Appearance vs. Substance in China

Have you ever wondered if all the new stuff they’re doing in China is really everything it’s chalked up to be? It’s a perfectly legitimate question to ask, especially so because in China appearance is far more important than substance. This isn’t meant to be a value judgment, to say that this is good, or bad, or whatever. That’s just how it is here, and this is one of the major ways in which working in China is different than the west.

Every society in some way has the concept of ‘face’, but the Chinese take to a whole new level. There’s a whole art, almost a science to it. There’s a defined procedure as to how to exchange business cards (with two hands, among many other things) how to receive a gift (try to decline it at first, but once you accept it, don’t open it in front of the person who gave it to you), the list goes on. Doing things correctly allows you to ‘gain face’ and consequently you will see your social standing rise. Not following procedure will cause you to ‘lose face’ and your social standing falls.

On the small scale, one of the things I’ve noticed is that many Chinese colleagues I’ve had, when faced with a task they don’t quite understand or can’t fully complete for some reason or another, wouldn’t say anything about it unless directly confronted by somebody else. To directly admit you don’t know something or can’t do something would cause you to lose face. So instead of asking questions or clarifying what needs to be done, they would just do it wrong, but be happy about the fact that they merely finished the task.

On a large scale, we’ve seen this with the venues for the Beijing Olympics, the high-speed train network, newly built freeways, and even an entire city.

In the interest of appearing more international, legitimate, respected, impressive, etc., some Chinese companies will even go to the extent of hiring a white person simply to sit around and, well, be a white person. This could be for as short as a few hours to appear at a conference or meeting as a purported representative of the company to as long as a few weeks. Notwithstanding the fact that the white-guy-for-hire probably hasn’t the foggiest idea as to where he is or even what the company does, he makes the others swoon. Woah! Look at that! They have a foreigner working for them!

I once worked for a small company that had its offices in a building that also housed several prominent Chinese groups. We sometimes used this fact as a talking point in initial introductions, and spoke about it as if being in the same building as these other groups established a phantom connection somehow improved our firm’s standing. At first I raised an eyebrow to this, but later learned not to care and even to start using the line myself.

So when you see stories in the news about how the new biggest this or the fastest that is being made in China, just remember that appearance is more important than substance.