11 May 2009
Business as usual
An expert being interviewed for the programme pinpointed three particular problems that increase the chances of money invested there going astray: that foreign investors don't understand the business culture, don't understand the language, and rely very heavily on local advisors.
Now where does that sound like?
It's a constant puzzle why in so many different ways China is treated differently from anywhere else. When talking about business in China, despite endless examples of investors leaving large sums in China and achieving either a great deal less than they might have achieved elsewhere or indeed nothing at all, and despite endless cases of breach of contract, fraud, and intellectual property theft, China doesn't get a mention here.
Maybe there's no 'growth in fraud' story to tell about China because fraud reached maximum levels a long time ago.
The interviewee went on to cite an example of foreigners allowing themselves to be intimidated by local culture, or persuaded that they shouldn't ask various questions for fear of giving cultural offence. In his example an important businessman went to Japan to check on his business, was introduced in English, but then the rest of the meeting was held in Japanese. He was asked at the end if he had any questions, but was too embarrassed to ask for the matters to be gone over again in a language he understood.
Businessmen looking to invest in China are this stupid on a daily basis, and arrive already persuaded that things must be done 'the Chinese way', often by foreign consultants with every interest in promoting the obscurity of business dealings there and the inscrutability of officialdom in order to line their own pockets with fees for steering the hapless foreign investor through it all.
The advice given in the interview was that as soon as it is suggested in Japan that you should not ask a question because of local peculiarities then alarm bells should ring. In China you should not only look a gift horse in the mouth, but you should be getting its teeth X-rayed on a daily basis in order to ensure they haven't been pulled and replaced with fakes.
The way in which China is treated differently from the rest of the world never comes out more clearly than when U.S. foreign policy is considered, not only with Clinton's recent disgusting downgrading of the importance of human rights there, a demoralising self-given black eye for the new administration, but also with recent discussions of U.S. policy towards Cuba.
Shortly after her appointment to the Obama administration, Clinton made a rousing speech about telling dictators their time was up, and there would be an end to suppression of free speech, right of assembly, of religion, etc., and put several countries on notice.
Did she mention the most extravagant offender of all? No, she did not, and made it clear before visiting China that such considerations were to get less prominence than was at least claimed for them even by the Bush administration.
While apparently embargoes are appropriate for bloody-handed regimes the U.S. government doesn't like, engagement is right for others, if they have sufficient economic clout. The rhetoric on being 'leader of the free world' and on being morally upright defenders of democracy and free speech has by now added staleness to its already rank odour.
But recently to hear a Republican official criticise Obama's possible engagement with Cuba while encouraging such engagement for China was enough almost to have me hurl my laptop across the room.
What has the European policy of engagement with Cuba achieved, he asked? Has it brought about democracy or a free press?
Well has the US's engagement with China brought those institutions there?
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