By Peter Schellschmidt
PROF. Yang Ganfu needs to be applauded for making the time and effort to immediately reply to my critical response to his earlier opinion piece (‘Why the Chinese Believe in Favours’, New Era, 13 July 2007) – and New Era deserves respect for providing the platform for this increasingly intense debate.
But I must honestly admit that I do not fully understand his reply, indeed, I now feel even more confused.
Prof. Yang Ganfu, I did not take issue with your statement that Chinese tend to be collectivists, whereas Europeans are more leaning towards individualism. In fact, I subscribed to that conclusion. All I wrote in that regard was that the underlying reasons for this are probably more complex than cited in your article.
My issue of contention was a different one: I still have serious doubts that principles like “mutuality and reciprocity” can (or should) simply be transferred from private to business relations. It is still my considered opinion that “gifts and favours” have no place in sound business relations.
I am sure that you are aware that Namibian law clearly makes the acceptance of a gift or a favour by a member of the public service in relation to an administrative matter or a business order a criminal offence. And I add from my point of view: rightly so!
I tried to explain and do so again: business and administrative decisions should be taken strictly on account of substantive criteria pertaining to the subject under discussion: value for money, quality and reliability of goods or services, transparency and clear rules of competition (like tender process regulations, etc.). I still fail to understand the logic that under these rules the placement of an order to a given company can be termed as a “favour” that needs to be reciprocated.
This is exactly the reason why I quoted from your article the following statement: “Chinese in their business activities … show gratitude to business partners from whom they receive a favour, such as a job offer, a loan offer, preferential policy, assistance to solve a problem, or a favour in any other form.”
Unfortunately you did not deal with this issue at all in your response.
Instead, you advise me that I am “not supposed to assume” that your article wants “Namibians to familiarize themselves with Chinese business practices and culture”. Indeed, I admit that this was my assumption. If I was wrong, I do not hesitate to apologize.
But why then the repetition even in the response to my critique of your example of a Namibian company that “was supposed to repay, according to Chinese culture, the favour they received from the Chinese company since the Chinese company had given them the big order”? How is the reader supposed to take this, if it is not meant as a piece of advice to play by these (Chinese) rules?
But be it as it may: I believe that Prof. Yang Ganfu’s opinion pieces deserve full credit for opening up a debate in an area that – at least to me – seems to be shrouded with few information, some mysteries and very little public debate. I fully agree with him that miscommunication between cultures can create serious tensions which could be avoided by proper dialogue.
To me it seems fairly obvious that the growing number of Chinese immigrants and businesses are observed by many Namibians with some degree of suspicion, a situation which may be partly due to the observation that Chinese migrants obviously do not mix (and communicate) easily with local people. Prof. Yang Ganfu has broken this wall of non-communication, and he deserves credit for that.
Since it doesn’t make much sense to take this dialogue further through the columns of New Era, I would like to extend an invitation to him (and, maybe, some other interested members of the Chinese community in Namibia) and continue the dialogue – including, of course, some of our Namibian friends – face-to-face in an informal atmosphere. I would be more than happy to host the occasion.
And if New Era should be interested to follow up the debate: you are more than welcome as well.