The Psyche of Chinese-ness:

and why the Chinese excell in entrepreneurship

and why the Chinese women take in a favoured place in business.

Extract out of the book: “ Navigating through Chaos in China:

A Cultural and Business Compass for Managers and Business Leaders.” Mentognost Ltd.
2006. ISBN 0-9552147-0-X . by by Ronny Julius C. amazon.co.uk

China definitely is no longer lonely on the planet.

Eight million Westerners a year are travelling to China out of which one million are on
business trip. No worry, if you have no plans to travel over there yourself yet, the Chinese did
start travelling all over the world. This year some twenty million people will travel abroad and
the number increases by thirty percent per year.
China’s Economy which has been growing at a rate of ten percent per year during the last
decade has changed the global trade and business landscape. It seems that it is now the West
which has become the yellow submarine floating in the ocean of globalization. Let me explain
this statement.
The probability that your shoes, your laptop and your mobile phone are made in China is
more than seventy percent. It is thanks to China that the West managed to keep inflation very
low for the last decade, even when the global economic growth has been very strong. Our
consumer ecstasy has been fabricated in China at ever decreasing prices. Under these
circumstances it seems justified that also China wants to keep something for herself.
Seventy percent of world’s counterfeit goods are produced in China. Haly-Boté has been read
by millions of Chinese children even before the official Harry Potter arrived on the shelf in
our bookstores. Every year some 200.000 people die in China from the intake of fake
medicine. So gentlemen are warned when you travel to China and when you are in need of the
blue pill, you better buy it at home for there is seventy percent chance that the Chinese
version is just a sweet. This is not a remark out of the blue sky at all. You have to be aware
that forty percent of Western expatriate families living in China or where the husband is a
frequent business traveller to China, who stays longer periods there, break up because a
Chinese Madam Butterfly has broken into their marriage. China not only spreads her spell
over individuals. Even great Economies are charmingly and unnoticed being hijacked. One
example is the USA that carries huge trade deficits with mainland China, because the USA
bulges with Chinese consumer goods and China’s coffers which are full with US Government
bonds; a situation which can trigger any time the instability of the US dollar. The other target
of China Corporate is the Development countries in Africa, South America and the new
economies in the Middle East. Any country rich in commodities and in need of investments
and cheap consumer goods are in for excellent deals with China.
Should the West worry? Let’s first start to understand the psyche of the Chinese as individuals
first. This picture also can reflect the mind of Mainland China on the world stage.

Your first reflex might be: just ask Chinese psychologists.

Wrong, psychology is still a very young science in China and the universities have had
psychology on their curriculum only for a couple of decades. Even in Hong Kong that has
been strongly influenced by the British, there is no strong establishment for psychologists.
This is basically because the Chinese do not want to be analysed and they consider
psychology as a kind of voodoo-ism, another western product just like religion is.
If you want to grasp the psyche of the Chinese you will have to study her philosophers.
Do not follow the path of beliefs or religion; they will not give you insight in Chinese-ness.
In fact never any religion could touch ground in China; the more philosophy does the job.

Basic Chinese philosophical belief is that we as humans are only sure about two things: we
have been born and one day we will die. What is before the first point and what is behind the
last point, cannot be grasped by human intellect.
But there are other things we are pretty sure of and that is, that between the major milestones
of our life, all things change continuously. Just look at Nature.
The Chinese say that we westerners let ourselves be manipulated by religion and even
science.
When you behave well in your live you will be rewarded with a ticket to Heaven, otherwise
you deserve punishment in Hell. Although it must be said there is some consideration also.
When on a weak moment you misbehaved then you can compensated for it only when you
swear unconditional fidelity to the religious doctrines. According the Chinese the West has
been hijacked by the mono religions which have controlled mankind most of the time. But
this did not turn our fortunes or give relief to our burning uncertainty in our mortal life. That’s
why a new strategy was launched at the end of the Middle Ages. The Lord Almighty
appointed an earthy prime minister. One of the first premiers was Isaac Newton. For sure you
remember the story of Adam and Eve and the apple. The same apple would change the course
of history again. This time the link was laid between the apple falling from the tree and the
sun going down under the horizon. The New Science explained how both the apple and the
sun where controlled by a mysterious power of gravity. Even more it all could be predicted
with the help of mathematics. Now mankind started shooting rockets to heaven without angles
falling down on earth. But despite the New Science, the uncertainty of life did not fade away,
even worse the laws of science did not explain what makes us happy or sad or where the
mood comes from which influences the stock markets. Even purely physical events like
earthquakes completely escape from any control by our computers and institutes.
Now that it became clear that after religion also science did not give all the answers, a new
strategy was launched in the West: find it out yourself. ‘Je pense donc Je suis’ said Descartes
and from now onwards you yourself have to take the lead, each for himself.

Also the Orient was confronted all the time with the basic ‘uncertainty’ of what life brings.
But their approach was different from the West. Much more pragmatic is the East. Just look at
Nature, here also everything is born and dies. Do not fight nature, try to follow and be
flexible. If God has created life, for sure he knows better. Do not waste your time in
speculating what’s in the after life. People are not in need of dictates or doctrines. God has
programmed his will in the peoples themselves. Chinese cannot understand why we
westerners are searching like crazy to find a Holy Grail or some better fitting explanation of
ancient texts?
You never will grasp the being of being. When you repeat the words of Descartes ‘I think, so
I am’ in front of a Chinese; his reply will be: ‘…and I lie so I am the lesser’. The Westerner
feels flattered with this reply and most probably he will miss the real point of what has been
said…..that the Chinese feels superior!
Out of these basic differences between West and East in philosophical orientations there is a
whole series of derived differences which have been confirmed by our famous psychological
tests.
Chinese are ‘polychrome’ which means that for them ‘time’ is cyclic while the Western time
is running linear till it reaches the day of last Judgement. The Chinese will execute more
easily simultaneous tasks than their western colleagues. Chinese New Year which they call
Spring Festival is a moment of celebration but it is also the moment which appeals for a
change. Many Chinese will reconsider their prospects around Spring Festival and change job
or start a new project or business. Chinese attitude toward ‘fate’ is also fundamentally
different. Just like everything that happens, also fate comes in cycles. There is bad fate but
also good fate that calls as opportunities to be grasped. People should not be passive towards
fate; a lot depends on our own awareness and attitude. ‘Fen Shui’ or geomancy is in fact a
kind of risk analysis of short term and long term nuisances. If you build a house near a river
bed there is an increased risk of flood.
Everything moves in short and long term cycles along the patterns of chaos. Chaos is a
ubiquitous phenomenon. The course of a chaotic event is very sensitive to the initial or
starting conditions and it tries to find a path to a pole of attraction or it aims to keep away
from a pole of repulsion. The Chinese genetic system seems to be programmed to
continuously scan directions of fate and opportunities. Once you have detected a particular
wave of fate it is up to you to follow or avoid, cooperating or obstructing its course. Never
confront the wave, just catch it at the right place and in due time. This attitude makes it that
the Chinese excel in entrepreneurship and flexibility.
The lack of psychological benefits which religion can provide in life is by most Chinese
peoples being compensated by their guanxi. This is a network of personal connections,
commitments and obligations which each individual spins around him. This provides the
Chinese with a buffer to compensate for the daily uncertainties and problems which
everybody encounters. This network will share experiences and views and act as a last resort
or back-up. The personal guanxi also has a broader version which we call Chinese
Bureaucracy. This is the toughest place where Chinese practise their skills in social navigation
which in most cases has the meaning of acquiring power in the network. No wonder that in
China every problem becomes a political issue.
Since the last Emperor of China returned to citizenship a vacuum in the supreme power has
been created. That explains why the Communist Leadership is so powerful. Nobody anymore
can talk and negotiate with Heaven which was emperor’s privilege and task. This link has
been replaced by Science which is China’s biggest admiration and envy towards the West.
Once China will have cleared her backlog in science I can bet that a new Great Wall will be
erected. A wall with only a few holes with pipes for the inflow of gas, petroleum and
commodities.

Another reality of life is that the world is increasingly becoming more complex. Despite the
use of very advanced computer models for forecasting in all areas, we still ‘feel’ as if we are
nowhere. The economy is driven to a great extend by an unexplained mood. Mathematics
does not get a grip on anything that has to do with the principles of life. Recently a step
forward might be mathematics based on the concept of triple-logic which seems to be more
effective in playing a role in understanding pattern dynamics in chaos. It could well be that
the Chinese have an advantage in pattern recognition and handling or processing of chaotic
phenomenon, although hardly any research in that direction could be found. Take for example
indirect communication. This is mainly a feature where patterns of behaviour and expression
has to be decoded and returned by the receiver too the sender. The holistic approach of
Chinese medicine is another example of pattern processing. Maybe the most explicate case of
applications of chaos theory is to be found in China’s language it self. In the West our current
languages have evolved along a linear stream of decoding simple signs or characters.
This is being processed in a rather small bandwidth of interpretations, which further on is
being transferred into a limited set of meanings. Meanings which are black or white, good or
bad, short or long, etc. which are called dichotomies. This should not completely surprise us
because our philosophical operating software is based on the logic centric version which
Aristotle deployed twenty centuries ago and which is the basic of western culture.
It is because of their way of ‘processing language and content generation’ that the Chinese
need so much time in negotiations. In fact negotiations will never end, simply because after
reaching a stage of understanding or implementation, the new situation and its context is also
due to renewed judgments and consideration which are needed to find the next best direction
where to navigate to.
Chinese rhetoric has the typical structure of ‘because….so”. The western style is one of
sentences like “ if….then”.

Chinese also are masters in “double thinking”. This means that they can easily build up
reasoning along different paths simultaneously”. This mental feature makes it easier for a
Chinese to live in a Big Brother state. But to survive happily in such an environment you need
to combine it with yet another complementary skill, which is the capability of “balancing”.
Chinese have a genetic micro program which allows them to keep the balance between many
issues at any moment and still be ready to move to a new direction or another point where
they can pause in equilibrium. This explains why in the eyes of a Chinese you never may lose
your temper because then you show that you are not able to balance.
How to build up these skills of double thinking and balancing your views has been written
down in what is China’s oldest book. The book of Change or also called the ‘I-Ching’ is
written in the terms of yin and yang. The book is much older than the Bible and more widely
spread across the globe. In the West it is mostly considered as exotic fortune telling because
most readers interpret it in the context of the time that the book was written. In ancient time
all behaviour was expressed in terms which depicted Nature, like water, wind, fire, metal, the
animals etc. But when you manage to read the Book of Change in the concepts and
dimensions of modern time, it turns out to be a ’unique oeuvre which stimulates the modes of
operation of the human brain’. This is a statement by Carl Gustav Jung and he added that it
operates in a way which brings our conscious and unconscious mental features in balance and
which at the same moment points to acts with targets which are achievable.

Beside these macro-psychological patterns and characteristics there do exist also the minor
psychological features which can be measured in our familiar psychological tests.
The Chinese are better in memorizing which of course is triggered by their language with its
many signs.
Chinese are less aggressive especially at young age. When it happens that they lose control
they will express it verbally rather than physical. The Mainland Chinese are the absolute best
in motivation. They work hard and are prepared for big sacrifice in order to achieve their
goals and esteem as well. This ‘achievement drive’ is balanced with a weaker score in ability.
In order for a westerner to operate effectively in China, she or he will have to acquire the
skills of indirect communication. Respect and adherence to the Chinese rituals is the first step
which should be taken. A totally different type of observation is that the Chinese man seems
to pump less testosterone in his blood than what the western macho’s do. This can explain
why Chinese men have less hair on their body. This gives a social advantage to the Chinese
ladies who can be very outspoken and assertive. Maybe this phenomenon can explain why
western men so easily get caught by the honey yellow fever. This is the phenomenon of
westerners falling for the (aggressive) charms of Chinese woman. Chinese would explain it as
a balancing act of macho behaviour which seeks for compensation by the exotic purity of a
white lotus flower.
This again is an example of how the Chinese see life through the windows of yin and yang.
A very effective and simple way to handle yin and yang is to picture yin as the female
psychological features and then attribute a male behaviour to yang.
Yin dominates in the East and the West is controlled by yang.
That’s why the best way for a western man to be successful in China is to practise harmony
with his wife or girl friend. That’s also why western women should have an advantage in
doing business with Chinese.

Extract out of the book: “ Navigating through Chaos in China:

1.