Minxin Pei’s latest column, “China in the Eye of the Beholder,” is all about how Westerners are fooled by China’s leaders:
One of the most glaring, if unremarked, oddities concerning China nowadays is how perceptions of its leaders diverge depending on the observer. In the eyes of the Chinese public, government officials are venal, incompetent, and interested solely in getting lucrative appointments. But Western executives invariably describe Chinese officials as smart, decisive, knowledgeable, and far-sighted – roughly the same adjectives that they once used to describe Bo Xilai, the disgraced Communist Party boss of Chongqing, before he was purged.
Pei then goes on to state that between Westerners and Chinese people, the latter are in a much better position to evaluate their leaders:
And that means that Westerners who have spent considerable time in China and consider themselves seasoned “China hands” need to ask why they have gotten it so wrong.
OK, hold on there a second. While I don’t necessarily think of myself as a “China Hand,” I have been around the hutong a few times, and I can tell you with some authority that most expat “China Hands” are jaded, cynical and possess excellent bullshit detectors. They are also not likely to be easily impressed with the usual tricks used to seduce foreigners and hardly ever do any cheerleading. I for one rarely believe anything anyone tells me. Come to think of it, this explains why my wife is so fond of hurling cutlery and glassware at me.
Pei’s article is all about businessmen, and I think his use of the term “China Hands” and focus on folks over here for a “considerable” amount of time was a mistake. In my experience, the foreigners most likely to fall for the China leadership song and dance are the guys who come over here for a short period of time (anywhere from a week to a year), talk to a few officials who sound reasonably intelligent, and assume that everything they heard in terms of policy reform is: 1) true; and 2) likely to be adopted.
We could call this the Tom Friedman Syndrome.
It’s possible that Pei regularly runs into naive business types whose experience with the system here has been pretty good. That’s definitely possible, and if your life revolves around your job, then that positive experience will bleed over to your overall impressions of the country. It’s also possible that Pei talks to multinational executives who are afraid to voice their honest opinions of China for fear of repercussions.
Either way, expats are some of the most cynical folks I’ve ever met (even compared to your average Chinese person, which is saying a lot), and to mistakenly lump us in with businessmen on short-term junkets to China is neither fair nor accurate.
© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. |
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