Too much time spent on face

Hold the Criticism in China
Where Face is Everything
March 11, 2008
Note to readers: The Chinese version of this column is available here

A Chinese friend in New York is upset at all the news reports about Chinese product recalls.

"I felt as if I lost my own face," she said, referring to the Chinese term that refers roughly to one's pride. "Why is it always Chinese companies that put money ahead of everything else?" she asked. "How will Americans think of us?"

My friend's comments are typical of how Chinese react to criticism and unflattering news coverage of China in the West. Most Chinese care a great deal about how foreigners think of China and the Chinese. When the portrayal is positive, Chinese are proud that they're given a lot of "face." When it's negative, they can feel humiliated or even angry, believing that the conclusion is based on bias.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION



How do you feel when you hear criticism of the U.S. and its government? Do you take it personally? Share your opinion with fellow readers in an online forum.Many foreigners in China find themselves frequently running into questions, such as: How do you like China, Chinese, and the Beijing Olympics? Most of the time, there's only one acceptable answer: "Yes, it's great." If there's a "but," keep it to yourself. Air your doubts, and many Chinese won't receive it well at all. Be prepared to be called a "China basher" or told that you're ignorant of China.

Kyle Caldwell, an American running an English school, a restaurant and a bar in Qingdao, Shandong province, said that he's learned all the "correct" answers. When I asked the 25-year-old what the real answers are, he paused and said, "I have to be very careful because I'm doing business in China." He then added, "In general, I'm a very positive person."

It's not that we Chinese aren't critical of our government or each other. But when the criticism comes from foreigners, it instantly becomes a different story. For example, Chinese readers have very different reactions to the same coverage of a contaminated anticancer drug in Nanfang Weekend, a well-respected Chinese newspaper, and on The Wall Street Journal's Chinese Web site www.chinese.wsj.com, which publishes Journal stories translated into Chinese as well as original content, like this column.

Readers' comments on the Nanfang Weekend story, posted on China's popular Tianya online forum, uniformly chastise the pharmaceutical company's behavior, with some people calling it "greedy" and "irresponsible." Several readers used the word "tragic" in their comments. The Journal story also attracted some angry comments, not targeted at the company, but at the Journal for doing such a story in the first place. Some comments were critical of the pharmaceutical company.

"I believe my Motherland can handle it. You foreigners should stop interfering," wrote a reader with the pen name "Phoenix." A reader called Eric wrote, "What are the editorial standards of The Wall Street Journal? Every time (I) read its news, it's full of slander, false accusations and suspicions. (I) hope the government agency in charge of the press should pay attention to the publication's circulation in China."

What I don't understand is that if this type of stories can at least inform readers (who are also consumers and investors), why would some of them want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend nothing is happening? Why do they think more highly of China's face than their fellow countrymen's (and possibly their own) livelihood and life?

In late 2006, a friend of mine saw an old woman begging on the Beijing subway. Nobody paid much attention to her until she stopped in front of a white man, possibly the only foreigner in the car. A fellow passenger, an old lady with heavy Beijing accent, yelled at the beggar, "How dare you beg for money from a foreigner? Don't you know you're making the Chinese people lose face?" It had never occurred to me that the beggars on New York subways mean a loss of face for the U.S. or Americans. Every country has its own problems.

A good example of the face issue comes from a reader's comment on a Journal story on Chinese.wsj.com about the controversial China Central Television tower, one of the monumental buildings constructed in anticipation of the Beijing Olympics Games. Many Beijing residents dislike the unusually shaped design.

The reader, signed with the name "titans," wrote, now that China claims to be the third most-powerful nation in the world, "when foreigners see the old TV tower, they may well suspect if Beijing is lying."

"My suggestion is that every Beijing resident should make at least 6,000 yuan ($845) a month," "titans" wrote. Otherwise, they should be sent to the neighboring, less developed Hebei province because their clothing and housing conditions could harm the image of Chinese, "titans" said.

Why do Chinese care so much about what foreigners think of us?

It's a complex question. Here are a few possible reasons:

First, for Chinese, the state, nation and individuals are closely integrated. To criticize one is to attack the whole. Although the government isn't elected by the people, and Chinese regularly criticize government policies and officials in private and semi-privately on the Internet, they often jump to the government's defense when the criticism comes from foreigners. The loss of face on the government's part is a loss for the whole Chinese nation.

Second, China has a victim's mentality after suffering poverty and foreign invasions for so much of its recent history. When we are criticized by foreigners, our insecurity could lead us to believe that the commentators are either biased, jealous of China's achievements or scared of China's rise as a world power.

We Chinese have every reason to be proud of ourselves for our achievements in the past 30 years. But we need to have more confidence in ourselves. The more confident and self-possessed China and the Chinese are, the more open and welcome others are likely to be with us.

Third, many Chinese don't believe there's such a thing as an independent press. The most powerful media entities in China are supposed to serve as "mouthpieces" of the Communist Party. Chinese often believe what is said in the press more or less represents government positions on the issue. To be sure, there are serious Chinese journalists and publications that report on corruptions and question government decisions, especially those on the local level. But they often operate in grey areas and have to toe the line on sensitive policy and political issues.

Many Chinese are also suspicious of the conflicts of interests between business news reporters and companies. For example, in their comments on the Chinese WSJ site, many readers accused the two Journal reporters, who wrote a story last week about Ping An Insurance (Group) Co.'s stock offering, of peddling the stock on behalf of the company. I was shocked by the accusations. I'm not sure if they would believe me that all Journal reporters have to sign a conflict of interest declaration once a year, which forbids people from trading in stocks of companies they cover. And the declaration is not just a piece of paper. People take it very seriously here.

I'm not saying that the Western press has always been fair in their coverage about China. Some journalists do view China through colored lens. Whenever I hear Lou Dobbs on CNN say "Communist China," I grab the remote control. Few Chinese believe we're still a Communist country. But these kinds of reports don't represent the whole, and the mainstream American press tries hard to be balanced and responsible.