“…it’s fair to say that the Chinese are as baffled by our interest in Tibet as we would be if they were trying to re-impose Druid rule on Wales. It’s something of a dialogue of the deaf…places like China are increasingly not ‘black boxes’, but are more and more intimately linked with us by global business processes and partnerships…”

By Mick James
Source: Consultant-News.com

When the Olympic torch passed through London I decided not to go out in the snow to watch it. So I missed all the excitement of minor British celebs running with the torch, shielded by squads of track-suited Chinese officials against people who kept leaping out of the crowd with fire extinguishers. Watching the scenes I couldn’t help feeling that an important political issue was being reduced to farce. If I was Tibetan, I’d wonder what if China hadn’t won the Games. Would we have had to wait until they started playing Test cricket until we got a rise out of the British?

Because it’s as if we are dealing with two countries. On the one hand there’s China, human rights, Tibet, Tiannanmen Square, tut, tut. On the other hand there’s the place that makes all our stuff. It’s too painful to try to link them together. So we — literally — clutch at the straw that is the Olympic torch, in the hope we can kick off the following process:

1. Olympic torch goes out
2. Chinese regime collapses in shame and embarrassment
3. Democratic reforms sweep China
4. Independent Tibet

There may be more steps. To be honest I haven’t really through it through that thoroughly. That last step’s a doozy. Despite our recent enthusiasm in Europe for making big countries into smaller ones, democracies — and particularly large, ethnically diverse ones — don’t tend to do separatism that well either. And it’s fair to say that the Chinese are as baffled by our interest in Tibet as we would be if they were trying to re-impose Druid rule on Wales. It’s something of a dialogue of the deaf. And until we’re prepared to do something serious about it — like stop shopping in Primark — it’s going to stay that way.

China may be the elephant in the room for most of us. The consultancy industry is inside the elephant. Our current engagement with China is only beginning to occupy ground that has been staked out by the consulting and outsourcing industry years in advance.

I have to say I’ve had my qualms. A few years back I was working at a conference hosted by a major consultancy where the guests of honour where a number of Chinese CEOs. “If you run into anyone Chinese, treat them like a rock star” was the order of the day. But each of these people, all heads of major concerns, had to go through a gruelling process just to get permission to leave their own country. It felt wrong. People reassured me that their colleagues in China were happy with their lives. I responded that middle-class conformists are generally happy everywhere.

But is there even an ethical issue here? Consultants aren’t put on this earth to be moral arbiters, and would probably make a pretty poor fist of it if they were. The writing on the wall has pretty much consisted of a giant arrow pointing East for some time now. Clients are as constrained by this trend as the rest of us, more so in fact. I can always pay more for my trousers if I want to.

For the modern industrialist, China is the modern equivalent of the Bessemer converter — it’s effectively a new technology for making things more cheaply. You ignore it at your peril and — critically — as long as it can be treated as a “black box2 that you don’t have to worry about what goes on inside too much.

For those of us whose politics were forged in the Cold War the result has been a tragic disappointment. The Soviet experience seemed to prove that theory, although, in retrospect, Gorbachev was possibly just working from the same script as the rest of us. Linked to this was the belief that our way of life in the West was so deeply attractive that others will be drawn to it like moths to a flame, that enough Beatles albums and blue jeans would sink any dictatorship. That doesn’t seem to work any more. But maybe there’s a reason for that.

Over a century ago Mark Twain wrote a controversial essay, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness”, (http://tinyurl.com/5cocxb) in response to the USA’s actions against “insurgents” in the Philippines and the subsequent annexation of that country. It reads like it was written yesterday, and in a way it was. Globalisation was in full swing back then, only to be postponed for a century as attempts by rising economic powers to claim their political due led to war. (But that could never happen again, right?).

Twain’s point back then was that, as attractive as our ideals are on paper, we still need to live up to them. The container marked “Blessings of Civilisation - Export Only” has to do what it says on the tin. Otherwise the “person sitting in darkness” is liable to get confused about what’s on offer.

So, in my view, we should let consultants off the hook over China. It’s down to the efforts of consultants and outsourcers after all that places like China are increasingly not “black boxes”, but are more and more intimately linked with us by global business processes and partnerships. What will that level of engagement bring? Even the most innocuous conversations with colleagues and partners can have political overtones. It’s really about what, you, as an individual representative of the Blessings of Civilisation Trust, have to say for yourself. Otherwise its:

“You let the ruling party appoint your next leader? Hey, so do we! And I hear that in America the guy with the most votes gets to make an award-winning documentary about the environment. Good system!”

Contact Mick with your views or suggestions at: mick.james@top-consultant.com