody.

E-13 But this is should…

E-14 Should.

E-13 Not would.

E-14 Yes.

E-13 If we were talking would, people would not do that.

E-14 But do you think that?  Do you think that if they’ve earned their money, they shouldn’t…

E-13 No no, I’m not saying they should give all their money away.  I think what you earn is, yeah, you earned it, right?  But then you should give back to the society.  And you should give to people who don’t have much because they’re not as fortunate as you.  They don’t have those capabilities.  They’re not in the same situation as you.  So I think people should give back to the society.

E-14 I agree.

E-13 Like do something, like make a foundation, or a charity.

E-14 Just put it where it’s needed.

E-13 Yeah.  A lot of people do say, yeah, I earned the money, so I should keep it, but really what are you gonna do with all that money?  You’re just gonna spend it on yourself. That’s so selfish.  But then again if I were in that position I don’t know what I’d do.

E-14 Yeah.

E-13 It’d be…it’s easy to say…

E-14 Yeah, see, everybody says, this person should give it to charity, they should donate it, but that’s not what people do.

I don’t know if I ever had an actual conversation with another American that went like this, but I’m certain I had internal dialogs that went like this. In fact, every time I’ve enjoyed some windfall, however small, part of me is tortured by the contrast between what I know I “should” do and what I actually end up doing. Even when I can coax some generosity out of myself, it’s often not really generosity, coming as it does from a sense of scarcity, when what I “should” have is gratitude for the great abundance in my life, for God’s grace in even allowing me to live, and on top of that have shelter, food, water, and clothes.

American’s often talk of “giving back to society.” In order to give back, I must have been given something. What have I been given, and by whom? The “what” includes the standard list of things Americans are “supposed” to feel grateful for having. In addition to the basic material comforts, we have freedom of many kinds (to choose our leaders, to pursue our passions, to choose our spouses and where we live) and opportunity (to advance socially and economically, to travel the world, and so on). And probably a lot of other things, depending on whom you ask. None of these are things any of us has earned. And yet we have them.

Which leads us to the “who” question: Who exactly gave us all these things for which we are grateful? We often point to the Founding Fathers, and to all those who have given of themselves to protect what the Founding Fathers founded, including and especially all the veterans of America’s wars. How many times have we heard, “If you love your freedom, thank a vet”?

The story doesn’t end there, though. Another entity is at play here. Who? God. Which brings us back to a place we visited briefly when discussing our imaginary friend Tom’s decision whether or not to join the rock band: civil religion. Who, after all, inspired the Founding Fathers, and so many soldiers? And while many cringed when George W. Bush said it in 2003, just as the war in Iraq was getting underway, it can’t be denied that a deeply American belief system is behind his statement that “Freedom is not America’s gift to the world. It’s God’s gift to humanity.”

God is everywhere in the American mindset, running the show throughout American society and in the thought patterns of America’s people — even, I suspect, atheists. When I say that, I need to point out that I am making a purely ethnographic statement, not a theological one: whether you believe in God or not, you’ve got an uphill battle to fight if you want to claim that something or someone like God isn’t imagined to be operating behind the scenes when we talk about rock-band Tom being “given” his talents, or when we state our upset at not “giving back to society” enough. The “God’s-eye view” dominates the American mindset.

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.

Not only do the Chinese feel no interest in that which belongs to the “public,” but all such property, if unprotected and available, is a mark for theft. Paving-stones are carried off for private use, and square rods of the brick facing to city walls gradually disappear. A wall enclosing a foreign cemetery in one of the ports of China was carried away till not a brick remained, as soon as it was discovered that the place was in charge of no one in particular. It is not many years since an extraordinary sensation was caused in the Imperial palace in Peking by the discovery that extensive robberies had been committed on the copper roofs of some of the buildings within the forbidden city. (Arthur H. Smith, Chinese Characteristics, New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1896, p. 111)

What could be more “collective” than “the public”? What could be more “individualist” than neglecting “the public” in favor of “the self”? The complexity of culture can boggle the mind. We just need to be sure we minimize the bad decisions we make as a result.

A society with a differential mode of association is composed of webs woven out of countless personal relationships. To each knot in these webs is attached a specific ethical principle. For this reason, the traditional moral system was incapable of producing a comprehensive moral concept.…

The degree to which Chinese ethics and laws expand and contract depends on a particular context and how one fits into that context. I have heard quite a few friends denounce corruption, but when their own fathers stole from the public, they not only did not denounce them but even covered up the theft. Moreover, some went so far as to ask their fathers for some of the money made off the graft, even while denouncing corruption in others. When they themselves become corrupt, they can still find comfort in their “capabilities.” In a society characterized by a differential mode of association, this kind of thinking is not contradictory. In such a society, general standards have no utility. The first thing to do is to understand the specific context: Who is the important figure, and what kind of relationship is appropriate with that figure? Only then can one decide the ethical standards to be applied in that context. (From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society: A translation of Fei Xiaotong’s Xiangtu Zhongguo, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992, pp. 78-9. Translated by Gary G. Hamilton and Wang Zheng.)

Westerners in China will fail if you adhere rigidly to your universalist moral standards. If you can’t complexify how you relate to ethics, China is not for you. This emphatically does not mean that you must “sell your soul” or do anything you find repugnant. But it is true that you must consciously and consistently be willing to question many of your most deeply held beliefs, and walk a very fine line between remaining 100% “true to yourself” and doing things you might regret. There are no easy answers. But a bone-deep commitment to success will go a long way toward revealing that fine line and helping you walk it.

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.

Another of the interview questions I asked in my research was:

If a person is rich, what should he/she do with his/her money?

如果一个人很有钱,他应该怎么用他的钱?

As with the fallen tree question, the Chinese respondents hold to a very practical line: invest the money, because money makes money (钱生钱). The Americans, however, agonize over the question. They seem to feel intuitively that the “right” thing to do would be to give away a lot of the money. At the same time, they are troubled by the gap between ideal and real:

A      And you should give to people who don’t have much because they can’t…they’re not as fortunate as you.  They don’t have those capabilities.  They’re not in the same situation as you.  So I think people should give back to society.

B      I agree.

A      Do something, make a foundation, you know, I mean, you know like a charity.

B      Just put it where it’s needed.

A      Yeah.  A lot of people do say, yeah I earned the money, so I should keep it, but really what are you gonna do with all that money?  You’re just gonna spend it on yourself. That’s so selfish.  But then again if I were in that position I don’t know what I’d do.

B      Yeah.

A      It’d be…it’s easy to say…

B      Yeah, see, everybody says, this person should give it to charity, they should donate it, but that’s not what people do.

More than anything, what the Americans find troubling is hypocrisy: Saying one thing, doing something else. Not practicing what we preach. This is a function of the “universalist” aspect of American culture: Americans are inclined to judge a broad range of situations according to a fixed, static, set of criteria. In contrast, Chinese culture is “particularist”: specific situations, in all their complexity, tend to be privileged over abstract, universal principles.

The Chinese distaste for this kind of abstraction shows up in two responses. First:

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。

Another pair of interviewees goes as far as to suggest that a different question should have been asked:

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。

To put a harsh-sounding spin on it, we could say: What Americans do is pass judgment. We do so because we’re conditioned to judge based on how closely actual behaviors match up to a universal moral code. And lest I pass judgment on passing judgment, I’ll state again, as I’ve stated before, that in my own (very American) opinion, this has been, in the right contexts, one of the greatest gifts American culture specifically, and Western culture generally, has brought to the world.

You can see, though, what a mismatch a stubbornly universalist approach can be in the nitty-gritty, messy, detail-oriented context of Chinese culture. From one possible Chinese standpoint, Americans are hopelessly naïve: how could you hope to take one set of principles and apply them everywhere? Only someone who hasn’t lived in the world could think that way.

This is just one more way in which Westerners can get ourselves into trouble in our China dealings. It takes a special, hard-earned kind of self-awareness and leadership to function well, consistently well, in ways that are so contrary to our deepest, culturally conditioned norms.