Great questions, as always.
The truth behind “low-trust”
I think I need to preface my answers with this: while I have been speaking in broad generalizations, I have been quite careful with my selection of words (I’m presuming most readers are westerners here), because the same words can have vastly different connotations from culture to culture. When westerners describe China as a “low-trust” society, it’s VERY IMPORTANT to note what this designation really indicates and to NOT accept it purely at face value.
First, “low-trust” here should not be seen as a diagnosis but rather a symptom of the complexity of the modern Chinese society. Recall that, broadly speaking, the Chinese perceive all things—people, things, events, relationships—as interconnected, kind of like a spider’s web that extends indefinitely in all directions AND changes constantly. It is imperative then that, as an individual, you know how to navigate this “web” if you want to be successful. Given China’s history of massive natural disasters, agricultural (i.e. ordinary farmers) origin, and long-running imperialistic rule (i.e. emperors/dynasties and their constant wars), it’s not hard to imagine that, on this web, the people you can trust are the ones with whom you have the most enduring, most consistent, and most reliable connection—that is, your parents/guardians, grandparents, siblings, or other direct relatives. It’s my personal belief that this concept of a social web feeds off of—and at the same time feeds into—the Chinese tradition of perceiving “family” as the basic social unit. Consequently, if you are not a member of someone’s family—you’re, by default, not within that person’s “inner circle of trust”. On the other hand, western societies are built around the individual as the basic social unit, so we are free (and empowered, even) to extend our personal trust to anyone we feel is worthy of it. By extension, it is also why westerners generally have a stronger conviction in the ideas of self-fulfillment, self-expression, personal freedom, personal property, loving and marrying someone at your own choosing, etc. In China, those ideas are much more abstract and open-ended, for better and for worse.
Second, the general “low-trust” atmosphere is also enhanced by China’s successive crises in the past century: imperial overthrow, Japanese invasion (not excluding centuries of western rule by invading forces—a big sore point for the Chinese), nationalist/communist civil war, cultural revolution / Great Leap Forward, Deng Xiao Ping’s opening of the economy and subsequently massive wealth expansion, SARS, 2008 Olympics, 2008 Sichuan earthquake, ongoing Pacific Ocean territory disputes, recent anti-graft crackdowns, pollution, food safety scares, and so on and so forth. In short, there has been a HUGE amount of social, political, civil, and other kinds of upheavals that seems to constantly attack the already very fragile social “web”. To say China is simply “low-trust” is implying “less trusting than western societies”, but that’s missing the point—which is that China has gone through more “big events” in one century (and, sadly, lost more lives) than many, many western countries have gone through, even if you put them all together. What most westerners don’t appreciate is that it’s not completely fair to put an entire country that still has more people in poverty than there are people in the UNITED STATES on the same value scale, whether you’re talking about democracy, social equality, or, in the case of designers, the idea of intellectual property protection. So westerners (especially our politicians who love having vote-attracting talking points) find it easy and addictive to point fingers at a country that’s already deeply self-aware, defensive, and ready to “prove itself”. It’s like asking a victim of bullying who’s been hitting the gym not to harbor any ill will towards the bullies. That’s not a healthy thing, for the west or for China (see China’s artificial, military-oriented islands in the Pacific). It’d be better if we open up dialog and help developing countries come around to understand the importance of those issues, but also check our sense of superiority at the door.
Finally: all that being said, there is UNDOUBTEDLY a wide-spread trend of make-money-now-worry-about-consequences-later. Shoddy construction of products and buildings (e.g. schools in Sichuan during the 2008 earthquake), entrenched corruption from the most national to the most local levels, and food safety problems—they all reflect a people that’s partly exasperated with an unreliable government (and legal system) and partly worried about their immediate loved ones (and thus unworried about others). The mysterious disappearances of activists, cover-ups of large-scale disasters, and constant political distractions/attacks on Japan and the U.S. feed into the unspoken understanding that “I can’t trust my government, but if I had to choose between that and outsiders, I’d rather side with my own, because no outsiders care about China.” Which, sadly, has been a self-fulfilling prophecy for years, if not centuries.
OK, enough about that, onto the questions…
1) See how this attitude affects developing new products, being that in the west we usually prefer to market products as “lasting” (although far from always the case, but I digress)
A: As I mentioned before, the Chinese already don’t believe anything to last forever, the only exception being the familial relationships (even that is slowly eroding away). The prominence and emotional value that westerners tend to place on physical objects are something that we’ve accumulated over the formation of our societies—again, our ability to “individualize”, or piecemeal, our environment rather than define them in terms of relationships to other objects in the same environment. For example, I can easily reminisce about “my first car”, “my first drawing desk”, “my first pencil case”, “my first BMX bike”, “my first computer”, etc. The Chinese are more likely to reminisce about “the village I came from”, “the road I used to take to my elementary school”, “where I drank coffee before my first job interview”. As a result, designed objects are not perceived by the Chinese in the same “lasting” framework as by westerners. The issues of reliability, high-grade materials, safety, and other performance or value-based metrics follow suit. In cities where imported goods and brands are more developed, you will begin see an increase in people’s ability and tendency to impart value onto objects, but it won’t be as “sophisticated” as the west. (By the way, I use “sophisticated” loosely, as there are obvious criticisms about how the west put so much value in objects/brands.) The one exception to this rule of thumb is MONEY, more specifically CASH (better yet, American dollar), which is a universal constant that the general public is more willing to faith in than any “designed object”.
2) See any change to this attitude in your company, being American-driven
A: If you’re talking the idea of making “lasting” products, I will say that there is a subtle, but noticeable, conflict of interest between the different functional teams. Almost all large companies have this, but it’s exponentially more evident in their China operations. On the one hand, brand and design folks will emphasize the importance of building long-term “brand value” and consistent “design strategies” (this is true). On the other hand, due to rapidly changing market trends and even faster-changing consumer tastes, our marketing and sales staff are more concerned with developing just-on-time (kind of like Toyota’s system) communications and promotional materials such as TV commercials and online ads (this is also true). For many other multinationals, the rapid public adoption of e-commerce has been an immense challenge; large companies have broadly been caught with their pants down and are not at all structured in a way that allows the flexibility that China consumers want; in the west, large companies are built to have “fuses”—a pseudo-democratic management structure that prevents a long ranger from wreaking havoc. New brands are, therefore, sweeping in and taking big chunks out of their market shares. Imagine the general public adopting the likes of Amazon, eBay, Paypal, Facebook, and Uber in only a few months, and new players are entering the market all the time, where there were no such things before. Case in point: the local taxi companies have all already rolled out Uber-like apps and network of drivers. In turn, there many cab drivers who are drivers for ALL of these services, having 3 to 4 cellphones on their dashboards running simultaneously. This, in turn, is forcing marketing/sales to be VERY reactive—which makes the brands look even more behind the times. But they HAVE to; there’s nothing that can be done unless you do a ground-up restructure of your organization. Basically, the global teams often move too slowly and the local teams often move too quickly. (By the way, new Korean skin care, cosmetic, and fashion brands are very, very good at this, but their market is also hyper-competitive. What they’ve resorted to doing is launching and killing sub-brands every few months to keep things fresh. Amazing and scary.)
3) See any changes to this attitude in general, due to everchanging social and political climate, younger generation etc…
A: In the U.S., we tend to place a lot of value in “heritage”; brands out of fashion can often claw their way back—if they improve their products—by leveraging a long company history. Recent examples are Timberland, Jaguar, and Gap. The “good ol’ days” still spark compelling nostalgia, such as “Made in the USA” and handmade goods, the retro-styled electronics, music on vinyl, etc. In China, the idea of heritage is too tainted by a negative history and one that was almost destroyed by the Great Leap Forward, so the young generation is more motivated to find new things, explore new places (hence the exploding popularity of traveling overseas), and, in general, discover things that no one else has. The phenomenon of tens of thousands of ordinary people becoming trend setters and opinion leaders online with several millions of followers reflects this (the Kardashians pale in comparison). As a result, you’ll see many splintering trends in the new generation, which makes branding and marketing to them even harder than before. The new generation will be very unpredictable and armed with discerning tastes acquired from all around the world. They will be brand conscious to stay leading edge, but not brand loyal to avoid being a follower. They’ll want genuine surprises, not just localized versions of the same things. Luxury brands that had record-setting sales last year but shutting down brick-and-mortar sales this year are evidence of this. Unfortunately, most foreign brands don’t or refuse to recognize this—at their own peril.
Do you socialize with Chinese people above and below yourself in the company hierarchy, outside of work?
A: As a strictly personal rule of thumb, I don’t normally socialize with colleagues outside of work. This keeps myself in check and it helps me maintain that critical level of professionalism. In China, my demeanor is easy-going, but the downside is that it can easily give people the impression of having built an overly good “guanxi” with me. I think, perhaps conservatively, that this overestimation can mislead some people to think that I’ll turn a blind eye to them cutting corners. Indeed, I have observed that some people will use our guanxi to become pushy on deliverables, set unrealistic goals, or worse, start to “manage” me as if I were a vendor. It’s not out of any ill intention; it’s just a natural “flow” when you have good guanxi in China. But of course, in my position, I cannot allow that to happen, so I strive to keep all colleagues at the same level of expectations and social interactions. However, in the office, I still extend the common courtesy of having casual conversations about their work, family, etc. before any formal talk. This is still important. It’s worked out for me quite well so far.
. Note that both Taiwan and Shanghai have their own local dialects; Taiwanese often speak Min-nan, or ‘Taiwanese’, and the Shanghainese speak Shanghainese. They are vastly different from Mandarin.