On SD and China

by Anthony Charles Sterpin

...I have been to China and back, as well, which again was an interesting experience. Their emergence from Blue to Orange has been interesting to watch. They are fascinated by money....as well as preserving their culture (without the arrogance of the French in preservation). As someone best put it......they are socialists in mind but capitalist in pockets!

The beauty of their orange emergence is the heap of history they have to observe what the rest of the world has done. So, without being trend setters they face less daunting problems on the surface. They have read and seen the good, bad, and ugly of the west and make strategies to be successful in that vein. No doubt they will have an entirely different set of life conditions that they will need to cope with, a fact which will be interesting in itself mostly because of the magnitude of population they have (1.5 billion people).

The business world over there is talking of competition and prosperity and even the adverse being bankruptcy. They are very conscious of these things in their thinking systems. Big is beautiful for the Chinese, and so are relationships. So, money at the expense of people is not their core outcome, as the Americans showed us through people like Chainsaw Dunlap! But they are prepared to sacrifice their own if they don't conform to the D-Q (Blue) rules and structures. This is prevalent. Their hierarchy system of obedience is obvious (great for us power/control freaks). Funny, because what it appears they dislike most is arrogance. By nature they are pacifists.

D-Q (Blue), though, is very obvious if you delve deeper into their psyche. I asked some people at dinner one night whether they would die for their family. I also asked whether they would die for their country. Then, finally, would they die for their country before their family. The "driver" (married, male approximately 30 who spent 5 years in military service) who drives us around for the factory was adamant he would die for family and country, but country first. The manufacturing agent (a woman about 35-40, married with a 14 year old, grew up during cultural revolution, hard tough woman) would die for both as well, but family first. Our QC agent (a Chinese man, married with a 2 year old, but lived much in Hong Kong for business) who is proud but more liberal, said 'yes' to family, given the right context, and definitely 'no' to the country, and then started laughing. Interesting cross section.

Now in China the complexities of characters don't extend as much as here where many people are different (pre-supposing), which means that I had a fairly good cross sample set of data. Their business infrastructure is such that they can copy almost anything now. They aren't set on being the best at anything. They are just set at having good business for a sake of preservation of culture and survival of self and country. This is very important to the bigger business heads who generally have good communist party backgrounds, as well.

Because they have good discipline as a race, the people don't question everything, yet. "Why?"...."because that's what we say it is" is the response from Chinese to Chinese, and it's usually acknowledged that you don't ask in the first place, anyway. Very D-Q. The best part of their D-Q is the absence of religion which has meant a different sort of D-Q, as I have been explaining. Their greater cause, as mentioned, is generally country and not some other deity. They respect their leaders (again D-Q with a bit of B-O) without the fantastism of their spiritual leaders  as with followers of Jesus or Buddha or the Koran. There is no interpretation of any of the Scriptures to create 100 different D-Q thinking systems which leads or amounts to wars, etc. (my opinion, by the way).

How will they handle full blown E-R? Well, already everything is rounded to the 8 in their local currency which "remarkably" is equal to $1 US dollar. So you can find room rates at 800RMB, or DVD's for 8 RMB, etc.; never 9 or 7, always 8! They despise the Americans on the surface, and yet understand their importance to achieve their financial outcomes. When asking them about Sept. 11, it was interesting to hear the perspectives. All bosses were extremely disappointed because it affected their business severely. Ask the commoners and they were in line with the Arabs' views of "it's about time someone put them in their place".

What do they think of the west, overall? The 'grass is greener' approach is fairly common, which draws me to think of the book called "Flatland" by Edwin Abbott, if you know it. They don't know beyond their current thinking systems what there is, but it must be better than current existence issues! I have a passion and admiration for the Chinese up north (as opposed to the western Hong Kong Cantonese). It is fascinating to look at them and learn from them what they see the future like, and how the past shaped them.

Was Mao wrong in his strategies for 1.5 billion people? Are single child families inappropriate? Are swift and quick executions for law breakers immoral? As an observer, it ain't my position to judge, but it is definitely interesting to watch and understand some of the why's.