SPEAKING FREELY
Cultural bias a drag on China business
By Matt Young

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Pleas e click here if you are interested in contributing.

Politics affects business. This is a certainty, and yet Western businesspeople almost always are skeptical of the Chinese political system, somehow managing to look the other way from something that directly affects their failure or success.

They often come to China from democratic traditions, from nations that fought wars to stop communism, and from schools with

obligatory reading lists that included the likes of George Orwell's 1984.

When Western people say the word China, many probably think of the color red (as in communism, not luck), imagine certain scenes from 1989, ponder censorship, pity the unfree, and generally wonder about a possible evil empire of today.

No doubt, this stops many businesspeople from setting foot in in the country. Others may see China business as a necessary evil. They'll skip out after making a pot of money.

Multinationals have the convenient euphemism of calling China just one part of global operations, but we know what executives sitting in Hong Kong are thinking: thank god they sent junior to backwards Beijing.

Even those who are committed to China's business environment in part for the betterment of the country can be real snobs. Like missionaries, they feel they come with a superior way of thought and preach down to Chinese. If they don't preach it, they think it.

I'd like to consider myself part of this last pack, and am just as stuck-up - though I try to deny it. Every time I squat in a toilet in Xicheng, hear a taxi driver spit out the window, walk by an ugly construction site, and look up at the 15th hazy sky in row, I think, "This is quaint, but thank God I wasn't born here." The thought almost has a racist quality to it, like thinking, "Thank god I'm not black."

But by far the most irritating feature of China that rubs me and most Westerners the wrong way is its political way of thought since 1949.

Yet if you believe BusinessWeek, that system is making a transition towards democracy - that is, real democracy, the kind where Wang of Party X is up against Zhang of Party Y and you get to vote for the winner.

BusinessWeek interviewed politburo member Li Yuanchao - an old colleague of President Hu Jintao since their time together in the Communist Youth League - and his comments are politically inspiring.

I've edited plenty of political editorials for state-owned media to know the difference between bogus and bona fide. Before, the jargon was mostly bogus, based on the fact that it didn't make sense. But this appears to be logical, bona fide. That's because Mr Yuanchao isn't saying China currently has a democracy, as I was led to believe through previous editing.

He's saying China is transitioning to democracy in its own way. That's more believable.

A few excerpts:

The greatest accomplishment of reform and opening up has been the freeing of people's minds, and the liberalization of our thinking, which have been the driving force behind our country's development in the last 30 years. All this helps develop an environment that leads naturally to political reform and the development of democracy ...

... Like the majority of the countries in the world, we do agree that democracy is a fundamental political value. Indeed, look at President Hu Jintao's work report to the 17th Party Congress and how many times he mentioned democracy. China has been studying and learning the experiences of other countries in building democracy. However we also believe China's democratic development should cater to its own conditions.

Yuanchao was credible enough to the article's author, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, who is an international investment banker and senior adviser at Citigroup. He wrote:

I am convinced that on political reform there is now a major shift in how China's leaders think. The process is nuanced and gradual, of course, but leaders are committed to bring about demonstrable change. There is now a real road map, with steps so specific that it would be awkward for China's leaders not to carry them out. Basically, the plan is this: first, to build democracy in the party, and then to expand it into the general populace. By strengthening intra-party democracy, Li says directly, "We pave the way for the people's democracy."

Kuhn, BusinessWeek noted, is "a longtime advisor to the Chinese government". So he's clearly more able to believe the Chinese government when it tells him something. If China's government says it's transitioning to democracy, it will have to do a lot more convincing.

But it will be in the best interests of both the government to do this, and businesspeople to put down their Western democracy biases when listening. A lot more well-grounded international business could get done in China if that happened.

Matt Young is founder, editor and publisher of bizCult.com, which seeks to engage, entertain and educate a community that wants to do better China business.