20201130 trans

Cao Runxin 曹润鑫

A good example to illustrate this is the cuisine that is often still defined by national borders (but certainly also in even smaller regional units). The existence of Italian cuisine is undisputed, but you don't have to go to Italy to eat quite authentic Italian food. Of course, there have always been Europeanized variations of Chinese cuisine (e.g. with thickened sauces), and the Istanbul native who orders a kebab in Germany will be surprised that he is served flat bread and not a plate of cutlery.

Eating habits, especially at breakfast, seem to be difficult to change, so that the author did not get used to the Chinese breakfast (rice soup with salty vegetable side dish) in China for years.

Chang Huiyue 常慧月

When Italian spaghetti with bolognese sauce was announced one lunchtime in the cafeteria of Beijing University, the joy was great, at least until the dish could be tasted. Obviously only the outward appearance had been preserved here, the appearance of the spaghetti largely corresponded to that which one can see in cookbooks. However, in terms of taste it was a catastrophe, the tomatoes used had obviously been understood by the cook not as vegetables but as fruit and the noodles had been overcooked for an extra long time.

Also with the enterprises there are such cultures, German enterprises are considered e.g. in many countries as well organized. Even manufacturing processes for the same products often differ from country to country, but are increasingly standardized worldwide, especially when a company has a patented process in several countries.

Chen Han 陈涵

This can lead to interesting national solutions when the same task is set, namely to design a street cleaning vehicle:

Street cleaning vehicle a) China

Street cleaning vehicle b)

Since the 1990s, the author has personally experienced the differences in working in a foreign Chinese software company in America (e.g. PC Express, later TwinBridge in Los Angeles), in a Chinese software company on the mainland (e.g. Suntendy, Beijing), in a German company in China and in a German-Chinese mixed company. These personal experiences flow into the present booklet.

Thus, the term culture here is largely synonymous with tradition or philosophy, whereby tradition appears to be related to the past and philosophy often appears as reflected culture reduced to a few principles, and thus already consciously controlled and teleological. For these reasons, the author has chosen the term culture in the present context.

Chen Hui 陈惠

Japanese production culture is known to us, the Chinese (here abbreviated CMPC) has hardly been investigated in literature, so this booklet has a pioneering character.

In this booklet, the author draws on Geert Hofstede's comparative cultural model, which he discussed with him at the LMU in Munich on January 22, 2009, on fundamental observations on the Chinese economy from a macro perspective by Philip Huang, and on the results of a field study by Jianzhong Hong, Aino Pöyhönen, Kalevi Kyläheiku 1998-2000 (see bibliography).

This booklet was prepared to be presented at the conference "Beyond Japan - Values and Attitudes of Asian Production Cultures" in autumn 2010. The author is grateful to Dirko Thomsen, AutoUni Wolfsburg, who invited the author to contribute to the conference.

Chen Jiangning 陈江宁

Approaches/Perspectives

The distinction between craftsman culture and trader culture has been established for some time. This means that in an economy, more emphasis is placed on developing products that are as perfect as possible, and constantly improving them. A dealer culture places more value on the profit that is made between the cheapest possible purchase and the most expensive possible sale. This distinction becomes clear when we examine a typical case of complaint:

If a customer complains a product in a craftsman culture, then the salesman is concerned, offers an error free exchange product or a financial compensation and reports the product error further, sends the equipment possibly in, with the goal of letting the error, if it should occur e.g. at several devices, in principle of letting the development department eliminate the error.

Chen Jiaxin 陈佳欣

In a dealer culture the service and satisfaction of the customer is more important, here it is more important to see if the customer is angry and reacts accordingly to his complaint with apologies and compensation offers. Feedback to the manufacturer is of secondary importance.

Here are some of the countries that fall under the relevant categories:

Craftsmen's Culture Retailer Culture

Germany, France Poland, USA, China, Korea

Another distinction is made between production and design cultures.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, a production culture developed in mechanical engineering in the USA, whereas in Germany a construction culture developed.

Chen Jingjing 陈静静

The experience of rationalization in the U.S. with the pioneer Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) was quickly received in Germany, among other things by establishing chairs of business administration in Berlin in 1904, Aachen in 1908 and Hanover in 1910. Accordingly, I follow Kunze in 2008 when he rejects Kothes' assertion that German production culture before 1914 is backward.

In Germany as a culture of craftsmen, a diversification of products developed early on, which was made possible by constantly optimizing the product. Even in teams, the focus is still on the highly qualified individual who does his part of the teamwork independently and assumes responsibility.

Chen Sha 陈莎

In the USA, the goal is rather the production of a cost-effective mass product. Responsibility was delegated to teams and budget control was introduced to control these teams. However, this is more in keeping with the lawnmower principle and does not apply to the appropriateness of the individual special product or the individual employee.

This can be illustrated in an overview:

Chen Sunfu 谌孙福

The Japanese Production Culture

After World War II, Japan did not have as many investments available as Germany, for example, through the Marshall Plan. Out of necessity, the Japanese economy therefore did what was possible, namely an optimization of existing machines, processes and personnel. This also resulted in the development of a special national production culture, the characteristics of which can be seen in an overview:

Chen Yongxiang 陈永相

Today, the Japanese production philosophy is considered the pacemaker for new production technologies and the benchmark for modern industrial nations. Former Porsche boss Wendelin Wiedeking is an admirer and imitator of the Toyota Production System: "Toyota is synonymous with consistency". It is the international standard by which the modernity of a factory is measured.

The basic idea of the Japanese model was that storage costs were incurred because more was produced than purchased. So technologies were developed which ensured that the product was only (re)produced when the customer bought the product (production on demand). The higher costs of producing a single item are more than compensated by the savings in intermediate storage (and, in the case of slow-moving items, final storage) of products. This procedure is successfully used today, for example, in book production.

Cheng Yusi 成于思

More important, however, is the idea that there should be as few production interruptions as possible, and if so, that these should be eliminated as quickly as possible. A typical phenomenon on the construction site is that work stops because a certain part / material to be installed has not been delivered on time. In production plants, a machine in the assembly line production breaks down and the whole production is stopped. This is where the Japanese philosophy comes into play, training the individual employee to the extent that he or she can repair minor defects on their own and assigning the responsibility to them to do so. For larger defects, a central team is available.

Deng Jinxia 邓锦霞

This motivates them to ensure that these smaller defects do not occur in the first place and not only repairs the defect, but also thinks of a way to ensure that this defect does not occur in the future, i.e. they not only repair the defect, but also the cause of the defect.

With production on demand, interruptions in production would also be conceivable if demand were to decline. Ideally, production then adjusts, i.e. it runs correspondingly slower or faster, depending on how strong demand is at the moment. The most important thing is that production is uninterrupted and trouble-free.

Ding Daifeng 丁代凤

The Japanese reward system works in a similar way for innovations introduced by individual employees involved in the production process. Here, it is important that the person who had the idea receives a relevant sum of money immediately and unbureaucratically, long before the idea is implemented.

Another element are the quality circles or Kaizen teams. These are smaller working groups that are responsible for a small part of the production. They should meet once at the beginning and then regularly at least once a week to openly discuss suggestions for improvement.

Recently, other Japanese elements of production culture have also been mentioned, such as multi-divisional structures and decentralization. They are also found in the American production culture.

Fang Jieling 方洁玲

The Japanese production culture, whose optimization was born out of necessity, proved to be more competitive than the cultures of other countries, which is why it quickly became the model, even the epitome, of modern production culture, and in the 1960s and 1970s it began a worldwide triumphal march.

China - Factory of the world

Today, however, China has replaced Japan and the other classic industrial nations as the factory of the world.

It also leads the emerging markets worldwide.

In the projection of economic performance, Goldmann/ Sachs sees China ahead of the USA, India and Germany.

Gan Fengyu 甘奉玉

So China is today again (after the period 0 A.D. until about 1200 A.D.) the leading economy in the world. One of the characteristics of the Chinese production culture is its continuity. For thousands of years, China has been producing products such as silk, tea, porcelain, etc. without interruption. Even though Chinese production was not a world leader in the period 1200 to 2000 A.D., it remained at a roughly constant level for a long time before it caught up with the Industrial Revolution in a rapid development. Such a long production culture is without equal worldwide.

Gao Mingzhu 高明珠

It is still important to bear in mind that China is once again growing to become the leading economic nation, but in this most populous country not all Chinese are yet benefiting equally from this leadership role. This is easy to see when comparing the absolute figures (e.g. GDP in country comparison or related to the growth of its own GDP) with the relative figures (GDP/capita). Here is one such comparison with the USA:

I would like to start my analysis of the importance of production culture with a few questions:

Does the production culture have anything to do with the rapid increase? Is it perhaps the cause of the increase?

Obviously, the Chinese production culture has not been an international model for modern production culture. Could the reason for this be the problem that the production culture is culture-specific? What other reasons could there be? Are these reasons justified?

In order to find clues to answer these questions, the Chinese production culture is examined and defined below.

Gong Yumian 龚钰冕

Genuity of Chinese production culture

The Silk Road has been documented since about the 5th century BCE, but gene analysis proves that it was used to trade domesticated plants and animals in both directions already about 10 millenia BCE. There is also proof of cultural exchange through this trade road. The following products manufactured in China were traded on it:

·Silk

·Tea

·Spices

·Ceramics/Porcellain

·Jade

·Bronze

·Lacquerware/Paints

·Iron

·Paper

·Gunpowder

·Furs etc.

The Silk Road was of course used in both directions, gold, precious stones and for a long time glass were imported into China. If the New Silk Road can be built with rail roads, it will lower the costs and time of shipping several times compared to the current maritime container shipping.

Gu Dongfang 顾东方

With the world's largest merchant ships, junks, which could hold up to 4000 tons, China also dominated maritime trade for centuries. Already in the 3rd century B.C. the Emperor's Canal was built in China for inland navigation.

Previous picture: Chinese junk from the year 1804.[ John Barrow, „Travels in China: containing descriptions, observations, and comparisons, made and collected in the course of a short residence at the Imperial palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a subsequent journey through the country from Pekin to Canton“, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12.1.2010, ISBN 9781153190947, 302 pp., p. 59.]

Ming period junk (14th century).

In the period from the birth of Christ until 1200 A.D., China had the highest gross domestic product in the world. Only in 1200 was China overtaken by Western Europe.

Guan Qinqing 管钦清

Between 1200 and about 2000, China lagged far behind the West and was considered a developing country. Nevertheless, from 1700 until today, China has experienced the same population explosion as America and Europe.

While Europe ensured the food supply of the larger population at the end of the 18th century with the Industrial Revolution, China slept through this development and caught up with it in fast motion from 1900 with its first factories, from 1950 with centrally planned larger production units and from 2000 with private enterprises, at first mainly joint ventures, which led to an uneven development in the country.

Gui Yizhi 桂一枝

The example of silk production in Japan and China already reveals the first differences in the production culture:

In Japan, a loom was introduced that was copied thousands of times without a license, thus ensuring a nationwide standard. Silk from Japan was always woven in the same way, and buyers could always rely on the same product quality.

In China there were various independent production facilities and regional traditions. So silk from China was of a variable quality.

Another aspect of Chinese production culture is the ethnic component:

·Western companies have better cards in China if they use Chinese middlemen.

·Chinese companies that are active in Africa export their entire business model including employees, cook, buildings.

Guo Lu 郭露

Nevertheless, today's Chinese production culture is no longer genuine, but is also more strongly influenced by history than the Japanese Western culture.

Even party schools at the beginning of the 21st century are commissioning business faculties of American universities to conduct management training.

Made in China

The label "Made in Germany" was originally a British origin label to distinguish itself from poor quality German goods. It was only later that the mark of Cain became a trademark due to the improvement in quality.

"Made in China" stands for cheap products, low wages, poor quality, mass production and plagiarism, hierarchical management and an "ant-like" workforce.

Han Haiyang 韩海洋

But in fact this is only an impression that applied to the first mass products in China; in the meantime the picture has changed.

1 At the beginning of the 21st century, the labor market in China appears saturated for the first time. This is accompanied by extreme wage increases. In the meantime, one has to pay almost as much for a man-day of an engineer with comparable qualifications in China as for an engineer-man-day in western industrialized countries.

2. The previously most important productive sector is being replaced by the service sector as the most important economic sector.

3. Following the example of Western companies that have consistently introduced quality assurance in China, the proverbial poor quality of Chinese products is now a thing of the past. In many companies, quality assurance is now also practiced.

Han Wanzhen 韩宛真

4. apart from the reproduction of products developed in the West, the first high-tech products that have been further developed in China (cell phones, notebooks, etc.) are already available.

5. Chinese companies are now buying companies worldwide with the required know-how (notebook division of IBM => Lenovo, Volvo etc.).

6. with a real ravenous appetite, Chinese managers devour bestsellers that explain Western management principles and apply them with playful curiosity and great zeal, such as team meetings. Meetings in Chinese companies are now more common (5 meetings/day) than in Germany (1-2 meetings/day).

He Changqi 何长琦

Characteristics of Chinese production culture

Hierarchy

Chinese companies are traditionally strictly hierarchical, with many levels. Authority gives face. As in other countries, functions are called together with the name as titles. According to Hofstede, the yardstick for hierarchy is the power distance index.

Appreciation of age

In addition to hierarchies based on professional positions, age also has a corresponding authority. Older people are seldom deported to retirement homes after their retirement, but live until death in the extended family, in which they fulfill tasks until the end. The neighborhood also takes care of the elderly people by involving them in work assignments (street cleaning, support for traffic regulation) depending on their readiness.

Hu Baihui 胡百辉

The older brother automatically has a more prestigious position than the younger one. In Chinese, kinship terms are strictly separated into "older" or "younger". The preceding adjective "alter" in the confidential form of address is an honorific.

In business life, too, older employees are respected because of their life experience (and possibly because of the large network of relationships to be expected). A positive side effect is that the experience remains in the company. New research also shows in the West: older employees are often underestimated, their experience must be used more and knowledge can be kept in the company.

Concept of Face

For the protection of the individual, there is the face concept, where everyone can preserve his or her honor, even if mistakes have been made or someone is inferior. For this purpose, unwritten rules (institutions) are observed in the company: No one criticizes the other person in front of others. If criticism must be exercised, then indirectly. A request is not rejected directly, there is no "No! The Chinese employees are particularly sensitive to the nuances, to the "maybe" and know how to classify it accordingly without being damaged.

Hu Huifang 胡慧芳

Incompetence of bosses leads to informal decision-making

Traditionally, the position of General Manager, or even senior positions in Chinese companies, is preferably filled with people who can be trusted by those making the appointments. The greatest trust is given by a family relationship, somewhat less so in the case of friendship between families or between individuals, or by shared periods of life, such as being born in the same village, attending the same school, the same club, etc. Of course, professional qualifications also help to build trust, but this is only of secondary importance.

The leadership positions of the largest state-owned enterprises in China are assigned by the party, and these positions are cobbled together with correspondingly deserving cadres.

One consequence of this appointment policy is the widespread incompetence of leaders.

Hu Jin 胡瑾

In economic terms, this too is an emergency situation, especially for the bosses concerned, who are surrounded by more competent subordinates. In combination with the facial concept, the bosses thus have to hide their incompetence on the one hand and on the other hand want to keep their position, i.e. they are under enormous pressure to make the right decisions. This has led to an informal decision-making system. The boss discusses possible alternatives informally with the experts. In the end, he has obtained a broad opinion and makes the decision that seems best to him alone. The fact that the laurels are actually due to others remains unspoken; it increases the intensity of the personal relationships (renqing) of the people involved. Once the boss has made a decision and communicated it, the employees will implement it without contradiction due to the hierarchical structures.

Ji Tiantian 纪甜甜

If a superior's decision is not considered correct, the subordinate may not address the boss. Rather, when the hierarchical structures do not apply (joint leisure activities or similar), an opportunity must be sought to indirectly point out the wrong decision to the boss.

Meetings per day C > USA > D

The frequency of meetings is much higher in China than in Germany. In the country comparison of four selected countries/regions the following order results:

1. Hong Kong

2. China

3. USA

4. Germany

Jiang Fengyi 蒋凤仪

Shapes of modern Chinese production culture and their causes

Modern Chinese production culture shows the following characteristics:

1. in the area of know-how China lags behind the western industrial nations and Japan, which causes feelings of shame. Many Chinese feel that they are on the defensive and regard their country's relationship with the USA and Japan as the David's against Goliath. This results in a subjective legitimacy for broad-based industrial espionage with national interest and know-how theft.

Jiang Hao 姜好

2. Innovation

China is traditionally known as an empire of inventions, so letterpress printing, gunpowder, porcelain etc. were invented long before similar inventions were made elsewhere in the world. However, these inventions were often not brought to serial production and were produced in masses, as for example in Europe, where gunpowder led to the production of handguns and cannons. It can be exaggerated to say that gunpowder was used instead for New Year's fireworks by the nobility. This shows the Chinese characteristic of a capacity for innovation with a simultaneous lack of diffusion in the market.

The Industrial Revolution also largely passed China by. Since China, like Europe, was experiencing a population explosion due to better hygiene and medicine, but at the same time the automation of food production did not go beyond manufactories, China fell behind in its standard of living.

Jiang Qiwei 蒋淇玮

Traditionally, imitation has always been highly valued in China. A good copy was almost as important as the original. Thus, both the civil service examination system of previous centuries and today's school system were strongly oriented towards reproduction rather than creativity. One reason may be the enormous amount of characters that requires students to memorize for years.

Kang Haoyu 康浩宇

The idea of copyright is also less rooted in China than in the West.

When the Chinese were awakened from their sleep by the cannon thunder of the 1st Opium War, there was great regret that they had not carried out their own research and development. Although physical violence was disregarded, the foreigners were envied their technical superiority and since then they have propagated the idea of learning technology from foreigners and reproducing it in order to be able to defend their own cultural values and sovereignty more effectively. This feeling of envy gave rise to an extreme motivation to both imitate the superiority of others and ultimately to outdo them.

Kang Lingfeng 康灵凤

3. Competition

The toughest competition worldwide is in China. Successful products immediately find numerous imitators. As soon as an imitator can produce the product at more favorable conditions, the client switches to him. Together with state arbitrariness, this has resulted in the emergence of a typical Chinese type of company: The financial holding company as a family-owned enterprise with involvement in various industries. This enables a company to survive even if the sales market for a product suddenly collapses. In hardly any other country in the world do companies have to be as vigilant as in China, adapting products to changing customer requirements within the shortest possible time and always being one step ahead of the competition. New trends have to be recognized early and capacities have to be built up or reduced flexibly.

Those who survive in this hard school are also prepared for more peaceful and fairer markets like those in Europe and America.

Kong Xianghui 孔祥慧

4. State control

The reform and opening policy since 1978 has led to a predominance of foreign companies in China at the end of the 20th century. In order to protect their own industry, laws were introduced obliging companies to provide a certain percentage of their production in China locally. As a result, Chinese suppliers had to be sought who were able to contribute parts to the production chain. This promoted local industry and also the transfer of know-how.

At the same time, foreign suppliers were also forced to follow the large companies to China if they did not want to be replaced by a Chinese company. This accelerated the settlement of foreign companies in China.

Kong Yanan 孔亚楠

However, legislation (like the joint venture laws) and court decisions favoured domestic companies. Also, China has built up a state capitalism that sponsors industry, supports domestic industry on the world market and helps financing overseas investment. Also, copyright infringement and industrial espionage (including civil-military alliance) supports the Chinese economy. Under the Trump administration, the USA has responded with a protectionist “America first” strategy.

5. Legal system

The legal system in China is not independent. It acts at the behest of the state.

Western companies came to China with superior know-how and financial power. These companies were admired in China, but at the same time a feeling of disadvantage arose with regard to their own backward industry.

Lei Fangyuan 雷方圆

As a counterbalance to this perceived weakness in relation to the large foreign corporations, the legislation was designed and the judiciary was urged to protect their own corporations.

This puts Chinese partners in a better position when joint ventures are dissolved (often the know-how and capital goes to the owner).

Necessity is the mother of invention

The reason for the increase in efficiency, known worldwide as Japanese management culture or production culture, was the lack of money for new machines in Japan after World War II.

Lei Kuangxi 雷旷溪

In China, another emergency situation is also the reason for developing a separate response to the challenges of the market: it is the professional incompetence of management personnel. This has grown historically. In China, management positions are primarily given to people who can be trusted. Traditionally, the most trustworthy people in China are family members or family members of old school friends, acquaintances who come from their own village and who have indulged in the same hobbies together (see Deng Xiaoping's Bridge round or the golf acquaintances in Western lobbying) etc. Loyalty to the party plays a secondary role. In principle, members of the Communist Party have it easier in business life, cadres even easier. Membership in the People's Liberation Army plays a similar role.

Li Haiquan 李海泉

Professional competence often plays no role at all. But here, too, a generational change has taken place; the highest leadership cadres in the Central Committee often had no education or training at all in the Soviet Union at the beginning, were replaced by technocrats in the 1980s, and at the beginning of the 21st century many have an American university degree.

In the business sector, the leadership positions of the largest Chinese state-owned enterprises are still awarded by the party to deserving cadres.

The professional incompetence of the bosses represents a plight that must be countered in daily work with a sophisticated strategy if one does not want to be replaced by a more professionally competent boss.

Li Lili 李丽丽

This strategy consists of the following:

·Avoiding the disclosure of own professional incompetence

·Informal consultation and coordination with the actual experts in the company before each decision process

·Announcement and representation of the decision by the boss alone, this decision may then also no longer be questioned

This informal participation in the decision-making process is organized in a network which, however, in contrast to the Japanese model, is not lived out in team discussions, but rather through several face-to-face meetings between the boss and a different expert in each case, since if the boss sought the advice of a first expert in the presence of a second expert, he would lose face with the second expert. This network character is therefore very personal and usually consists of direct two-person relationships.

Li Lingyue 李凌月

However, it is also possible to contact a third person who knows the second person, whereby the second person then only establishes contact and then withdraws.

A further emergency in China is that due to the sleepy industrial revolution and the lack of information diffusion in the market, no research and development tradition of its own has been established to date. Instead of carrying out basic research for a long time, information about the state of the art of advanced competitors was obtained and attempts were made to copy and eventually outperform them. Only recently, due to enormous governmental support, e.g. in hybrid drive technology and electric motor technology, self-developed products have been created in China.

Li Liqin 李丽琴

Changes in the Chinese production culture

When the production site in China opened up to the global industry, the egalitarianism of the planned economy had already erased the tradition of quality assurance from the memory of the factory workers. In the decades before, they had been used to selling along with the scrap. The first factories, which produced goods in China due to the low labor costs, also delivered rejects accordingly. The foreign investors first had to reintroduce the quality assurance concept in China. Due to the strong competition in China and the orientation towards world market prices and standards, quality assurance has now been internalized in China.

Li Luyi 李璐伊

The originally traditional lifelong relationship with the employer, as we also know it from Japan, has now been reversed. China currently has one of the highest employee turnover rates in the world, even higher than the already high rate in the USA.

In the period 1950 to 1980, the production culture was characterized by blind fulfillment of plans; since 1980, production has been oriented to the market. Today, management concepts are as en vogue in China as political campaigns were in the past. They are read and discussed, but often misunderstood due to the lack of foreign language skills and context/background knowledge.

Li Meng 李梦

Similar to the campaigns, the concepts are introduced with an eternal claim, but only last as long as a seasonal fashion. This type of management, which is based on current trends in management strategies, could also be called guerrilla management, following Sebastian Heilmann's concept of "guerrilla politics".

In China, a culture of secrecy (ID badges, access restrictions), especially among high-tech companies, is prevalent, which is exactly the same as in America. In China, this culture was simply copied from the USA, certainly also due to the findings of Chinese industrial espionage abroad that know-how, e.g. in German companies, is often insufficiently protected against access by third parties.

Li Yongshan 李泳珊

Roles in the Chinese production culture

The central role in the Chinese production and management culture is played by the boss. This can also be seen in the comparatively high values of China's Power Distance Index.

The specific behavior of the boss in the decision making process has already been explained above.

In the following, the difference in the relationship between the boss and his subordinates in China and Germany will be described.

The team member in Germany expects a target for the overall project and the specification of the assigned subarea within the project, feels responsible for the timely achievement of his own and the team goal and wants to find the way to this goal independently.

Li Yu 李玉

It would like to be little supervised and communicates intensively with the other team members. The team leader in Germany is rather a primus inter pares, who has a small area of responsibility as a specialist and is responsible for coordination. The success is always a success of the team.

In China, the boss has a much higher position than the other team members. He gives each team member the individual goal and the individual steps to reach this goal. He closely monitors the progress and cares for the team members, also regarding job satisfaction and in private matters.

Lin Min 林敏

He expects a feedback only to him and no exchange of information between the team members. If the input of the first team member is a prerequisite for the work of the second team member, the boss himself forwards the intermediate / work results of the first to the second team member.

The role of the employee in China is determined by the following characteristics: He cultivates a culture of error, in which it is important not to make any mistakes of his own, and in case mistakes are made, to correct them if possible without being noticed and in case they are noticed, to at least not immediately admit the guilt.

Lin Xin 林鑫

In all these behaviours, the principle of face awareness applies.

As mentioned above, the loyalty of employees to an employer in China is extremely low at the beginning of the 21st century. For a few yuan a month, workers change employers. Headhunters intercept employees at the factory gate, ask about the salary and offer correspondingly more.

The paid passing on of information, especially about customers, suppliers, purchase prices and patents, is also considered a trivial offence. Chinese companies communicate less and employees are more demotivated. This is mainly due to the high production pressure, as case studies by Hong/Pöyhönen/Kyläheiku 2006 show (see list of literature in the appendix).

Ling Zijin 凌子瑾

The Intermezzo of Socialism from 1949-1979

In the phase of socialism, the centrally planned economy applied in it blossomed as follows:

When the news reached the top, there was a culture of whitewashing.

The breakup of the unions made the culture of co-determination in companies even more informal.

Gaming in the Chinese production culture

In China, playful experimentation is a core element of the production culture. In this way, individual management elements, but also entire foreign production philosophies can be tried out in a playful way.

Liu Bo 刘博

One of the main differences between young people in China and those in the West is that, even as young adults, they can still play hilariously without making themselves look ridiculous to others. The joy of playing is particularly unrestrained if the ambition is there to copy a foreign product as similar as possible or even to surpass it and also to implement, for example, a new management concept or a production philosophy.

New rules of the game are accepted very quickly. The introduction of a reward system (incentives) for long service has led to a situation in China where it is always calculated when a change is worthwhile.

Liu Jinxingqi 刘金惺琦

Sustainable concepts can only be introduced if the benefits of the concept are clear. Other concepts with no discernible added value, such as alignment with the American corporate philosophy on mergers and acquisitions, are forgotten just as quickly as they were introduced, and people return to old habits.

Effects on the company

In China today, we find a modern production culture that is international but has its Chinese characteristics.

It has positive and negative effects on the company:

Liu Liu 刘柳

Positive effects of the Chinese management and production culture (CMPC)

·Networks

·the preferential treatment of Chinese companies (e.g. in tenders, competition, within corporate groups such as joint ventures)

·playful enthusiasm for technology

·Brutality, which in turn promotes competition

Negative effects of the Chinese management and production culture (CMPC)

·through their distortion of competition

·by promoting incompetence in management positions

·through their priority of personal rather than non-cash benefits, which is fundamentally negative for the production culture

·through rituals/conventions (face, criticism, status etc.)

·intransparent state sponsoring and corruption

Liu Ou 刘欧

The fundamental difference of the free trade zone established by China, Japan, Australia and other Asian Pacific countries in 2020 from suggestions of free trade zones involving the US or the EU is, that state-sponsoring and corruption are not restricted. Therefore China benefits most of this new free trade zone.

Where is modern Chinese management and production culture (CMPC) an international role model?

Liu Yangnuo 刘洋诺

The Chinese management and production culture (CMPC), as explained in the previous chapters, has its own characteristics that distinguish it from, for example, the Japanese or American management and production culture. Nevertheless, the CMPC is successful and manages the world's largest production market. Elements of the Japanese production culture have been successfully used worldwide to modernize production facilities. Can Chinese elements also lead to global success?

The following 5 elements appear at least compatible on the international market:

1. informal decision making through horizontal and vertical network management

In China, important and unimportant decisions are seldom made by competent committees or officials, but rather are investigated informally.

Liu Yi 刘艺

The hierarchical position in the company of those involved in the decision-making process is irrelevant, only their professional competence. Questioning the most competent is possible because this questioning is completely detached from the honor and reward system, but takes place in a parallel world, the so-called personal relationship system (Chinese: guanxi 关系). Due to this decoupling, the responsible decision-maker does not mind questioning other, not responsible but more competent colleagues/employees/outsiders. At the same time, the colleague/employee/external is motivated to give the best possible decision support, since he can score points in the parallel world.

The results are well-founded and accepted decisions.

Liu Yiyu 刘怡瑜

2. playfully trying out new forms of production and management (attention: hermeneutics/sustainability)

The play instinct in people up to old age is socially sanctioned. In phases when there is little to do in the office, a Mahjong or Go board or cards are taken out as a matter of course. Similarly, new methods, often imported from the West or Japan, are tried out with playful zeal. An incentive system, for example, challenges colleagues to earn as much capital as possible in the form of incentives in as short a time as possible. It is not unusual for hit lists to be posted in the office, so that colleagues encourage each other.

Liu Zhiwei 刘智伟

But it is important to pay attention to three aspects:

1. the actual goals should be achieved without neglecting other aspects of the work or even worsening the overall result, because the colleagues are addicted to the urge to play. The introduction of new management or production strategies is nothing new for Chinese employees, they know this from political or education-oriented campaigns (e.g. traffic education).

The second aspect that must be kept in mind is the understanding of the corresponding philosophies. For this it is important, for example, when importing Western management culture into China, that the correct Chinese term is first found for the fashionable e.g. English expression.

Lou Cancan 娄灿灿

Terms that are translated incorrectly or not at all lead to success messages that a new system has been introduced, with what was understood by it being introduced instead.

A third aspect that must be considered in this context is sustainability. Many new concepts that have been introduced are forgotten after a few weeks and the old rut has returned. Only individual, often senior employees still remember the newly introduced things and occasionally refer back to them without being able to enforce them on their employees.

Luo Weijia 罗维嘉

A process description system that is integrated into the daily work routine (e.g. daily used computer work surface) is useful here, where the employees make or execute decisions and processes in the given paths.

All in all, the playful approach reduces fear of contact with new things, the daily work routine is varied and the employees gain further qualifications.

3. speed and flexibility in product development

One of the hallmarks of the Chinese manufacturing industry is the speed at which products are cribbed and developed further, or at which they react to changing customer requirements or market conditions.

Luo Yuqing 罗雨晴

The ambition that Chinese product developers put into developing solutions for specific requirements is comparable to the play instinct described above.

This high speed and flexibility strengthens the competitiveness of Chinese companies. Western companies can learn these qualities by locating in China and thus benefit from these experiences in the comparatively sluggish production location in their home countries.

4. focusing on personal competence instead of things or functions

Interesting and certainly typical Chinese is the fixation on people instead of the thing.

Ma Juan 马娟

File:Majuan An original feature is the logistics. As this picture illustrates, existing primitive means are exploited to the utmost. Admirable is the matter-of-course way in which the extremes are mastered.

For a long time, production capacity in China grew faster than logistics. Only at the beginning of the 21st century are delivery services and infrastructure (highways, high-speed train connections, etc.) catching up.

Ma Shuya 马淑雅

The Freedom of Intellectual Exchange

Starting to work on the modern Chinese literary essay in the 1990s, I published my Ph.D. the�sis The History of the Chinese Essay in 1998. Because it was written in German, I hoped since then to raise interest in this subject in the anglophone world, too. With this volume in hand, this wish has become true. Some of the topics I dealt with in my thesis like the development of the genre, biblio-biographies of several essayists etc., are elaborated here extensively by my collegues in English and more de�tailed than I could do it in my first ground work in German.

Ma Zhixing 马智星

Moreover, this collection do�cu�ments the lively discussion, which started among sinologists in the last years of the 20th cen�tury.

I remember quite clearly, how the idea of the conference was born during a meal at the Boston AAS conference hotel with King-Fai Tam. Leo Ou-fan Lee had helped to bring both of us together, knowing that we shared a seemingly specialized hobby, the modern Chinese essay. King-Fai was preparing two collection of essay translations, one with essays from mainland China and one from Taiwan. The first is scheduled for publication. I prepared another collection of essays with both, Chinese original and English translation, published by The University Press Bochum half a year ago. The common intention of both of us is to make more Chinese essays available in English translations.

Meng Ying 孟莹

King-Fai Tam and me are both fascinated of the idea of promoting this long time neglected genre and to find out more about its characteristics and the reasons of its success in the 1920s and 1930s as well as in the 1980s and 1990s. On a napkin, we outlined an AAS panel, an international conference and a volume with essays on the essay. All of these ideas are now becoming real more or less in the way we planned it: The AAS panel became an NEAAS panel at Yale, the conference took place in August 25-27, 2000 at the Academy of Euro-Asian Economy and Culture in Achern, in the Black Forest, Germany.

Mo Ling 莫玲

14 scholars of Chinese literature, from the States, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and Germany took part. All of them share the fascination of the phenomenon of the essay. Language was no barrier: The conference was conducted in English with the exception of a few papers in Chinese with English abstracts.

The collection of essays on the essay are the conference proceedings in hand, this book contains ex�ten�ded versions of the conference papers. It was published by The Uni�ver�si�ty Press Bochum in December 2000. More important is the fact, that through this opportunity, we now have lively email discussions and a website with updated information on the Chinese essay.

Mo Nan 莫南

Here I would like to take the opportunity to thank the members of the organizing committee Charles Laughlin, Xinmin Liu, King-Fai Tam, and Alexandra Wagner for their great help. I very much enjoyed the discussions via email.

A common philosophy stands behind the whole project: We want to share information, help each other and do not care about language barriers. Everybody can contribute in English or Chinese, some of us like me being non-native English speakers.

We encourage the reader to make use of the large margins for personal notes in the awareness of pursuing a tradition dating back to the very origins of essay writing.

Nie Xiaolou 聂晓楼

Having most of the conference papers in hand with this book, everybody is welcomed to give a feed back. This kind of free intellectual exchange I first experienced in the States when Leo Ou-fan Lee invited me to stay from 1998-1999 as a visiting scholar at the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.

The contributors to this volume can only introduce and draw the attention of the readers to this Chinese genre, the joy of reading remains to the reader himself.

M.W.

Ou Rong 欧蓉

The Flourishing of the Chinese Essay

Martin Woesler

The flourishing of essay publication in the periods of accelerated modernization, the Western-influenced one (1920s/30s) and the one of liberated economical actors (1980/90s), was helped in part by the appearance of new magazines and book series that existed chiefly as vehicles for contemporary essayists. The emergence of this media show a clear trend: the essay is a genre of overwhelming and increasing interest among Chinese authors and readers.

There are three reasons for the increase in Chinese essay production and popularity in the mid-1990s:

Ouyang Jinglan 欧阳静兰

·The giddy-paced nature of current Chinese society with its demands for diverting and short texts: “[...] we live in an age of exposition”[ Donald Hall, The Contemporary Essay (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984) xiii. In this textbook, Hall has chosen a wide range of contemporary American essayists. In his introduction, Hall applies for clear writing, and active reading.];

·the increasing consciousness of individuality for which the essay is the most direct form of subjecti�ve expression, even more direct than the poem with its metrical and formal demands;

·a revival of interest in discussing socio-political issues through the medium of the essay, as was the case in the 1920s/30s. Because of its increasing importance, the essay can now be assigned its proper place in the canon of contemporary genres and in the history of literature.

Ouyang Ling 欧阳玲

In the last two decades of the 20th century, the essay has been the main communication medium between the discourse of the intelligentsia and the mass of readers of daily newspapers. Therefore we have a genre which transports ideas of the elite in small pieces and common language and functions as the link between mass and elite culture.

December 2000

Peng Dan 彭丹

Keynote: “Let us Assign the Essay its Proper Place in Chinese Literature!”

Martin Woesler

Abstract

The literary-historical narrative told by anthologies and collections of the 20th century has drawn an incomplete picture of Chinese literature: The genre of the essay was lacking. We are used to the established narratives of C.T. Hsia, Průšek, and Anderson, which let Chinese literature appear overshadowed by its elder brother, fiction. The latter has been prized ever since the valuing of fictional literature and the vernacularization of writing in early Republican China, which followed from the master narrative established by the May 4th movement.

Let me name a few reasons, why the essay in fact is as abundant as its prose brother, fiction, and its lyrical sister, poetry, and why it must be valued as highly:

Peng Juan 彭娟

•The essay had a direct impact on Chinese society throughout history. The impact of the essay genre, with its direct language, its connection to life, and its direct access to the individual reader through newspapers, was larger than the indirect effects of fiction or poetry.

•The essay also reflects trends in society better than poetry and fiction. Individualism is expressed in the essay more directly than in the poem, which is limited in content and form. Ephemerality is reflected in the short form of the essay, which may be read in the subway on the way to work, where poems may not be so spontaneously enjoyed.

Peng Ruihong 彭锐宏

•The essay reaches a larger part of the population than poetry, and does not require the large amount of time spent on reading novels. The essay itself is a genre of high actuality, if not simply the genre of today.

•The volume of essay production exceeds the volume of xiaoshuo production.

Can the picture of Chinese literature remain unchanged if we take the essay into consideration? As stated above, there is a large contrast between the true value and the current valuing of the essay. Let us assign the essay its proper place!

Peng Xiaoling 彭小玲

The unknown genre

The literary-historical narrative told by anthologies and collections of the 20th century has drawn an incomplete picture of Chinese literature: The genre of the essay was lacking. The genre has been neglected for a long time as a genre of merit (Margouliès 1949, Schmidt-Glintzer 1990) or overlooked (McNaughton 1974, Leiden 1988-90); whereas its elder brother, fiction, has been prized ever since the valuing of fictional literature and the vernacularisation of writing in early Republican China, which followed from the master narrative established by the May 4th movement. Modern anthologies would have the reader believe that a triumvirate of poetry, fiction and drama forms the backbone of modern Chinese literary output.

Peng Yongliang 彭永亮

Two times in the 20th century the Chinese essay was flourishing, first in the 1920s and 1930s, then in the 1980s and 1990s.

Analysis reveals a general increase in essay publication after 1979 with two peaks immediately after the 'Cultural Revolution'. The publications apparently reaching a new height in 1990. The first increase came about in the 1920s and 1930s, after which the essay's role was eclipsed by the genre of the report (baogao wenxue, see works of Laughlin, Klaschka). The flourishing of essay publication in the 1920/30s and 1980/90s was helped in part by the ap�pearance of new magazines that existed chiefly as vehicles for contemporary essayists, and nu�merous sanwen congshu 散文丛书 (essay bookseries).

The increase in essay production right after the clear-cutting of the ‘Cultural Revolution’ has been the backlog of demand, which is reflected in 1 million copies of essay collections being printed between 1980 and 1982 - only counting the collections contai�ned in a sampling of 130 ‘representative’ books I was able to collect for a survey.

Peng Yuzhi 彭育志

Thanks to the work of some major Chinese editors, the whole essay culture was compiled from magazines and newspapers and was published in a flood of anthologies since the 1970s. This boom is comparable to the cultural fever of undigging xiangtu literature, which rose in Taiwan in front of the background of the movement of self-identification and independance.

Let me name a few reasons, why the essay in fact is as abundant as its prose brother, fiction, and its lyrical sister, poetry, and why it must be valued as highly:

The essay had a direct impact on Chinese society throughout history (the reform ideas from the end of the Qing dynasty through the May Fourth period with the literary theorethical pieces and the daily political zawen of Lu Xun, until today are mostly presented in essay form).

Qi Kai 漆凯

The impact on literary reflection and theory is shown in the collection Modern Chinese Literary Thought 1996 (see Denton). The effect of the essay genre with its direct language, its connection to life (e.g. its role in the coming to terms with the cultural revolution), and its direct access to the individual reader through newspapers. This impact is larger than the indirect one of fiction or poetry. The poem is the genre of retreat from social life, from political issues and time references.

Hu Shi argues, that poetry is most important in the process of modernity, since poetry rises emotions. But it relies also on images and on linguistic rhythm. Liang Qichao stresses the role of novel and opera in the changing society. But sanwen is able to name things, it reflects life, caleidoscopic. Modern subjectivity is constructed with the tool of sanwen.

Qu Miao 瞿淼

The essay also reflects trends in the society better than poetry and fiction: Individualism is expressed in the essay more directly than in the poem with its limitation in content and form. Ephemerality is reflected in the short form of the essay, which may be read in the subway on the way to work, where poems may not be so spontaneously enjoyed.

- The essay reaches a larger part of the population than poetry, the amount of time spended on reading novels goes back, too. The essay itself a genre of high actuality, if not simply the genre of today.

- The essay tells us more about an author and his time than fiction or poetry, because in this genre, we encounter the author himself without metrical restrictions. We look trough authentic eyes on his contemporary society. Many authors turned to essay writing in the later periods of their lives, like Lu Xun, Ba Jin, and Wang Meng.

Quan Meixin 全美欣

-The volume of essay production exceeds the volume of xiaoshuo production: Chinese newspapers since the 1870s on[ Shenbao, Shibao, etc. Liang Qichao sees the role of the newspaper both as liberal and authoritative: He understands the press as an institution to control the government, on the other hand he favors censorship.] and as a mass media from the early 20th century presented only one or two fictional stories in a serialized form, but invented essay columns like zagan (from which Lu Xun developed his zawen), suibi or suixiang (from which famous collections like Ba Jin's Suixiang lu derived).

Let us assign the essay its proper place The consequence which must be derived from the above presented contrast between value and valuing of the essay is: Let us assign the essay its proper place!

Taking into consideration the essay will rewrite the history of Chinese literature I will name a few points to illustrate what the essay can contribute to the picture of Chinese Literature, which so far is overshadowed by fiction through the narrative of C.T. Hsia, Pršek and Anderson.

Sagara Seydou

We are used to established narratives, like the emergence and success of the May-Fourth literature. But this view neglects the role, that for example the yuanyang hudie pai played in the choir of different voices in the awoken intellectual debate in the beginning of this century. The May-Fourth group at that time was one voice among many and only succeeded because of its agitation and polemic in the public sphere, so we have to use new means to assign the Chinese essay its proper place. We learn from simplifiying narratives, that it is absolutely necessary to differentiate, and to reconstruct the complex time background. Having understood Chinese literature as determined by the development of fiction and poetry only, a broader understanding will change the whole appearance of Chinese literature. A scholarly endeavour is the use of modern literary theories in the approach to this genre.

Shi Diwen 石迪文

In the following, I will name two aspects (chronologically sorted by past, and modern times) to promote the argument, that the taking into consideration of the essay will rewrite the history of Chinese literature and change our current understanding of it.

1. The classical and premodern essay documents Chinese philosophy, early subjectivity and still, a native Chinese tradition is questioned How is the Chinese essay to be positioned historically, how did it emerge, what is its generic background? Generically, the ancestors of the essay both in China and the West are notes written in the margins of books, as well as letters and travel notes saved. These notes differed from the canonized literature through its informal style, its expression of individuality and subjectivity, a much earlier document for subjectivity than the first autobiographical Chinese novel, The Dream of the Red Chamber.

Shi Haiyao 石海瑶

From the very beginning, the essay was valued lower than poetry: the oldest reference[ This is older than the ones referred to in Morohashi, 5:529a / sequential page counting 5167a, and in the The Encyclopaedic Dictionary of the Chinese Language, vol. 73c / s.p.c. 6137c.] this far for the term sanwen that I found is Luo Dajing's 羅大經 (? - after 1248) statement from 1240: “Shī sāomiào tiānxià, ér sǎnwén pōjué suǒsuì júcù. 詩騷妙天下，而散文頗覺瑣碎局促。” (Poetry is moving mankind in a wonderful way, prose inquires into incoherent bagatells, is limited. Luo Dajing 14:Baihai:1). Another reproach Luo Dajing mentions, is a formal one: In comparison to the highly artistic and century-long tradition of poetic writing, the direct and often vernacular langage of the essay in his eyes had less value.