I recently attended a Visiting Scholar Lunchtime Talk held by the Center for China Studies at Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies. (Go here for a listing of events; I really recommend them and what’s more, they’re free!)

The lecture was titled “Corporate Governance in China: An Investigation of the Interdependent Model” and was delivered by Prof. Liu Pingqing of the Department of Business Administration at the Beijing Institute of Technology. Professor Liu had taken case studies of over one hundred State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and over one thousand Private Enterprises (PEs) whose owners are from Mainland China.

He mapped out the specific nature of the interdependence between local, mid-level and federal government and the SOEs and PEs — the kind of resource support (or lack thereof) the different businesses receive, negotiation of legislative or policy enforcement issues, and so on. All in all, it was fairly dry stuff (in my opinion, anyway).

I perked up, however, when he began to talk about management structures. Firstly, he noted that, in a major change from the danwei or communal enterprises of the 1960s, most of the major SOE and PE players were being operated by one person and his or her ‘family’ — both in the literal sense, through nepotism, and figuratively, as through a large social network. Establishing a Board of Directors requires special permission from the government, and has only been granted to a handful of companies since the start of economic reforms.

By tracking the career paths of some of the leading SOE and PE ‘owners’, Liu finds that many of these elite businessmen bounce back and forth between positions of leadership in the private, state-owned AND governmental sectors. According to Liu’s research, it is not uncommon for these key influencers to hold official Party and SOE or PE posts at the same time. This trend puts economic innovation and power into the hands of a relative few; it also creates a huge potential for corruption.

My first instinct is to wonder, why these people? What about their personality makes them special and deserving? However, if we look at this phenomenon’s ideological foundation in Legalism, we wouldn’t ask that question. In the Legalist model for governance, less emphasis is given to the personal merits of the executive in power, but to the position he or she holds; therein lies the authority. Reverence is gained not through charisma and self-promotion, but by keeping a low profile and following the letter of the law. By deemphasizing personality, strengthening the influence of the job title itself and keeping those job titles spread thick among fewer people, the state asserts its authority and is better able to negotiate and appraise changes in economic policies.

This stands in almost total contrast with our interest in executives and officials as ‘personalities’. See the NYTimes Op-Ed piece on personality traits of CEOs, and countless other books (How to Win Friends and Influence People, Think and Grow Rich, How to Think Like a CEO, the list goes on…). Further evidence that formulas for success must be taken in context with one’s environment, and the best corporate and government officials will play the game differently depending on the playground.

As for China’s governance structures, future reforms are increasingly hard to predict. Professor Liu pointed to Taiwan as an economy that accepts certain aspects of the U.S. model but remains ‘consistent with its Asian heritage’, straddling both as it were. But the value of this trajectory towards the U.S. economic model is becoming obscured.

“China views the U.S. as its teacher on the economy,” he said. “What happens now, when the teacher himself is struggling?”

I’m sorry but not entirely surprised to hear that he’s received death threats and hate mail for his status as a major influencer of our nation’s child vaccine program at the CDC, and for inventing a rotavirus vaccine which he developed at Merck and for which he received a substantial sum as its sole inventor. Citing a study done by a British gastroenterologist that claims a connection between autism and the MMR vaccine, certain members of the autism community remain very outspoken about their beliefs against vaccines.

And that’s just what this is about – belief, held so tightly as to wrench and twist scientific debate into a storm of emotions. Just read the comments after the article. Things get personal; the passionate language of Heroism and Villainy is tossed around. I disagree with author Jason Fagone’s highly personal portrayal of Dr. Offit as a piece of rather yellow journalism. But for some perspective, this article comes after waves of slanderous attempts from the other side to dehumanize him and blame him as a person. That Dr. Offit’s intentions as a doctor and scientist are being libeled as evil, elitist, and deliberately harmful by frustrated parents is repulsive and sad. He is not the enemy; he is an expert. The absolute worst he could be is wrong.

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Amazon – Vaccines: What Every Parent Should Know, by Paul Offit and Louis M. Bell

In his reply, Peter Foster of the Telegraph accuses Mr. Whiteley of spinning propaganda for the Chinese government’s ‘mouthpiece’, China Daily. He contends that the White House opening a Facebook page to promote the Obama administration to young people is not propaganda, because “in America the young people are free to throw as many rotten tomatoes at Mr. Obama as they like”. For Foster, the freedom to reply makes what Obama’s party does on Facebook different from Communist party publicity campaigns.

I’m not trying to debate that here. The Chinese would name their government’s efforts and the Obama administration’s efforts with the same word — xuanchuan, 宣传. It’s a neutral word closer to ‘publicity’ or ‘dissemination’ and doesn’t carry the negative connotations that it does in English.

Mao Zedong found you through Friendfinder!

I’ll just say this. News outlets are organizations run by people, and it is in our nature to create spin. We’re not Vulcans; it requires immense effort for humans to actually remain neutral in their communications.

Now for my blanket-statement interpretations of what are perhaps truths, sometimes (don’t worry, I’ve seen the bumper stickers…don’t believe everything you think):

Westerners are amazed by the straightforward, blatant mandates the CP uses to promote itself: “Love China, Love Socialism”, etc. We marvel at those translations, thinking, ‘does the general population really think in those terms?’ The Chinese struggle to see their nation jabbed at under the spotlight of western media attention. ‘Do the westerners really think stripping something naked for all to see is the proper way to deal with its problems?’ Both wonder, ‘how can they be so hypocritical?’

As someone who once worked in the Publicity/Propaganda department (officially the 宣传与公共关系办公室) at a Chinese public university, and who has both Communist and WWII-era U.S. Navy and Marines propaganda hanging on the walls of her home…I have no real authoritative answers. In wars of loaded words, I can’t think of anyone who would. Maybe Spock.

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*Update: How about ‘torture’ and ‘harsh techniques’ for loaded words? Heretical Ideas Blog

At the start of each video was a short, ten-second opener promoting the Confucius Institute Online. Let me describe it: a brushstroke of watercolor ink; some pandas playing; a sweeping view of the Great Wall, with each brick transforming into dazzling strings of computer keyboard keys which then wrap around the globe and fade to reveal the Confucius Institute’s logo.

It’s a strongly literal opener, a good example of China’s current P.R. style. First, it touches on a few universally celebrated elements of Chinese culture: Chinese brushstroke painting and/or calligraphy, playful pandas in a bamboo forest, and the Great Wall. It then conveys blasting off into a bright future: an incarnation of One World, One Dream. The Confucius Institute’s message visualizes the dissemination of China’s rich culture to the world via the Internet to swelling music.

To my eye, the symbols are puzzling. The Great Wall, albeit a wondrous symbol of masterful Chinese masonry, was built to fortify the country’s defenses against outside invaders. The massive operation that censors the Internet in China has long been called The Great Firewall. With this in the mind of a person raised on ideals of the right to Free Speech and Lady Liberty’s steadfast “Give me your tired, your poor”, the strings of computer keys convey something closer to chains of censorship and cultural monolithism than strengthened ties.

But is that just paranoia talking?

Let’s look at the sponsoring institution. Subsidized in part by a group of governmental departments known as the Chinese Language Council International, or Hanban, and in part by their host universities, the Confucius Institutes are typically run by native-born citizens and operate with independent agendas. According to their umbrella website, services include Chinese language instruction, training and certifying Chinese instructors, administering the HSK Chinese Proficiency Test and conducting language and cultural exchange activities. To date, there are 314 Confucius Institutes in some 81 countries and regions around the world.

In the U.S., Confucius Institutes can be found in dozens of highly respected state and private universities and many play supportive roles to East Asian Studies departments. Some schools like Harvard and University of Pennsylvania have turned down offers to establish a CI on their campuses, citing worries over potential academic interference into research topics sensitive to the Chinese government and cultural differences in teaching style. These questions invariably will arise when educational institutions arrange cross-border cooperations.

“Of course, using the language to create a positive feeling toward China is political. There’s no getting around that,” says Elaine Gilbert, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Kansas, which hosts a Confucius Institute.

That the presence of politics in this situation is as assumed as the power of learning Chinese to create positive feeling towards China is encouraging to me. Let me explain. Ms. Gilbert is acknowledging that language learning does create some kind of understanding where only ignorance existed before. It’s as assured as it is politically useful. Sure, some teachers and students will promulgate stereotypes along the way, and this can indeed be harmful, but at its core, learning the language illuminates a culture’s social history and shared experiences like many other academic endeavors cannot. I hesitate to say it’s objective in a way that politics cannot touch…but that’s a debate for another post.

Back to the video opener and the presence of politics. I can’t help but cringe when I see China promotion (ok, propaganda) that focuses on repainting a political situation instead of exclaiming the beauty of free conversation with other cultures (which is inherently good P.R.), in this case between language learner and native speaker. Such stumbling, heavy-handed promotion ensures that politics be always near, in effect concentrating the sense of insecurity coming from the Communist government.

Sources

Why China wants you to learn Chinese, Carol Huang, Christian Science Monitor
Who are we, Confucius Institute Online website