East | West behavioural and thinking dichotomies

The Shanghai Swiss Chamber of Commerce swisscham.org recently commissioned Birds & Fish Communications to work on the development of a quarterly magazine appropriately titled “The Bridge”. Designed to foster more awareness of Swiss Chinese business relations in Shanghai and China generally the publication’s March 2005 issue featured a wonderful article “10 differences between Western and Eastern Behaviour and Thinking” by Hans J.Roth, Consul General of Switzerland in Shanghai. The article describes the most significant differences between European and Chinese cultural environments. Although quite broad brushstrokes the observations can be considered a solid general guideline. I thought it would be positive to share the main points of difference highlighted in the article.

Behaviour Patterns

1.China is a collective society. This means that ‘in-group ’ and ‘out-group ’ differentiation is much more marked than in the West. ‘In-group ’ behaviours are marked by strong consensus patterns. ‘Out-group ’ relations rely on pure Darwinist survival and appear very cold or even brutal to Western eyes. A foreigner is never regarded as belonging to the group, which partly explains the difficult working environment for foreigners in China.

2.Personal relationships play a key role in any collective society. There is no abstract ethical system like in Europe. Morality is linked to the quality of the relationship. If this quality is bad, cheating will be normal. If it is good, it is more reliable than a relationship in the West. So even among criminals there might be a strong solidarity -or none at all.

3.Competitive behaviour is very common in this kind of system, even within the group. But an ‘in-group ’ competition can switch immediately to a neat and closed co-operation if the group is attacked from outside. Competitive behaviour and closed ranks strongly mark Chinese behaviour patterns. Such competition takes place on individual as well as on group levels. The highest level of solidarity is that of the Chinese as an ethnic group.
International solidarity is therefore even more difficult to be achieved than in a Western environment.

4.China is a collective mass society. Thus privacy is very strongly reduced. Everybody knows everything about everybody else. This makes life for foreigners, used to less limited individual space and privacy, not always easy.

5.Chinese usually act in accordance with the group.Self- responsibility is therefore rarely taken. Responsibility lies with the whole group.

Thinking Patterns

6.Chinese thinking envisions reality as a constant flow, whereas Western thinking understands reality as a sequence of static moments. The Chinese see reality as a film, a Westerner as a sequence of photographs.

7.Chinese consider reality in a synthetic way. The dialectic process of analysis (thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis)has never been made. Chinese reality is thus not analysed. It is grasped in an intuitive way. It remains, therefore, quite undifferentiated, but paradoxically enough, much more precise at the same time. The assessment of reality by all the senses leads to a much deeper understanding of the actual moment.

8.Chinese thinking is thus concrete and pragmatic, it does not
analyse reality. Given the short spatial and temporal horizons, Chinese thinking is concentrated on the actual moment in the actual situation. This kind of thinking conflicts with a Wetern-style rational planning process. It has, however, the big advantage of a complete feeling of reality at a particular place and time. Furthermore, the future is seen in a visionary way, with full confidence that the development of time will actually show the ways to realise these visions.

9.Being synthetic, Chinese thinking has no problems in integrating contradictions in the understanding of reality. Western thought has considerable problems with this. In fact,from the point of view of the Western mind, the Chinese way does not seem to be logical and rational. For a Westerner, it is hard to understand something as positive and negative at the same time. For the Chinese, however,the presence of yin and yang at every moment has a long philosophical tradition. There is no concept of an either/or. The two, rather, always go together and characterize reality by their contradictions.

10.Chinese thinking does not accept absolute and eternal truths. Whether something is still true tomorrow, the reality of tomorrow will show.

The Bridge, Shanghai, March 2005 Text: Hans J.Roth, 2004

Why share this knowledge? I would maintain that by developing a more subtle appreciation of the difference culture can make on thinking and behaviours in business contexts we can make better use of the creative innovation process as it increasingly intersects across a global/glocal business environment.

Has anyone else had experience of this kind of divergence in cross-cultural communications as they relate to design and product / service development?