Learning from Pushback

I read in Peking Duck blog this morning a post about TCBN Charter Member David Wolf's latest piece in Ad Age China. Writing about increasing antipathy to foreign brands in China's domestic market, Wolf characteristically hit the nail on the head: "Suddenly, just as people in China were starting to wonder if they still needed foreign capital and know-how, we went and proved to the Chinese that we were greedy, dumb, and actually needed China’s help to pull us out of our own mess."

The emperor is looking pretty scantily clad in Chinese eyes. I am tempted to summarize the lessons learned - so far - from China's 30 years of rocketing from poverty and isolation to global superpower status in these terms: humility is the ultimate competitive advantage. By subordinating to the dominant power - adopting the maxim that 'the customer is always right' while building a customer base comprised of anyone who buys manufactured goods anywhere in the developed world; by seeking knowledge of the deep secrets of America's meteoric success in a few hundred short years by studying the esoteric wisdom of iconic institutions like Wall Street, Harvard, Silicon Valley and the WTO - China learned everything it could from the West about unleashing the forces of economic development in the modern economic infrastructure. What happens next, now that Wall Street has proven an unreliable compass point?

The era of China's enthusiastic learning from the West is clearly waning. That's a Yin Yang theory term - one aspect wanes, the other waxes. Once the former subordinate becomes powerful, it's time to learn about them and from them in order to deal effectively with them. The social values of the west are still powerful - the Chinese experiment with democracy for practical rather than moral reasons, even today appreciate that a diverse, educated and open civil society breeds great resilience, creativity, and ultimately, wealth and power. At the same time, China 1979-2009 is a case study without parallel: creating wealth by mirroring some behaviors and values of the people who have the money. Just saying - we can't out-Chinese the Chinese, but we can regain ground by being our smartest selves.

Meaning, deploy that "learning from other cultures" toolbox that tolerant, educated, and diverse nations give its citizens the conditions to develop. With that, I invite you to come visit our new China Networking Toolbox, doorway to meeting peers, mentors, consultants and prospects; tools to share learning, build projects and businesses.