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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (75390)	3/2/2000 6:05:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Nations don't do business. People do. Anyone who expects a government to honor its agreements is a fool. The Communists point out that the British forced China to cede Hong Kong at the cannon's mouth. Let the Qing Dynasty carry out its agreements. Both Queen Victoria and the Old Buddha are long dead and out of power. As for America, you understand that the Court of Claims Act had to be passed because no one could make the United States government pay its bills, and no one would make agreements with the U.S. government. Doing business with most Americans is usually quite safe (despite the criminality of our government), not because of our race or heritage, or because we might be sued, but because we expect to do business again and again. I do business with individual Chinese because of my experience, and also because of the knowledge that most Chinese have a traditional sense of family honor, learned through centuries where going to law was useless and humiliating. When a Confucian gentleman makes an agreement, one doesn't need fancy written contracts. A gentleman's word to agree to agree is more than enough. One reason most Chinese (and Japanese) business men dislike dealing with most Americans is that they are not members of the Confucian moral universe. We display a streak of legalism. We try to enforce contracts when it is to our advantage even when it is immoral for us to do so. When an American demonstrates that he understands and respects honor (i.e. reciprocity), he enters a moral world where each accepts his duty to carry out his word whatever the consequences. My grandfather lost a fortune in the panic of 1907. He was discharged of debt by bankruptcy with nothing left. He spent the rest of his life paying off his discharged debts, and handed the debit balance on to his children as debts of honor for them to pay. By today's standards he was a fool. A very Chinese thing to do, but in those days it was also an American thing to do.