By Glen Loveland

History is loaded with examples of well-intentioned foreigners who decided they need to save China from itself. Businessmen, politicians, missionaries, soldiers, students, and others have sought to impose Western attitudes on the Chinese to help them see the “error” of their ways. Perhaps it’s only natural that people want to remake society based on their experience of what is “right.”

But as is often the case, such good intentions often fall short between nations with vastly different cultures and experiences.

The Chinese are pragmatic and have always been eager to accept Western technical advice, but have always clung steadfastly to their own methods and beliefs. Chinese people have a style and attitude that are uniquely their own.

Let’s face it: some of the “advice” that Western governments have tried to give China has not only been shortsighted, it has also contributed to the world’s current economic downturn.

Consider the visit of Bush administration Treasury Secretary John Snow to Sichuan Province in October 2005. While visiting Mulan village, he urged China “to take lessons from the US on how to spend more, borrow more, and save less.” Fortunately for China, they didn’t listen.

It’s quite common for foreigners on their first trip to China to be confounded by some of the ways China operates. For example, when I first arrived in China, I was amazed at how often meetings can be planned with little or no notice. I remember a colleague inviting a man from Shaanxi Province to fly to Beijing for a meeting the next day.

I thought, “That’ll never happen. The notice is too short.” Imagine my surprise when the gentleman arrived in Beijing the next day. In time, I let go of my generally Western attitude that everything must be carefully planned weeks in advance. China’s flexibility and approach to scheduling were a major advantage to a developing country.

The global economic crisis revealed a larger truth: the West has much to learn from China. The myth that China needs more from the West has been shattered.
his doesn’t mean that countries or individuals need to abandon their principles or long-held convictions about genuine disagreements in approaches or policy. But it does mean in this new era that everyone from presidents to everyday citizens needs to approach each problem with a new perspective. We should learn from each other.

Many people in Asian countries believe that the past 500 years of Western military and political dominance have made the West intellectually and morally arrogant. The recession forces Western audiences to consider the possibility that another valid approach to thinking about the world exists, not only in economic matters, but with every challenge confronting our world.

When the US President Richard Nixon made the historic voyage to China in 1972, there was a belief that China’s challenges were so massive that the country’s inevitable rise would be gradual at best. By the late 1990s, however, China’s sustained, unprecedented growth made everyone realize that China would do things its own way.

That doesn’t mean that China’s policy is infallible. Indeed, the Chinese people continue to look outside their own country for solutions to some of their most pressing problems. The Chinese government announces new economic, military, scientific, education and cultural exchanges every day – not only with Western nations, but also their Asian neighbors. These policies underscore a real commitment to learning from and taking the best the world has to offer. It’s just common sense.

It also means that the changes coming to China in all realms of its society will be uniquely Chinese and may not resemble anything the West has known. That doesn’t mean that these ways are wrong. It means that China is continuing its own evolution and era of experimentation. It’s not hard to imagine a time in the near future when the West looks to China for more and more answers to some of its own vexing problems.

Make no mistake: China will continue to utilize the best the West has to offer. But the days of the West arrogantly dictating to the Chinese people the “proper” course of action are long gone. It has (hopefully) been replaced by a world with more dialogue, cooperation and a genuine desire to learn from each other. As more and more foreigners discover China, they also realize a simple truth: you can’t change China; China changes you.

The author is a marketing representative for the University of Massachusetts