All About China 1.1


In an essay entitled “The Hedgehog and the Fox”, Sir Isaiah Berlin compares Tolstoy to other authors and intellectuals of his time by using the metaphor of hedgehog and fox. In his analysis, he portrays Tolstoy as the Fox, who draws on a wide and often disparate array of knowledge and wisdom; and the other authors and intellectuals of his time as the Hedgehog, who frequently displayed a fanatical adherence to one big idea.

In today’s global economy, people talk about the huge global market out there, the opportunities that are available. The two most talked about Asian markets today are China and India. While both markets are huge, in comparison to many other developing markets, China is being considered more intriguing and attractive between the two oldest civilizations for two reasons—the miraculous economic development the Chinese has accomplished over the past twenty plus years and continue chugging along at phenomenon pace, and the mystic historic background of over 5,000 years. Doing business and visiting China can be very problematic for non-Chinese speaking people.

While the official language is Putonghua (普通话) or Standard Mandarin, spoken by approximately 70% of the population, there are several major divisions of dialects. In many cases, one will find oneself in a completely different environment based on the dialects spoken by the locals, in just crossing a river to a neighboring village. Although in most cases, the difference in two dialects is a merely a different annunciation or pronunciation of the same word, or the tone in saying the word or phrase, it is enough to confuse even Chinese people.

In contrary, although India has a rich history no less intriguing to those of China, but the mystery is significantly decreased because of the language. Although there are as many as 1,652 different dialects in India, and the Indian Constitution recognizes 23 different dialects as official language, Hindi and English are the only two languages used by the Indian government for official purposes. And since most Indians speak English, traveling to India for non-Indians becomes a much more “regular” activity than those of China. Through the commonality of the English language, the gap between two diverse cultures seems to be so much smaller than those of China.

There is no doubt in my mind that in order to be successful in today’s global economy, one needs to go to the places, to know its people, to find out what is going on, and what went wrong, to figure out what to do, how to do, and with whom to do it with. In China, many businesses have done it, and thought to have done it. But many of these businesses are also facing with similar issues—not knowing its people, thought they know what to do, but discovered that they’re continuing fixing symptoms instead of solving problems. The reason is simple. While they have managers who can speak the language, and thought they know the people, but they don’t really know the language or its people. Lacking this ability, they can only see the symptoms and never the real problem. As profitable as these businesses can be, they will have a very difficult time to accomplish success in China until the managers master the Chinese language, which requires the person to know the people, its culture and its civilization.

Therefore, I say, in this global economy today, I portray myself as the hedgehog—one who is passionate about one thing—China and the Chinese language.
04:05 PM PDT Permalink | Comments [72]

Tourism between Taiwan and PRC
Few days ago, it was reported that the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) will set up a new semi-official organization "Taiwan Strait Tourism Association" to handle the tourist business from Chinese visitors. The target is 1,000 people a day during the trial period. Procedural details is still under negotiation and is expected to complete by the end of the year and the first group of Chinese tourists will follow immediately. Business analysts predicted that if one million Chinese tourists were in Taiwan for an average of eight days and each spent US$150 day, the annual visitor spending would be US$1.2 billion, equivalent to 33 percent of the entire Taiwan tourist spending in 2004. My immediate response after reading this news is: language can work wonders!

The issue of allowing Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan has been under negotiation for a period of time. The reason that it failed to make any progress was primarily because of disagreement of the name to be used. China has long set up an organization to handle all cross strait tourist issues. The organization was named as Cross-Strait Tourism Association. Its counterpart in Taiwan was deadlocked in the namesake. Republic of China is a definite no-no since there is only one China. Taiwan is sensitive because the Chinese government wants to avoid any indication of independence when referring to Taiwan. And, the Taiwan government would not accept Chinese-Taipei because of the apparent implication that Taiwan is a part of China.

The name Taiwan Strait Tourism Association, as rumor has it, came as a suggestion from a lowly employee of the MAC. The idea came from its counterpart, China's Cross-Strait Tourism Association. In Chinese language, cross-strait implies the Taiwan Strait. Thus, Taiwan Strait Tourism Association has two different implications, depending on how one looks at it and how one interprets the term. From the Chinese side, the word Taiwan, when used together with Strait, refers to the proper name of the strait--The Taiwan Strait and therefore, is acceptable. However, from the Taiwan side, the term Taiwan refers clearly to the "country" and "strait" simply refers to what the Chinese refers to as "cross-strait". The difference in interpretation lies in the invisible punctuation, which was purposefully left out for easy interpretation and ambiguity. Obviously, the Chinese government reads the two words "Taiwan Strait" as the name of the strait, while the Taiwan government reads the name as "Taiwan, Strait Tourism Association", interpreted as: the Strait Tourism Association of Taiwan, and Taiwan, in this situation, refers to the country.
05:22 PM PDT Permalink | Comments [730]