Karen Christensen: China-related insights into the power of social networks

The American diva of corporate blogging, Debbie Weil, is hard at work in China now (and enjoying every jetlagged minute!). She’s blogging, naturally, at China Blogging Tour, and speaking tomorrow at the Beijing ad-tech conference. There’s a lot going on in the social media world in China, of course, and suddenly the conferences are springing up like mushrooms.  (That’s a poor choice of words, given how some people see social networking, but I think I’ll let it stand.) There’s a Chinese Blogger Conference coming up, too,  in early November - here’s a post about it from China Web2.0 Review - and I’m scheduling to speak at Nurturing and Commercializing Online Communities in Shanghai at the end of November. After talking about writing a blog early in Day 2, I see that I’ve also been booked to moderate the final panel, which sounds quite good:

Transforming Organizations into a Vibrant, Collaborative Environment
Karen Christensen, CEO, Berkshire Publishing Group (Moderator)
Carole Boudinet, Manager Collaborative Work Solution Center, AB Volvo
Jacqui Zhou, Manager of Direct2Dell Chinese, Dell Inc.
Dean Tan, Senior Manager, Oracle Asia Research and Development
Center

I’m looking forward to learning about that!

I’ve just come across Doing Business in China, How to profit in the world’s fastest growing market by Ted Palfker, published a couple of months ago by Warner Business Books. It looks a little light-weight (lots of exclamation points, too, something at which my 18-year-old daughter would turn up her nose, and that seem a little odd in a business title), though it may be just the ticket as a non-threatening introduction for people completely new to China. We’ll review it soon, but today I thought I’d quote a few lines from the front jacket flap:

Tips and insights include:
Be aware of guanxi , a word that defies simple translation. It means “relationship” or “connection” in the narrow sense. But when used in terms of business and bureaucracy, guanxi is far broader, meaning everything from “connections” to “networking” to “pull.” Unlike smaller matters of etiquette in China, people will expect that you understand guanxi and play by the rules.

I have joined Facebook as a social networking experiment. Posting about it on my publishing blog, but this struck me as fascinating and relevant to Guanxi:

白人看不懂 - Yes, we’re Chinese. Envy us.

Global
Information
Group InfoName:
白人看不懂 - Yes, we’re Chinese. Envy us.
Type:
Just for Fun - Outlandish Statements
Description:
The name of this group is a cultural reference taken from Phil Wang’s T-shirt in “Yellow Fever” (see pic), a video made by Wong Fu Productions. It roughly translates to “White people can’t read this.”

The purpose of this group is to acknowledge the fact that chinese people rock life. This group’s goal is to provide a community within Facebook for Chinese people (or those interested in Chinese culture).

This group is classified as a JUST FOR FUN group, founded as a place for Facebook users of ALL cultural and literary backgrounds who ‘get and appreciate the Yellow Fever reference’ to meet friends and share opinions. The name is simply a phrase, chosen with humorous intentions. IT IS SIMPLY A PHRASE, NOTHING MORE. We have no intentions to attack, discriminate, or diminish anyone, and by saying Chinese people are awesome we do not imply that non-Chinese people suck. So don’t take this group the wrong way, and do not waste your time making a big deal out of nothing. IF YOU DON’T FEEL COMFORTABLE JOINING, WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO REFRAIN FROM JOINING THE GROUP.

This is NOT a place to attack others, advertise your group or your political propaganda, or meet girls. These posts on the wall or in discussions will be removed ASAP.

We welcome all members to post pictures, participate in discussions, and share opinions insofar as they’re RELEVANT to the purpose of the group, and NONDISCRIMINATORY. Posts and opinions that are irrelevant, offensive, and/or discriminatory will be deemed inappropriate and promptly removed, whether accidental or intentional. Members who is a party to an inappropriate act will be warned, and repeated offenders will be suspended from the group temporarily or permanently, with or without report to Facebook admins.

*please invite more people!!

(BTW, IF YOU ARE NOT CHINESE AND CAN READ THAT, GOOD FOR YOU BUT STOP POSTING IN ON YOUR WALL)
Contact InfoWebsite:
http://www.post-jdm.com

It’s now less than a year till the Olympics in Beijing, and we’ve just brought out a double issue of Guanxi: The China Letter that focuses on the business aspects of the Games. The Olympics organizers have a regular newsletter now that’s worth reading and we’ll be recommending blogs and other sources of information as the Games get closer. Here’s a recent newsletter.

As a new member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, I was glad to have a chance to do some research into the National Committee’s role in Ping-Pong diplomacy, something I’m not quite old enough to remember and that our young staff had never heard of. For those who don’t know or remember, in 1971, Ping-Pong—the “ping heard round the world”— helped to create the first person-to-person, and then diplomatic, ties between two Cold War enemies: China and the United States. Here’s the article itself, the story of Ping-Pong diplomacy and interviews with people who were involved at the time, from the July-August double issue of Guanxi: The China Letter.

Destination Chungking, the 1943 memoir I wrote about in my last post, ends with a paean to the coolies of China, written during a time when the Communists, led by Mao, were beginning to challenge the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek (whom Han Suyin’s husband served under in Chungking). Han is sympathetic to the Communists, though she comes from a wealthy, cultured family and is angry with friends who treat the workers—the peasants or coolies—as less than human.

These coolies, mentioned occasionally in the book as shirtless, as Han the crowds in the underground shelters during the Japanese bombings of Chungking, are the equivalent of today’s shirtless migrant workers who are causing consternation for those in charge of getting Beijing ready for the Olympics, reported here in an essay about choosing reality over perfection:

Truth be told, going shirtless is not really in very good taste - it’s less than ideal and the very least is not in accordance with the standards of modern civilization. For an influential, world-famous, metropolis like Beijing, it’s something of a loss of face. But the reality of shirtlessness is not just Beijing’s reality - it is China’s reality as well. I will suggest that this phenomenon exists in practically all of China’s cities. Making shirtless migrant workers completely disappear from Beijing’s streets in a short time is not difficult to accomplish, but have we ever considered that Beijing without shirtless migrant workers is no longer the real Beijing, no longer the real China? We always say that the greatest inspiration, the greatest life force, comes from reality. When friends come from afar, we ought to warmly welcome them in a festive atmosphere. But we must not lose the opportunity to show the world the real China.

As we polish off a double issue of Guanxi: The China Letter focused on Olympic preparations, I’ve been reading the debates about whether China will be ready. An experienced China watcher said to me last week that it’ll be much better than Athens, the Chinese really have everything done now, and they know how to pull off huge events. That sounds good, but when I think about the traffic, the subway signs, and the difficulty in finding an ATM that takes foreign cards, I wonder. I was also talking to my son Tom, who’s in Beijing now, about the very simple issue of hygiene. He said that workers on building sites near the Kerry Centre, one of the most Westernized complexes in Beijing, are using the sidewalk for all bodily functions. There is a supposed ban on spitting in the street, which the Western press reports with great seriousness and a lack of understanding of the power of habit.

When I’m next in Beijing and see a shirtless worker or have to step over or around something less than pleasant, I will remember that my own grandparents were farmers and carpenters and I will think of Han Suyin’s words:

These are the builders and carriers, the peasant farmers, the workers of China. They built the palaces of Peking and the Burma Road. They made the Great Wall and the Shelters of Chungking. …They keep life going…. Everything in China depends upon them. Coolies. I would make the word ‘coolie’ a name of honour before the world!

She then describes watching a coolie put down his load to read a newspaper posted on the wall., “I who watch am suddenly happy and confident of the future, because I see you, in the mist of dawn, lift your finger to read. . . .”

By the way, my copy of this wartime book has a jacket printed on the reverse of another book’s jacket – true recycling.

From the time a friend said our online forums and blogs would be rè nào—‘hot and noisy’ I’ve had the phrase in mind. My son Tom mentioned it first when he took us to a restaurant in New York. He was disappointed with the meal but also with the atmosphere. It wasn’t Chinese, he said, it wasn’t rè nào. This weekend I’m working on an article about the 1971-2 Ping-Pong Diplomacy between China and the United States, and also finishing a book about China during World War II. I just came across this passage, which, like much of Han Suyin’s writing, explains something about Chinese culture and social structure.

The author here has taken refuge in the home of her “Big Family” in southwestern China, as the Japanese invade and bomb the country. (Her book was published in the UK in 1942, and is explicitly written to turn the world’s attention to China’s plight. The rape of Chinese women by the Japanese is one of many things she writes about, from a contemporaneous perspective.)

In the north we say jeh-nao. In Szechwan it is nao-jeh, the syllables reversed, but the same meaning. Literally translated it is ‘hot and loud.’ It means many people, a great deal of noise, a joyous crowding, excitement, fire-crackers, bright red colour, bright lights, everybody happy. I could never make the meaning fully clear to my English friends. Americans, I think, might understand. ‘A hot time’ – they say that, also.

All through the New year season it was nao-jeh, and when the festival was over it continued nao-jeh in a slightly lesser degree. It could not be otherwise in the Big Family, there were so many of us. We all lived together within sound of each other’s voices, coming and going through the courtyards under the watchful windows of all the relatives. We had no private concerns; it was taken for granted that everything should be known to all, discussed by all. Of course, this was intended for the best. The family stood together for protection. Its life was based on routine, ceremony, continuity. . . .

I require long stretches of solitude. But this was a thing my family could not understand. They liked it nao-jeh! Solitude was all very well for hermits. Certain of the poets, who had odd ideas, surely extolled the pleasures of lonely communion with nature. But who else in his right mind would not prefer to forgather with his own kind in genial social intercourse?

From pages 204-5 of Destination Chungking by Han Suyin.

One thing we’ll be doing on the new GuanxiOnline (also known as GO China) is recommend books and other resources, and ask visitors to comment on and add new material. Here are a few recommendations sent by a colleague in New York who travels to China frequently:

Asian Mind Games, probably the best book I have ever read on the subject, written by a Taiwanese woman, Chin-ning Chu, president of Asian Marketing, Consultants who has studied in the USA and dealt with the mainland Chinese for years

The recently published Chinese Lessons by John Pomfret

The famous China: Alive in the Bitter Sea by Fox Butterfield, written in the early 1980s.

“These three books,” my colleague wrote, “plus a general book of Chinese modern history [that is, from 1841, the first of the Opium Wars, to the present] make an excellent package for someone who wants a good sense of how modern China thinks and how it got there.”

Talk about global: I heard about this exhibition when I visited GAPP, the General Administration of Press and Publications, in Beijing in April, and received an invitation a few days ago via Al Furst, of Asia Projects, whom I met in Amsterdam last September.

It’s a happy coincidence that the exhibit will be at Harvard, in our own state - or rather in our Commonwealth of Massachusetts. China Today opens on 16 July 2007. Visit the link below for details about the opening reception.

Mr. Sun Shoushan, Vice Minister of the General Administration of Press and Publishing, The People’s Republic of China, and Mr. Steve Weitzner, Chief Executive Officer, CMP Technology, cordially invite you to attend the US premiere of award-winning Chinese contemporary photography.

This exhibition is the first of its kind in the Northeast and features the work of some of China’s most renowned and accomplished photographers as they highlight life in today’s China.

OPENING RECEPTION - MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

I was buying fish in Guido’s, the Great Barrington equivalent of Balducci’s (or, for a London comparison, hm–Waitrose? Borough Market?), and trying to tune out the whiny tones of the summer crowd. But I couldn’t help listening to one conversation between the fishmonger and a woman who wanted to know where a particular fish came from (this is typical, along with requests for detailed cooking instructions when the line is stretching down to the organic banana display in the produce section). “I don’t want anything from China!” she said.

China bashing is becoming more common, I know, but I was startled to see this ad on a busstop in New York: “The algorithm is banned in China.” Meaning that the algorithm is good, obviously. A friend of mine in Great Barrington is a Harvard-educated mathematician who works in the computer world. I learned how important algorithms were when Apple used some of his numbers in an advertisement back in 1998. But I also know that algorithms are not political or moral arbiters. Click here to see a photo of the advertisement.

The China Town Hall discussion, a live video webcast seen in 30 cities across the United States on 31 May, was made available online that very night. It’s available free at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations website, and is well worth viewing. And, hey, the system is easy to use! A quick login and you’re watching. Here’s the description: “Thomas Christensen, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, discusses and takes your questions on the current state of U.S.-China relations. This conversation is moderated by Stephen A. Orlins, President, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.” The discussion provides excellent background for those who want to understand today’s issues, and there’s a lively Q&A as well. Incidentally, I loved finding out that the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs is named Tom Christensen, as is my 21-year-old Chinese-speaking son, who is getting himself organized for some summer work in Beijing right now.