Yellow Peril by Tze Ming Mok

Bizarrely enough, this week of Herald stories rightly digging between the lines of the Taito Philip Field corruption inquiry (PDF) was kicked off by a Lincoln Tan Herald column apparently advocating that New Zealand businesspeople engage in corruption in China.

Dude, I’m so calling you on that.

The context of his column on how Kiwis have to get wise to guanxi, is the new Asia:NZ Foundation report (PDF) that I have taken to calling ‘Preparing for a Future with your Asian Overlords, Europlebs’. Says it all really. Charles Mabbett from Asia:NZ also recently handed me a similar article from the NBR on New Zealand entrepreneurs’ total uselessness when faced with the guanxi system in Chongqing. That article describes how New Zealanders are perceived by Chinese businesspeople as bad at relationship-building, impersonal, and therefore as untrustworthy and just out to make a quick buck.

I note that local and central Chinese government officials might also have said that New Zealanders are bad at bribing them, had NBR asked.

But it’s Lincoln that comes up with the money-quote from a Shanghai reporter that he reproduces approvingly:

Kiwi businessmen don't know how to buy people's hearts. In fact, they don't even know how to buy people a meal.

Nice one bro. 'Buy people's hearts'. Sounds really... legal. Meanwhile Americans, Lincoln reports, know exactly how to bribe and exploit public position for private gain. Sorry, develop guanxi. This makes sense – I mean, look at Tom Delay, Dick Cheney, and Jack Abramoff! No wonder Americans are doing well in China – their entrenched system of political corruption (‘lobbying’), the casual habit of politicians of handing massive contracts to… themselves… and their dynastic method of Presidential succession make Taito Philip Field and his Thai tilers, gib-stoppers and house-painters look like small fry. The condemnation of both is justified; we don’t want to be as corrupt as America or Samoa, which is engaging in its own political battles with the lafo tradition.

And yet it’s seemingly acceptable to encourage New Zealand businesspeople to engage in corruption in China?

If New Zealand businesspeople want to ‘get to know their future Asian overlords’ by engaging with guanxi networks, they need to know that:
1) Plenty of guanxi is not corrupt, and there are ways of cultivating guanxi that are less likely to lead to corruption
2) But given the explosion of corruption in China since the 1980s and its entrenched practise, there is simply no clear dividing line between non-corrupt guanxi practises and corrupt guanxi practises.

Let’s get this straight: guanxi is not just about buying people a meal, and is also far more than straight bribery. According to Lincoln and the Chongqing source in the NBR, Kiwi businesspeople have no idea how to deal with it, poor buggers. Lincoln’s right - not knowing how to qing someone is pretty lame. You know, you guys really could figure that out.

But it’s part of their charm that most New Zealanders don’t know how to ‘buy’ people’s loyalties, and would never expect to need to.

Now for the cultural relativist cottonwool. The comprehensive guanxi system perceives all of civil, political and economic society as being grounded in personal, individual relationships which reinforce the reciprocal value of social networks and hierarchies, and maintain social stability. Actions are personal and embedded, not unrestrainedly rapacious, ‘neutral’ or removed from social consequences. As a result, guanxi systems compete directly with modernist, state-centred ideologies of fairness, neutrality, and set administrative processes.

There are strong reasons for understanding and supporting a system like this, which is not even alien to the Western world anyway; but simply to the principles of a neutral administrative process in government, and to some extent (but not the same extent) in business transactions. Even in New Zealand, immigrants entering the job market – whether ‘Asian’ or English – often remark on how difficult it is to find a job with their lack of ‘connections’ here. And part of the reason Lincoln has written two Herald columns and myself an SST column and a blog about the Asia:NZ Foundation report at all, is because Charles Mabbett is constantly shouting us lunch and feeding us information. Of course, Lincoln and I are both actually Chinese and therefore both receptive to corruption by lunching naturally interested in writing about reports on 'Asians' and 'Asia'.

Guanxi, and yes, Samoan lafo are traditional and also even pomo ways of looking at the world, that challenge the dominant Western positivist paradigm. Yes, it’s important to be able to move in those kinds of worlds and see the value in them, in order to prepare for our future with our Asian overlords. But we – particularly ‘Asians’ – also need to acknowledge why such systems still exist and take precedence over more egalitarian systems, especially with regard to the state’s interactions with its citizens. In terms of China, it would be the fact that since the invention of the Chinese state there has never been anything close to equality before the law or justice for all. So there have been no other ways to protect yourself, attain justice, or accumulate social capital. Of possible pertinence for the Field case, corruption that arises out of traditional patron-client or guanxi systems doesn’t have to be venal; it can also be altruistic, bending rules for all the best reasons. But such acts destroy the system of equality before the law. These aren’t the kinds of societies we should be aspiring to; and there’s no reason for ‘Asians’ to be too smug about ‘our’ way of doing business or politics. Even though it’s sometimes funny to laugh at hapless whitey abroad.

I don’t like the idea of New Zealand businesspeople perpetuating and taking advantage of the inequitable and corrupt parts of the guanxi system in China. But ultimately, who really cares what businesspeople get up to – everyone assumes capitalists are will do anything to get what they want anyway, and if they mess up and get narced on to the corruption squad by disgruntled local business partners or officials after they’ve bloodied their hands in the guanxi pool, well they got what was coming.

But where the guanxi system is truly despicable, is how it impacts on ordinary people’s access to their basic social and political rights. In China, your ability to do things as simple as travel, get married, have children, or rent an apartment, let alone access information or seek redress from your government, are not dealt with fairly and equally by the state authorities. The public sphere and political life shouldn’t be run according to how many wheels you can afford to grease. Guanxi as it works in relationships with state institutions, even for foreigners in China with their almighty dollars – is to always need a patron, a go-between, or a charm-offensive for you to do something as simple as renew a visa or apply for a credit card without hassle. It’s demeaning.

Is this the Western liberal in me talking? Is it because, as Lincoln’s column would suggest, I don’t ‘think like an Asian’ even though in China I know exactly how to act like one? Maybe I just don’t think like a businessman. Indeed, I attribute my dislike of guanxi as well as my knowledge about it, to the values of the Mainland Chinese side of my family, who unlike much of the historical Chinese diaspora were not businesspeople or struggling farmers resigned to the indefatigability of guanxi and the law of the jungle. Rather, they were modernising republican nationalist and communist intellectuals, who eschewed ‘backwardness’ and feudalism, and wanted to take down the whole damn corrupt edifice of sclerotic Chinese society and start again. Okay, they were overly optimistic, and wildly mistaken on more than a few counts. But for that surviving tradition of Chinese modernism, guanxi is a shining example of the subjugation of the poor, the granting of license to the rich, and lack of guarantee of justice for the wronged. And so I have always hated what guanxi stands for politically. It’s one of the overlords we managed to escape.

Previously in the Tilegate series:
No-one is illegal 1: Quality Assurance Overload
No-one is illegal 2: My part in Philip Field’s downfall and his part in dividing the nation and saving my sanity

I'd just like provide a window into some of the intense feelings circulating around the Aotearoa Ethnic Network wires in the wake of - sigh - 7-11. There's thankfulness for those relatives and AENers themselves who escaped the blasts, shock and sadness for those who may not have, and a sense of pride in the resilient 'spirit of Bombay' - not unlike what we've heard about London's 'spirit of the Blitz'.

When the news broke I thought immediately of resident AEN firebrand Sapna Samant, who had been riding those very Bombay lines a few days previously - thankfully, she is alive to rant another day - although one of her nephews was injured in an explosion while riding the trains. Sapna, a Bombay native, will have much to say in the coming days - even in her state of shock she got off a few choice hits on George Bush and the BJP.

Still, the Independent reports here on Muslim-Hindu solidarity in Mumbai followng the blasts, that even had Shiv Sena impressed.

Rohan Jaduram from the Human Rights Commission circulated a piece by his friend in Bombay, Naresh Fernandes, editor of Time Out Mumbai, who had gotten off the train at Bandra an hour before a train exploded there. The full article has just appeared in the New York TImes.

Despite the long history of sporadic violence, Mumbai has always picked itself up by its bootstraps and marched off to work as soon as the trains started working again. Our ability to jeer at misfortune is attributed in the Indian press to the "spirit of Bombay," which is variously described as "indomitable," "never say die" and "undying." But our spirit has been saluted so frequently of late, all the praise was beginning to annoy me.

Before I left the office Tuesday evening, I finished a magazine article complaining that this illogical faith in Bombay's innate resilience had the unfortunate consequence of absolving the city's administrators of the responsibility of actually fixing our problems. No matter how bad things get, they seem to suggest, we have an infinite capacity to cope.

After the bombs went off, and he witnessed the city's poor hauling the injured out of the destruction, and the waves of volunteers flooding in to pick up the pieces, Naresh became a little less cynical. His original point was pretty good though - not only in terms of local government - but national governments.

Meanwhile in the nexus between the real and unreal worlds, the Guardian has noticed the activity of the desi blogosphere in response to the blasts, particularly local Mumbai blogs such as Mumbaihelp (link in my last post), but Sepia Mutiny notices a deafening silence in the Western blogosphere.

What gives? I emailed the following question to three significant political bloggers:

No opinion on the Mumbai bombings?
I’m surprised. Many more have died than did in London a year ago, and the death toll is currently just a little under the death toll from Madrid. Yet the blogosphere is largely quiet. Why?

SM received this response:

The blogosphere tends to be relatively quiet on straight news like this, since it doesn’t provide much of a vehicle for opinion mongering. And in this case, it appears (so far) to be related to India-Pakistan tensions, rather than the broader Islamist movement. I suspect most Americans, at any rate, find that sort of uninteresting. [Kevin Drum]

It would be a shame if non-'Asian' New Zealand bloggers were of the same persuasion.

In that same post, Sepia Mutiny goes on to outline a few clear blogging points of interest coming out of these attacks, which SM blogger Ennis says "are rich in implications for American foreign and domestic policy. I don’t find it too hard to connect the dots, and I don’t think it’s just because I’m brown." Check it out.

Surely, it's one of our other Londons. sepia mutiny and Ultrabrown on the ground in Mumbai are running updates on the situation. If they haven't phoned home, try contacting loved ones through the Mumbaihelp blog.

Have succumbed to that awful silence that follows awful events, I'm afraid.

Sticking with the Brown - Singapore's uncannily named top-dog of politicalish-blog humour punditry Mr Brown has just been suspended 'indefinitely' from his newspaper column for being too funny. Too funny about the government. Full column "Singaporeans are fed, up with progress!" here; government response here; getting fired here; RSF criticism of the government here; the start of a 'Mr Brown Freedom Movement' outlined here; resulting in an actual flashmob public protest to support him here.

This freedom of information/internetty thing actually seems to be working.

"Try not to make me look like a hooker." Getting her face made up while powerless to hold up her own head, Li-Mei from Shortland St has never delivered a more self-referentially brilliant line. Though I cannot divulge whether she is leaving the clinic under a white sheet or on a prestigious plastic surgery internship, there was no mistaking her big 'interview' scene last night for anything but an exit interview.

[edit: it's okay, they've knocked her off now. You know all is lost when Chris Warner throws his cellphone against the wall.]

Expect a fulsome Li-Mei Chen tribute, Yellow Peril style, within the next few weeks.

While on Shortland St the existence of one Asian doctor precludes the existence of all other Asian doctors, in the real world, if you take one Asian doctor and put them in a room, more will eventually arrive, waiting for the pan-Asian finger-food. Last night, these worlds collided. I went to a launch at Parliament of the first ever Asian Health Chartbook, where we had deep fried mini-samosas to go with the incipient Indian diabetes and heart disease epidemic, and deep fried moneybags to go with the nation-topping level of female Chinese super-sedentary lazy-assedness. Then I went home to eat chocolate and sit on my ass watching the poor health outcomes of the soon to be deleted female Chinese character on Shortland St.

This chartbook seems to show that the 'Asian' category has now properly infiltrated the Health sector. There were comments that it's been a long time coming. There was also a sense of relief and appreciation that the report is setting a precedent for disaggregating the 'Asian' category into different ethnic groups, and calculating for length of residence. Samson Tse blew away a few bureaucratic cobwebs with a barnstorming speech about the work still to come - in particular, integrating the effects of discrimination and settlement problems into analyses of health and wellbeing.

Pansy Wong was also bopping around looking pleased as punch. She was at the Tuesday night launch of the AEN Journal too, which is worth checking out for its tackling of the 'elephant in the living room' of pan-ethnic/inter-faith networks: the Palestine/Israel issue. Here are the companion articles by Dave Moskovitz, Progressive Jew and Anjum Rahman, New Zealand Muslim. Am a bit embarrassed linking to something that I have also been published in - especially as it's a pretty half-assed contribution on my part, compared with the other 'serious' articles. But I'd like to acknowledge the amazing work that Ruth DeSouza and Andy Williamson have put in to producing the journal, and in keeping AEN humming along. It's really valuable to feel connected to a group of people who exist in reality, even though we don't exist on television.

This is indescribable. You must experience this Youtube clip (with translation) of the crazed CCTV-5 soccer commentary over the Italy-Australia game. The hysterics were being snippeted on National Radio the other day. Hint: this commentator quite likes Italy.

(thanks to Richman Wee for the tip-off)

More Friday Mandarin slacker viewing can be found amongst the odd little growing pile of American high school Mandarin class video projects on Youtube. Harking back to the serious concerns of a previous post about the threat to 'Asian' youth of their sedentary computer game-playing lifestyle, is the high school boy Mandarin tour de force 'Runescape is gay'.

Most importantly, they got an 'A'.