Understanding the Chinese Mind

I have a new student on Tuesdays. He's around thirty, overweight, a Chinese manager at a German company. His boss has sent him to me to improve his English. Good thing, because he's got a heavy accent and has forgotton most of the grammar that he memorized in grade school.

During our first meeting, I ask him what topics he wants us to focus on and he tells me he wants to be able to explain to his manager, who is a foreigner, the fundamental differences between Western and Chinese culture.

He feels frustrated that sometimes his boss just doesn’t "get" the Chinese mentality. For instance, he tells me, his boss doesn’t understand that Chinese people will always choose the familiar and the stable over the risky, even if it’s fun, creative, and has been successful in the West.

In class lately, we have been talking about the youth of China and their views of their country. My student by now knows that I’m not a typical foreigner, that I’m interested in Chinese culture and that I’m probably almost as smart and sophisticated, intellectually, as he is.

First, he tells me how optimistic the youth of China are about the growth of their country, and how proud they are of China’s resilience. I listen and correct his English mistakes, but I can’t resist asking him a question. I suspect that he will like this, that it will enliven our class together.

I draw a line and on one end write “1949” and toward the other end write “1979”. I say to him that I understand that after Deng Xiaoping opened up China to the West in 1979, its economy has been developing. I draw a line from “1949” to “1979” and asked him, “What do young people think about this time period? If China had been developing during this time, don’t you think China could have become a developed country, like Japan? Was this period of time a waste?”

My student tells me that, in fact, he believes it was. But he says it was a “process.” I think that this means that China needed to go through this period to get to where it is today. He likes to emphasize that Chinese people focus on process.

I ask him what he thinks of Mao. “Winston Churchill, who led England during wartime, when asked to continue leading the country after the war, said that while he was good at leading England during wartime, he wouldn’t be a good leader during peacetime, as he didn’t especially understand economics. So, Churchill was better than Mao. Mao didn’t step down after the revolution. In fact, he wanted to be another emperor of China,” my student responds.

I have to say, it is refreshing to hear a young Chinese person criticizing Mao.

My student is making a lot of English errors, which I correct from time to time, but our conversation is getting juicy.

He knows Western people always criticize China for its handling of the Tiananmen Square protestors in 1989 and he wants to explain his governments actions to me, a Westerner. The governments actions, he says, were understandable for several reason, and he enumerates them:

First, at that time, the government didn’t have a police force capable of dealing with the protesters, so they had to send in tanks. Second, army men aren’t used to dealing with civilians, so they used their war strategies with the protesters, which explains why they killed them. Third, he explains that at that time, the army didn’t have tear gas, and so they had to use guns and bullets against the protesters.

I am incredulous and I can't quite believe what I am hearing. For some reason, the word "BRAINWASH" starts flashing in my brain.

I ask him, “In 1989, did the Chinese government have nuclear weapons (of course, I know they did)?” And of course, he responds affirmatively. “So, you are saying the government had nuclear weapons, but didn’t have teargas?”

“Yes,” he responds. He honestly believes that the government didn’t have teargas. I suppose at this point I should have asked if the government had water and hoses.

I laugh and I tell him, “Honestly, you are not going to find a foreigner that is going to believe that the Chinese government didn’t have teargas or didn’t know that you can use teargas against protesters instead of killing them.”

I tell him his reasons are “interesting”, but I ask him, ultimately, do people think that what the government did was wrong? I make an analogy to Germany, saying that although there are probably some Germans who understood the intellectual reasons why the majority of Germans behaved the way they did during the war, still, most of them are ashamed of what happened and their government apologized for the atrocities.

He tells me no, we Chinese people don't believe the government was wrong. He tells me that Chinese people are different from Western people. Chinese people have an obligation to love and take care of their parents, and they also have an obligation to love their country. He tells me that if his boss, for instance, tells him to cheat or lie, he'll do that, because he also has an obligation to his boss.

I explain to him that in the West, if your boss tells you to do something unethical, you are expected to refuse, and if he threatens you with your job, you say, "Okay, bahbah-yi!"

He just continues to smile and says that in Chinese culture, there is no "right" and "wrong", that Chinese culture believes that everything is relative. "Our cultures are very different."

He says that Chinese people don't understand how anyone in the United States could criticize China. Is the United States a perfect society? And he brings up the Iraq War. He says that Chinese people know why Bush invaded Iraq—oil.

Perhaps he thinks that all of us in the United States are like the Chinese, that we unthinkingly support our government. Does he have any idea how many people in the United States would agree with him about Iraq?

I tell him, in fact, I agree with him. I am critical of my government, and I know a lot of Americans who are also very critical of the US. At this point in our conversation, I think it’s a good time to talk about freedom, specifically freedom of speech and freedom of information.

I bring up Tibet and he smiles.

I tell him how my Chinese teacher didn't even know Tibet was an issue until a foreign student of hers mentioned it to her last year. And as I mentioned in a previous post, she concluded that "there are two sides to every story."

I tell my student the conclusion I came to after hearing my Chinese teacher's story, which is that while there are two sides to every story, that you've got to let people have access to both sides so they can make up their own minds. I tell him that in the West, we have access to both sides and we can make up our own minds. Yes, we know how the Tibetans are better off economically than they were a hundred years ago, how they have better infrastructure and universities, but most of us still are opposed to China's policy on Tibet.

My student responds by saying that you can't give the Chinese people full access to all information because it will cause chaos. In fact, restricting this access if an important way of keeping China stable.

I am beginning to understand the Chinese mentality better. China has been through so much upheaval through the ages that this stability is of utmost importance. This perceived need for stability means that most Chinese people are willing to forego a lot of freedom and democracy so that they don't have to go through another period of chaos again.

I imagine that if Chinese magically became a democratic country overnight, it might collapse. I tell my student that I understand this, but I hope that China can move gradually to more freedom. I tell him if young people in China also want to move in this direction, then perhaps there is hope.

He tells me that they do want China to move forward, slowly, in this area.

I am happy we can talk freely about these things and I would like to learn more about what Chinese people think. My student is also happy and says that he believes he can learn more from our conversations.

I think there might be hope for China.