Qiaoxiang Ties
Book introductions
Why were cultural claims so important when overseas Chinese capital entered China during the 1980s and 1990s? How did assumptions of cultural affinity affect relations between mainland Chinese employees and foreign managers in Chinese transnational enterprises, and between those enterprises and Chinese officialdom? How important is it for Chinese transnational enterprises to leave their supposedly Chinese characteristics behind in their struggle for survival in the world market?
* By LEO DOUW
These are some of the questions that have been addressed by the IIAS research programme on 'International Social Organization in East and Southeast Asia: Qiaoxiang Ties during the Twentieth Century' from its introduction in 1996 to its conclusion in 2000 (see article, 'Qiaoxiang Ties, Programme Succesfully Concluded' on pp. 41 and 43 of this issue's Pink Pages). Our hypotheses required the deployment of a broad spectrum of social science approaches. To this end, the Qiaoxiang Ties programme was joined by political scientists, anthropologists, historians, and sociologists. This enabled us to discuss the interaction between business and society as well as the dynamics of social groups within enterprises over the entire twentieth century in great detail. A full account in which the research findings of the programme will be discussed more deeply will be provided in the programme's Final Report, to be published shortly. What follows are introductions to the two volumes of publications produced by the programme.
Qiaoxiang Ties: Interdisciplinary Approaches to 'Cultural Capitalism' in South China looks at how claims of cultural affinity made by officials in China and ethnic Chinese business people elsewhere served to facilitate negotiations between both parties on the establishment of business enterprises in South China. One of the central objects of study for our programme was the way links were formed with their home town in South China by business people who had once been sojourners from that area, or who were the descendants of sojourners. Rather than claim or disclaim that these people share a Chinese identity among themselves and with the people in their home towns (in Chinese: qiaoxiang, or sojourner home towns), it would seem to be more relevant to realize the context in which these claims figure. The most important are, firstly, that Chinese overseas usually share a background of political marginalization in their countries of residence; secondly, that a considerable number of them have achieved sufficient wealth and business acumen to assume the role of prominant economic actors, even in the international arena; and thirdly, that the 'home country', China, has lagged behind in economic development during all of the past century. The recognition of a mutual interest in the development of China's economy since the closing decades of the nineteenth century led to the establishment of institutions in China and abroad that were geared towards stimulating trade and investment in China by overseas Chinese business people. This effort was symbolically founded on the sojourners' dream of returning home once their fortune had been made. The organizations subscribing to this 'sojourner discourse' have consisted mainly of the voluntary Chinese associations abroad and the extensive semi-official state apparatus of overseas Chinese affairs that was built up in China for the specific purpose of conducting this type of economic diplomacy. The chapters by Liu Hong, Elisabeth Sinn, and Joseph Cheng and Ngok King-lun provide elaborate descriptions of the institutional fabrics of such groups since the early twentieth century.
The mechanisms involved are nicely illustrated, as seen in Stephanie Chung's contribution, by the dealings in the early twentieth century of the Siyi community of business people in Hong Kong, first, with the Qing state and then with Sun Yat-sen's government in Guangzhou. Because of their deviant historical trajectory the Siyi people, who originated from the Siyi region in Guangdong province, had become a marginal group among their fellow ethnic Chinese residents in Hong Kong, but they worked their way up by acting the roles assigned to them as Chinese overseas sojourners. This case casts doubt on the importance of the distinction between being Chinese and non-Chinese origins, but it also illustrates how important differences in wealth, power, and status were among those who claimed to have their roots in one Chinese culture. Weak governments, such as Sun Yat-sen's in Guangzhou, could easily be dominated by assertive emigrant groups, which turned the situation to their own benefit by intruding the state apparatus and usurping its financial decision-making machinery. During the rest of the twentieth century, the Chinese state was vastly more powerful, but the deals about establishing business in China were negotiated from similarly incongruent positions between business people and officials. This says something important about the character and efficiency of business networks, so central to the study of ethnic Chinese entrepreneurial activity.
In short, the assumption of cultural affinity among people of Chinese descent was a conscious construction set up to create a favourable political environment for the negotiation of foreign investment back in China. This is not to say that cultural constructions should not be socially grounded in order to be effective in the longer run and serve as a basis for institution building. In her contribution on a Singapore lineage from Anxi in Fujian province, Kuah Khun Eng shows how an upright religious sentiment is important in the re-establishment of the links with the home town, even though these links may be manipulated or used in a more straightforwardly instrumental way by business people and government officials. Cogently, on many occasions, cultural affinity may derail, ultimately thwarting, economic development. Numerous interviews with business people from Hong Kong and Taiwan operating businesses in South China, presented in a chapter by Isabel Thireau and Hua Linshan show incontrovertibly that there are constraints in the operation of business enterprises which to an extent impede the opportunities created by the sojourner discourse. Employees and subcontractors recruited from the home town district and among family and kin may be much more demanding and unreliable than persons who are recruited in less particular ways. *
Douw, Leo, Cen Huang, and Michael R. Godley, (eds.),
QIAOXIANG TIES: INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO 'CULTURAL CAPITALISM' IN SOUTH CHINA.
London: Kegan Paul International (1999).
Rethinking Transnational Chinese Enterprises: Cultural Affinity and Business Strategies investigates the social and economic fabrics of Chinese transnational enterprises. It discusses two major questions: (1.) What role does cultural affinity play in ethnic Chinese and non-Chinese transnational enterprises operating in mainland China and in other Chinese cultural milieus? and (2.) As strategies responding to globalization, corporatization, and the recent Asian crisis, what adaptations have Chinese businesses made to family control and business networks to ensure their survival and success? The first question is treated by looking at the cultural assumptions underlying labour relations in Chinese transnational enterprises. Cen Huang's study of enterprises in Fujian and Guangdong provinces casts further doubt on the efficiency of assumptions about cultural affinity between overseas Chinese managers and their mainland Chinese personnel: they can easily cause misunderstanding, disappointment, and conflict among both parties. Two chapters, by Irmtraud Munder, and by Renate Krieg and Kerstin Nagels, on Sino-German business ventures in China and Taiwan make it clear that Western assumptions about the viability of human resource management may not yet work in the emergent market economy in China. The conclusion is that there still is a strong preference in China for clear hierarchical command structures, even though especially mainland China employees increasingly value having a say in the decision-making by their superiors. Also, in different parts of China there are big differences in employees' and managers' expectations concerning the requirements of teamwork and leadership qualities. Exposure to Western contact, such as has long existed in Taiwan, does not of necessity lead to a higher degree of Westernization of work attitudes.
Of particular importance when looking at the cultural grounding of institutions are the contributions by Dai Yifeng, Zhuang Guotu, and Song Ping, all from the PRC, dealing with donation and investment behaviour among overseas Chinese investors operating in South China. Contrary to previous assumptions popular among academics and politicians in the PRC about patriotic values underlying such behaviour, these chapters acknowledge that in the pre-war past as well as at present, the profit motive is at least equally important. Zhuang's finding that in Xiamen, since 1978, the amount of donations made by individual overseas entrepreneurs has increasingly corresponded to the amount of their investment, which suggests that donation behaviour is coming close to routine tax operations.
In looking at the economic fabric of Chinese transnational enterprises, the remaining chapters cast further doubt upon the importance of the Chinese characteristics for the survival and profitability of these firms. Noel Tracy, David Ip, and Constance Lever-Tracy do claim, that the supposedly Chinese characteristics of Chinese transnational enterprises in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, namely their flexibility, invisibility, and family control, may have been assets in their struggle for survival through the recent Asian crisis. The other contributions, however, mostly contain disclaimers on this issue. For example, the chapters by Stephanie Chung and Henry Yeung that follow the Singapore- and Hong Kong-based Eu Yan Sang business firm in its development since the late nineteenth century emphasize the adaptability of Eu Yan Sang's organization to changing economic and political circumstances.
In conclusion, it is imperative to study cultural phenomena in order to understand Chinese transnational entrepreneurship and enterprises in our frame of time. At the same time, there is reason to doubt that institution-building based upon the present prevalent cultural assumptions is viable in the longer term. *
Douw, Leo, Cen Huang, and David Ip
RETHINKING TRANSNATIONAL CHINESE ENTERPRISES: CULTURAL AFFINITY AND BUSINESS STRATEGIES.
London: Curzon Press (forthcoming).
The Final Report of the programme will be published shortly on its web site: Http://www.www.iias.nl/ iias/research/qiaoxiang/
Dr Leo Douw was the director of the IIAS Qiaoxiang Ties Programme and
is a lecturer of modern Asian history, University of Amsterdam and Free
University Amsterdam.
E-mail: lm.douw@let.vu.nl