I'm a 7 decades old guy American, living in Wuhan and West Hubei approximately 15 years. The piece has an interesting take on what it's like in America. I would not call America high trust. I would call it a high gullibility society. To explain that in a Substack comments section is more than I'm inspired to do. Americans have entirely whacky ideas about China and Chinese society, and China has equally whacky ideas about America and American society.
I enjoyed the piece, but I would be careful making such broad based assumptions. Both places are too complicated for simple binary descriptions.
A "high gullibility society" has a nicer ring to it!
Point taken. I guess one thing I didn't comment on is that I perceive the "societal trust" level is on the decline in the US for the past decades, so it's possible the relative difference of "trust levels" between the two societies is getting smaller and smaller and may be imperceptible at some point (maybe it is already)
The declining trust level part is probably true, but the window for seeing America is more about class and less about trust. It may well be that folks are seeing class distinctions more clearly with an accompanying decline in trust. IOW, they're (we're?) becoming less gullible.
America likes to consider itself classless, but that's a sham. Perceived class bestows or withholds trust, whether the individual or entity involved is trustworthy or not.
Interesting ideas. I have to think about this more. Nice work.
I believe the author is writing about society and P2P relationships, not the government.
The government does not have to be analyzed; it has not trusted its own people for millennia. Research the secret societies and surveillance “police” in the ancient dynasties, and especially the Ming and Qing. They were a significant percentage of the population. This is nothing new, just better and more tech, not to mention everyone is on WeChat.
in the u.s. i rarely count my change or even inspect credit card slips, e.g. in a restaurant. i assume it's accurate. i routinely notice the same behavior in others. when i travel outside the country i'm more careful. call me gullible if you wish, but where else can one be so casual about the honesty of others?
At Nanhu Market in Wuhan, Wuchang District near JinFa Unit. My Chinese is lousy, so I often hand the phone (all payments are through WeChat app) to the farmer selling his vegetables and they tally it up for me. I double check with my wife, and they're always honest and get it right. Also, the vegetable lady in our neighborhood...same thing. I call her 老师. She teaches me Chinese hand sign numbers while helping me navigate payment. I can easily imagine Chinese screwing other Chinese. They seem to like me, the only laowai in the market. Maybe because I'm the novelty.
For authorities, if punishment is unpredictable, then power is unfathomable刑不可知则威不可测; or they just make harshest laws to leave some leeway for themselves. But for ordinary people, it is just the other way around.
It's interesting what a century plus of humiliations and wealth destruction can cause. The early accounts of the Western traders in Huangpu/Guangzhou, before the establishment of Hong Kong and large scale opium trade, was that the Chinese merchants were scrupulous in keeping their word, better than their experiences in their home countries, in part because no one wanted to turn to the imperial courts to settle any dispute.
Interesting comment! I have to say some Chinese local communities form tight super-high-trust sub societies, something I will comment on for the next article.
It's a big part of the success of overseas Chinese in South East Asia, where the locals/natives have extremely low levels of trust, so much so that their ruling elite would rather deal with the expat Chinese families.
The first time I heard of China being a low-trust society, I dismissed it as propaganda. The reason is that I lived 21 years in the US (after growing up in Europe) and then 5 years in China and my personal experience is that I see more trust in China. For example, in China, every morning there are deliveries of food supplies that are left on the street, in front of the restaurants, sometimes hours before the first restaurant employees arrive. This would be unthinkable in the US or Europe. The supplies would all be gone well before the restaurant personnel arrive. Other example: I often saw young students leave their bags and coats on the street unattended while going on a run for several km, and they expect to find them when they return half an hour later. This would be totally impossible in the US or in Europe. In China, I left my bicycle unlocked most of the time and nothing ever happened to it. In the US, my bicycle got stolen while fully locked. So, my understanding is that Chinese people trust each other not to take what is not theirs, which is not the case for US or European people.
The phenomenon of Chinese people unafraid to leaving stuff on the table deserves a discussion indeed. I may touch on this in Part 2
Some initial thoughts:
1. Again, video surveillance is a key factor here. 15 years ago, pre-camera, I lost phones and bikes very regularly.
2. It's one thing to leave stuff on the table trusting the surveillance cameras to protect you, but another thing if you come into the same restaurant, asking total strangers to help you do something, like answering a survey, answering a question, asking for favor. Success rate is not high. There was a funny video of Lei Jun asking random pedestrians for surveys in 2013 (he was not famous back then, now he is the richest person) It's like total rejections before he even starts.
I can't agree with most of the key arguments in this article. Having grown up in China and spent over a decade living in the West, I wouldn't describe the West as a high-trust society (perhaps it was 50 years ago but I wasn’t around then). Likewise, business dealings with foreign counterparts have never been as straightforward as the article suggests. In fact my first business project involved a British investor committing fraud while forming a JV with a local Chinese partner due to the common myth of "foreigners are trustworthy". Given the quality of your other pieces, I'm surprised by how quickly conclusions were drawn. I hope parts 2 and 3 offer a more nuanced perspective.
I guess we are having different personal experiences here, and maybe I am wrong, but when I deal with business counterparts from these two cultural backgrounds, I do feel the distinct differences between the "trust-worthy until proven" mode and "not trust-worthy until proven" mode. And understanding that China falls in the latter category helps me personally understand a lot of features of China's society.
But, one thing I didn't comment on was whether the West had become higher-trust or lower-trust. It seems, West has declined in terms of trust. One of my friends was born in China but emigrated to Canada and lived there for almost 2 decades, but recently relocated to Asia. He told me he witnessed how Canada crumbled from a high-trust society to a low-trust one because of bad choices. So it's possible the Western society is no longer a high-trust society either, and I won't be qualified to opine on that.
Still, if you disregard the issue whether the West is "high-trust" or "higher-trust" than China, you could see this series of essays as a discussion of what "low-trust" society is and how to operate in such an environment.
Yes, I have witnessed the decline of trust in N. American culture. My father was of the pre-WWII generation and lived in a society of high trust and integrity - business was conducted on a handshake and your word was your bond. My ‘Boomer’ generation lost trust in our government during the Vietnam War and the exposure of the blatant and calculated lies from the government until then sordid House of Cards collapsed. Later, “Tricky Dickey” Nixon had to resign his Presidency in shame.
A sense of collective cynicism has prevailed since then with President Bush’s subterfuge in Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Our nativity has transformed into the pervasiveness of cynicism and despair - willingly selecting a convicted felon and an administration of scoundrels to inflict “retribution” on fellow citizens. We now trust that “it takes a thief to catch a thief.”
My father’s generation would be horrified to witness what we’ve become.
I would remind you that Blacks and Whites were not allowed to go to school together in your father's generation, black men were murdered for trying to date white women, and LGBTQ were subject to lobotomies.
Obviously the US is far from perfect, and is in the middle of a particularly dark period, but it's important to remember that the US has been like this all along.
We are not discussing racism, but trust in commercial relationships and society in general. The whole counterculture movement, spawned in response to the Vietnam War, included civil rights, feminism, and wealth disparity. Naively we trusted our leaders to carry the integrity of the nation forward after WWII and that did not happen. The Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King were brutally assassinated and the trust was repeatedly broken.
The other day, I was explaining to a Chinese student that Americans generally do not trust nor admire their government, unlike the Chinese who generally have a favorable opinion of their government and the professional level of their leadership and dedicated bureaucrats. A total government meltdown like we're experiencing is unthinkable in modern China. Today, China has more public trust than we currently possess.
Right. I read these essays with great interest, but folks imagining America as high trust must have had a very selective experience, and were additionally very selective in their reading of history. I am (was) a small business person and I've been screwed, or experienced someone trying to screw me, by the best people. It's not entirely coincidental that those with the most money were the highest probability for me getting jammed. The lower the socioeconomic status, the less likely I was to get screwed.
Everything is the same everywhere, and it gets shunted into political narratives that rise or fall according to which way the wind is blowing.
To give Robert his due credit, he never mentions America (or the United States). He references The West, but that also includes Europe, which is very different from the US.
I was responding to the author above about his nostalgia for an America that never actually existed. But, as for Robert's essay, he could be talking about Italy for all its relevant.
Trump is a close representative of the pond scum level of ethics in NY and most USA real estate development business. You've circulated in the banking and venture capital business which has much higher standards, ala J.P. Morgan, a market manipulator, but one with a iron clad reputation for keeping his word.
“No sir. The first thing is character. Before money or anything else. Money cannot buy it...Because a man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom."
In this he was like the early Chinese Merchants of Guangzhou that I mentioned earlier.
In 1986 in 汉中， Hanzhong in Shaanxi, police stopped me from “disorderly photography”. I was taking a picture of a tiny ramshackle dentist’s office with curtains instead of windows and a set of false teeth in a window sill.
In Goat Home Mountain nearby, three police in a new Beijing Jeep stopped me and denied me access to a morning market alongside a stretch of road. The day before I had purchased a small melon for a few pennies without haggling and people were talking about how rich I must be.
I had to stand at the gate of Work Unit 182 and enlist friends to buy items for me.
Laws were unwritten and so vague, any policeman could arrest any person at any time for something.
The grandma egg story is amusing. The real irony is that, by being overly concerned about the perception that she stole the eggs, she ended up stealing the eggs! haha.
The rest I read and enjoyed without commentary. Just absorbed.
Years ago a tottler was run over by vans, twice on a busy street, Dongguan was the city and 2011 the year if memory serves me. The whole episode was captured on video. No one dared to help the child for the longest time, finally an old lady pulled the child to the side of the road and was about to run off in fear of being blamed when the parents finally showed up. Lucky for the old lady the parents were understanding and ashamed of their own failings. This whole episode exposed a trust problem that everyone who lived in China at that time knew festered in China. It's probably too late for Robert to use it, but I think it exposes both the issue and how sometimes it can be addressed/made better.
I remember that episode being played on a continuous loop in the States.
A few years ago, in Enshi, Hubei, I witnessed a young girl get whacked hard in a traffic intersection and it sent her flying. I ran into the intersection where she was laying limp, and directed traffic around her while yelling for an ambulance. Most folks just kept going, but I could see the guilt on their faces...they wanted to stop but something kept them from doing so. Even my wife was kind of like..."let's just go, someone will take care of it"... and I was kinda stunned. Finally, someone called an ambulance, it arrived, it was all taken care of, the girl appeared to be OK.
It's a different situation in China. The trust component is complicated.
I am an ethnic Chinese who has lived in the United States for more than 30 years. Lei Feng was a hero when I was in the elementary school, a distant memory. So, when I saw video messages about Lei Feng in a HuangShan resort elevator on my most recent (earlier this month) China trip, I was genuinely surprised. I have mixed feelings about it - bad if this was an indication of ramped up government propaganda; good if this was a sign of an effort to improve society moral standard.
There were a lot of those messages plastered all over the place, and now they're mostly gone. The ones you see are tattered and usually in some out of the way alcove on a side street. Big Daddy was putting on the push for societal moral improvement and I'm guessing some underling with minimal brain capacity decided to brown nose the leader by going back into the archives for something that would resonate with the old guy. It became a joke way more than anything young people responded to.
I saw it as benignly pathetic. Young people now have seen the outside, they're knowledgeable about lots of things, and appealing to them with 1950's type propagnda pretty much got nothing but derision. The young people I know were embarrassed by it. They couldn't believe their government was so tone deaf.
After this incident there was a movement to bring "Good Samaritan" laws into China's legal system, and there was a bit of debate as education through the printed press as well, but it takes a continued effort to achieve this sort of "cultural revolution", and I suspect the effort was not kept up as Beijing had higher priority problems. The real change will only occur if the government creates a curriculum in public education starting "Good Samaritan" thinking at the elementary level. My children are adults and I moved out of China more than 10 years ago so I can't follow up. It's odd how the spirit of Lei Feng didn't work it's way into this area.
I'm confident I'd do what you did, and not think anything about it in Shenzhen or any big city, but for now even I, a privileged foreign expert, be more than a little worried about being the target of a shakedown by local officials in rural areas. It's one reason why I always hired a car and driver, even though I had a driving license.
You got that right. The cadres in the rural areas are a big problem, but becoming less of one. They are the folks holding up rural land reforms which keep the farmers continually at the bottom of the China economic ladder. Until their fiefdoms of village and communal ownership...controlled by them of course...are carved up, the economic benefits of China's opening up will not be realized by rural residents.
When I'm out in the countryside, I get the side eye from those guys. They see outsiders and don't like it, but it's changing. As a laowai, I have a little bit of leeway, but I know where the lines are drawn and don't overstep.
Edit... I have a car and drivers license. When I pull into a village and get out of the car, the sight of a laowai driving into their village is so strange for them, they kinda give me leeway. It's so outside their conceptions of the world, they just give me that side eye look but never mess with me. I always smile and wave at them. If I was there on a regular basis, I'd be more nervous. As it is, they don't know if I've got some sort of dispensation from higher up, so they don't mess with me...yet.
Also, Lei Feng... I'm always helping someone out with little things; it's how I am. My friends all laugh and call me Lei Feng. Lei Feng is like a joke for everyone.
Another interesting piece of work Robert! My thanks!! I'll leave the discussion of trust to others.
I wanted to highlight the issue of selective application of the law. That strikes me (Western educated) as dangerous, with far reaching implications.
When a non Chinese person or entity considers whether to invest in a Chinese company, any discretion in the law is scary. While the Chinese government might give leeway to most Chinese most of the time, a foreign investor would need to be more concerned.
An example might be in the conflict of laws challenge of a Hong Kong issued bond, sold to foreigners, secured by assets in China. Will the security interests in China be secure for a foreign investor? Or will other considerations, such as the occupant or local government's interest in that property? I think you can see which party will benefit from discretion and which will not.
very interesting read Robert! I'd recommend the book Deep China - Moral Life of the Person by Arthur Kleinman, one of my favourites. I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on the "absolute trust/expectation of loyalty and duty" within family/known society 我们, vs the "low-trust" other/strangers society 他们 you focus your analysis on here. it seems to me that china operates roughly on these two extremes. whereas western societies don't seem to make that distinction - including less loyal to family..?
I agree. Chinese people's "over"-trust of people close to us may be equally matched by our under-trust of strangers. This is the topic I think I need to flesh out a bit more. And some topics in Part 2 and Part 3 are related to this.
Interesting. The high and low trust frame is useful.
From my (rather non extensive) knowledge of Chinese history, vague Chinese laws have been the norm.
The laws often relied on (having faith in) the ethical judgment of scholar-officials for interpretation and enforcement. This vagueness, of course, allowed for not only justice, but also corruption: officials could use their discretion to interpret laws in various ways.
Hi, I think your characterisation of China as a “low trust” society is “state dependent”; it would be wrong (I think) to view the low trust as an inherent characteristic of Chinese society. The low trust seems to be due to China’s recent emergence from desperate living conditions. I feel sure that within one or two more generations, low trust will no longer be an issue.
Let me offer Singapore as an example. Singaporeans were once low trust, but Singaporeans today are high trust. I can see the behavioural difference between Singaporeans and Malaysians, and I would think GDP per capita explains much of the difference. Even in Malaysia, I think trust is rising and higher than it once was a few generations ago.
(That said, I am ignoring the problem of illegal migrant workers in Malaysia. I don’t blame the migrant workers; they live in desperate conditions. We don’t live in a perfect world.)
I can certainly agree that high-trust societies exist. We used to see them in (Social Democratic) Scandinavian Societies and I have been told that even there things are changing.
And a typical illustration used to be that they did not lock the front door of their houses when they left.
But something funny seems to happen: now there are reports from China that people leave their phone (i.e. their wallet) at their place when going to the toilet. And we are told that this is because of all the surveillance cameras. Isn't this an example of trust that will be hard to find in the West?
Hi M Blu, those reports are correct. I leave my laptop and phone on the table all the time for toilet. But it’s purely because of the cameras. Only 15 years ago, pre-camera, I lost bikes and phones frequently.
I believe when Robert says "purely because of the cameras" he is referring to the <rapid, consistent, and inevitable> enforcement of the law that they enable, not the cameras themselves.
[Western] criminology research suggests that the certainty of punishment -compared to severity- has a stronger deterrent effect on lower level crimes like theft. In this sphere China has become higher trust because of the clarity and consistency of the whole process: Instead of trusting strangers to not want to take your stuff, you trust (a) if they do they WILL be caught (b) that they understand this, so they won't take your stuff. This is in contrast to China's business sphere which is still low trust due to vagueness of laws and selective enforcement of widespread noncompliance. Meanwhile, in the West (London, American cities) this sphere is seeing a decrease in trust as people do not believe the police can or want to do their jobs.
In Thailand, outside of the big cities at least, people leave their things unattended most everywhere. Many outdoor stores just put a fabric fence around their products when they close. Idle running cars, motorbikes with keys in, helmets and groceries hang out ng off the mirrors.
If I'm not travelling far I will leave my house open. I have non-working security cameras and what I call ‘auntie surveillance’ - the local gossips who know everything that happens here.
No not really. Some places are less safe than others, but I typically leave my gear when I go to the bathroom and nothing happens. Enough people are around to know that it's mine and a strange person grabbing it is probably theft.
I enjoyed this piece, but I did not understand the point of their story about the Lady Banker and her American client. Did she speak evasively with them because she did not trust them to understand? Could you please explain the relevance of that anecdote to your low trust theme.
It is interesting that business can continue to thrive in an environment where it is possible for the government to imprison just about anybody at any time. In the United States it is much easier for those accused of crime two flee successfully either by going abroad or assuming a new identity in another state.
That conversation is not directly linked with the "low-trust" theme, but the social security non-compliance is. The fact that it's a "small" issue, yet it is really hard to explain, suggests to me that there is a difference in how Chinese people vs western people look at these things.
Also, I think it’s really bad to have laws that are not enforced. It’s better if the government were to formally give a blanket exemption to small scale businesses and enforce the contribution obligations strictly.
Also, there is an unfortunate vicious feedback loop at work. If everyone paid contributions, the small businesses would compete with each other on a level playing field. So forcing all small businesses to comply would make the contributions viable. The contributions become unviable because the small firms have to compete with non-compliant firms. So this matter really needs to be fixed. Either exempt all small businesses or enforce it strictly!
When you say that not paying social security contributions is considered a “small issue” in China, is it because the workers have been told upfront that the firm they are working for will not be able to make the social security contributions? It is one thing to know in advance that social security contributions will not be made as a condition of employment, another to be misled that contributions will be made but are in fact not made. The latter would be a “serious issue” indeed.
Or, those accused of high crimes can get elected POTUS and virtually be immune from prosecution. “I could shoot someone in the middle of Times Square and not lose any votes.”
"Immunity from prosecution", in this case, lay with the weasel Senators afraid for their own worthless asses that refused to impeach. Everyone knew it was wrong. Their primary concern was keeping their job; they knew they'd get primaried out of office if they voted to impeach.
A majority vote of the American people elected Trump. We are all to blame for this travesty. There are still many who gleefully embrace the degradation and destruction of our government. We are all complicit.
Yes, but The People™ wouldn't have been able to vote the guy in if the Senate had done the job they knew they should have done. Voters are wildly and willfully uninformed on anything that matters. The Senate, theoretically, is the opposite. We are ruled by a Parliament of Whores.
Yes, and it was the “Citizens United” ruling that created the pimps who now own the whores. Our system of government is corrupt, broken, and dysfunctional. Even the lowest informed citizens realize this and voted to give MAGA the mandate and the power to destroy the system. It has become increasingly obvious that the American “experiment” has failed. The Republic is dead, long live the Republic…
Quite interesting and entertaining, but...
I'm a 7 decades old guy American, living in Wuhan and West Hubei approximately 15 years. The piece has an interesting take on what it's like in America. I would not call America high trust. I would call it a high gullibility society. To explain that in a Substack comments section is more than I'm inspired to do. Americans have entirely whacky ideas about China and Chinese society, and China has equally whacky ideas about America and American society.
I enjoyed the piece, but I would be careful making such broad based assumptions. Both places are too complicated for simple binary descriptions.
A "high gullibility society" has a nicer ring to it!
Point taken. I guess one thing I didn't comment on is that I perceive the "societal trust" level is on the decline in the US for the past decades, so it's possible the relative difference of "trust levels" between the two societies is getting smaller and smaller and may be imperceptible at some point (maybe it is already)
The declining trust level part is probably true, but the window for seeing America is more about class and less about trust. It may well be that folks are seeing class distinctions more clearly with an accompanying decline in trust. IOW, they're (we're?) becoming less gullible.
America likes to consider itself classless, but that's a sham. Perceived class bestows or withholds trust, whether the individual or entity involved is trustworthy or not.
Interesting ideas. I have to think about this more. Nice work.
Probably true!? There's over a billion government cameras in China. Please.
I believe the author is writing about society and P2P relationships, not the government.
The government does not have to be analyzed; it has not trusted its own people for millennia. Research the secret societies and surveillance “police” in the ancient dynasties, and especially the Ming and Qing. They were a significant percentage of the population. This is nothing new, just better and more tech, not to mention everyone is on WeChat.
in the u.s. i rarely count my change or even inspect credit card slips, e.g. in a restaurant. i assume it's accurate. i routinely notice the same behavior in others. when i travel outside the country i'm more careful. call me gullible if you wish, but where else can one be so casual about the honesty of others?
At Nanhu Market in Wuhan, Wuchang District near JinFa Unit. My Chinese is lousy, so I often hand the phone (all payments are through WeChat app) to the farmer selling his vegetables and they tally it up for me. I double check with my wife, and they're always honest and get it right. Also, the vegetable lady in our neighborhood...same thing. I call her 老师. She teaches me Chinese hand sign numbers while helping me navigate payment. I can easily imagine Chinese screwing other Chinese. They seem to like me, the only laowai in the market. Maybe because I'm the novelty.
thank you for your commet
For authorities, if punishment is unpredictable, then power is unfathomable刑不可知则威不可测; or they just make harshest laws to leave some leeway for themselves. But for ordinary people, it is just the other way around.
It's interesting what a century plus of humiliations and wealth destruction can cause. The early accounts of the Western traders in Huangpu/Guangzhou, before the establishment of Hong Kong and large scale opium trade, was that the Chinese merchants were scrupulous in keeping their word, better than their experiences in their home countries, in part because no one wanted to turn to the imperial courts to settle any dispute.
Interesting comment! I have to say some Chinese local communities form tight super-high-trust sub societies, something I will comment on for the next article.
It's a big part of the success of overseas Chinese in South East Asia, where the locals/natives have extremely low levels of trust, so much so that their ruling elite would rather deal with the expat Chinese families.
The first time I heard of China being a low-trust society, I dismissed it as propaganda. The reason is that I lived 21 years in the US (after growing up in Europe) and then 5 years in China and my personal experience is that I see more trust in China. For example, in China, every morning there are deliveries of food supplies that are left on the street, in front of the restaurants, sometimes hours before the first restaurant employees arrive. This would be unthinkable in the US or Europe. The supplies would all be gone well before the restaurant personnel arrive. Other example: I often saw young students leave their bags and coats on the street unattended while going on a run for several km, and they expect to find them when they return half an hour later. This would be totally impossible in the US or in Europe. In China, I left my bicycle unlocked most of the time and nothing ever happened to it. In the US, my bicycle got stolen while fully locked. So, my understanding is that Chinese people trust each other not to take what is not theirs, which is not the case for US or European people.
The phenomenon of Chinese people unafraid to leaving stuff on the table deserves a discussion indeed. I may touch on this in Part 2
Some initial thoughts:
1. Again, video surveillance is a key factor here. 15 years ago, pre-camera, I lost phones and bikes very regularly.
2. It's one thing to leave stuff on the table trusting the surveillance cameras to protect you, but another thing if you come into the same restaurant, asking total strangers to help you do something, like answering a survey, answering a question, asking for favor. Success rate is not high. There was a funny video of Lei Jun asking random pedestrians for surveys in 2013 (he was not famous back then, now he is the richest person) It's like total rejections before he even starts.
I can't agree with most of the key arguments in this article. Having grown up in China and spent over a decade living in the West, I wouldn't describe the West as a high-trust society (perhaps it was 50 years ago but I wasn’t around then). Likewise, business dealings with foreign counterparts have never been as straightforward as the article suggests. In fact my first business project involved a British investor committing fraud while forming a JV with a local Chinese partner due to the common myth of "foreigners are trustworthy". Given the quality of your other pieces, I'm surprised by how quickly conclusions were drawn. I hope parts 2 and 3 offer a more nuanced perspective.
I guess we are having different personal experiences here, and maybe I am wrong, but when I deal with business counterparts from these two cultural backgrounds, I do feel the distinct differences between the "trust-worthy until proven" mode and "not trust-worthy until proven" mode. And understanding that China falls in the latter category helps me personally understand a lot of features of China's society.
But, one thing I didn't comment on was whether the West had become higher-trust or lower-trust. It seems, West has declined in terms of trust. One of my friends was born in China but emigrated to Canada and lived there for almost 2 decades, but recently relocated to Asia. He told me he witnessed how Canada crumbled from a high-trust society to a low-trust one because of bad choices. So it's possible the Western society is no longer a high-trust society either, and I won't be qualified to opine on that.
Still, if you disregard the issue whether the West is "high-trust" or "higher-trust" than China, you could see this series of essays as a discussion of what "low-trust" society is and how to operate in such an environment.
Yes, I have witnessed the decline of trust in N. American culture. My father was of the pre-WWII generation and lived in a society of high trust and integrity - business was conducted on a handshake and your word was your bond. My ‘Boomer’ generation lost trust in our government during the Vietnam War and the exposure of the blatant and calculated lies from the government until then sordid House of Cards collapsed. Later, “Tricky Dickey” Nixon had to resign his Presidency in shame.
A sense of collective cynicism has prevailed since then with President Bush’s subterfuge in Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Our nativity has transformed into the pervasiveness of cynicism and despair - willingly selecting a convicted felon and an administration of scoundrels to inflict “retribution” on fellow citizens. We now trust that “it takes a thief to catch a thief.”
My father’s generation would be horrified to witness what we’ve become.
I would remind you that Blacks and Whites were not allowed to go to school together in your father's generation, black men were murdered for trying to date white women, and LGBTQ were subject to lobotomies.
Obviously the US is far from perfect, and is in the middle of a particularly dark period, but it's important to remember that the US has been like this all along.
We are not discussing racism, but trust in commercial relationships and society in general. The whole counterculture movement, spawned in response to the Vietnam War, included civil rights, feminism, and wealth disparity. Naively we trusted our leaders to carry the integrity of the nation forward after WWII and that did not happen. The Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King were brutally assassinated and the trust was repeatedly broken.
The other day, I was explaining to a Chinese student that Americans generally do not trust nor admire their government, unlike the Chinese who generally have a favorable opinion of their government and the professional level of their leadership and dedicated bureaucrats. A total government meltdown like we're experiencing is unthinkable in modern China. Today, China has more public trust than we currently possess.
Right. I read these essays with great interest, but folks imagining America as high trust must have had a very selective experience, and were additionally very selective in their reading of history. I am (was) a small business person and I've been screwed, or experienced someone trying to screw me, by the best people. It's not entirely coincidental that those with the most money were the highest probability for me getting jammed. The lower the socioeconomic status, the less likely I was to get screwed.
Everything is the same everywhere, and it gets shunted into political narratives that rise or fall according to which way the wind is blowing.
"History is fantasy, agreed upon."....Bonaparte.
To give Robert his due credit, he never mentions America (or the United States). He references The West, but that also includes Europe, which is very different from the US.
I was responding to the author above about his nostalgia for an America that never actually existed. But, as for Robert's essay, he could be talking about Italy for all its relevant.
True, but in any observation of the West, America obviously comes to mind.
Trump is a close representative of the pond scum level of ethics in NY and most USA real estate development business. You've circulated in the banking and venture capital business which has much higher standards, ala J.P. Morgan, a market manipulator, but one with a iron clad reputation for keeping his word.
“No sir. The first thing is character. Before money or anything else. Money cannot buy it...Because a man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom."
In this he was like the early Chinese Merchants of Guangzhou that I mentioned earlier.
In 1986 in 汉中， Hanzhong in Shaanxi, police stopped me from “disorderly photography”. I was taking a picture of a tiny ramshackle dentist’s office with curtains instead of windows and a set of false teeth in a window sill.
In Goat Home Mountain nearby, three police in a new Beijing Jeep stopped me and denied me access to a morning market alongside a stretch of road. The day before I had purchased a small melon for a few pennies without haggling and people were talking about how rich I must be.
I had to stand at the gate of Work Unit 182 and enlist friends to buy items for me.
Laws were unwritten and so vague, any policeman could arrest any person at any time for something.
Thanks for the comment. I can easily imagine that in the 80s. I think it has improved a lot by now, but the fundamental texture hasn’t changed.
Big changes have occurred!
1. Today officials in 汉中 are not shamed by poverty
2. Today buying a small melon from a street vendor without haggling over pennies is not showing off your wealth
3. Today China’s laws are written down and published.
4. Today the police would know I could hire a lawyer and challenge them in court
5. And today Jeep in China is bankrupt
Lol (about Jeep)
The grandma egg story is amusing. The real irony is that, by being overly concerned about the perception that she stole the eggs, she ended up stealing the eggs! haha.
The rest I read and enjoyed without commentary. Just absorbed.
Years ago a tottler was run over by vans, twice on a busy street, Dongguan was the city and 2011 the year if memory serves me. The whole episode was captured on video. No one dared to help the child for the longest time, finally an old lady pulled the child to the side of the road and was about to run off in fear of being blamed when the parents finally showed up. Lucky for the old lady the parents were understanding and ashamed of their own failings. This whole episode exposed a trust problem that everyone who lived in China at that time knew festered in China. It's probably too late for Robert to use it, but I think it exposes both the issue and how sometimes it can be addressed/made better.
Yeah that’s a good example
I remember that episode being played on a continuous loop in the States.
A few years ago, in Enshi, Hubei, I witnessed a young girl get whacked hard in a traffic intersection and it sent her flying. I ran into the intersection where she was laying limp, and directed traffic around her while yelling for an ambulance. Most folks just kept going, but I could see the guilt on their faces...they wanted to stop but something kept them from doing so. Even my wife was kind of like..."let's just go, someone will take care of it"... and I was kinda stunned. Finally, someone called an ambulance, it arrived, it was all taken care of, the girl appeared to be OK.
It's a different situation in China. The trust component is complicated.
I am an ethnic Chinese who has lived in the United States for more than 30 years. Lei Feng was a hero when I was in the elementary school, a distant memory. So, when I saw video messages about Lei Feng in a HuangShan resort elevator on my most recent (earlier this month) China trip, I was genuinely surprised. I have mixed feelings about it - bad if this was an indication of ramped up government propaganda; good if this was a sign of an effort to improve society moral standard.
There were a lot of those messages plastered all over the place, and now they're mostly gone. The ones you see are tattered and usually in some out of the way alcove on a side street. Big Daddy was putting on the push for societal moral improvement and I'm guessing some underling with minimal brain capacity decided to brown nose the leader by going back into the archives for something that would resonate with the old guy. It became a joke way more than anything young people responded to.
I saw it as benignly pathetic. Young people now have seen the outside, they're knowledgeable about lots of things, and appealing to them with 1950's type propagnda pretty much got nothing but derision. The young people I know were embarrassed by it. They couldn't believe their government was so tone deaf.
After this incident there was a movement to bring "Good Samaritan" laws into China's legal system, and there was a bit of debate as education through the printed press as well, but it takes a continued effort to achieve this sort of "cultural revolution", and I suspect the effort was not kept up as Beijing had higher priority problems. The real change will only occur if the government creates a curriculum in public education starting "Good Samaritan" thinking at the elementary level. My children are adults and I moved out of China more than 10 years ago so I can't follow up. It's odd how the spirit of Lei Feng didn't work it's way into this area.
I'm confident I'd do what you did, and not think anything about it in Shenzhen or any big city, but for now even I, a privileged foreign expert, be more than a little worried about being the target of a shakedown by local officials in rural areas. It's one reason why I always hired a car and driver, even though I had a driving license.
You got that right. The cadres in the rural areas are a big problem, but becoming less of one. They are the folks holding up rural land reforms which keep the farmers continually at the bottom of the China economic ladder. Until their fiefdoms of village and communal ownership...controlled by them of course...are carved up, the economic benefits of China's opening up will not be realized by rural residents.
When I'm out in the countryside, I get the side eye from those guys. They see outsiders and don't like it, but it's changing. As a laowai, I have a little bit of leeway, but I know where the lines are drawn and don't overstep.
Edit... I have a car and drivers license. When I pull into a village and get out of the car, the sight of a laowai driving into their village is so strange for them, they kinda give me leeway. It's so outside their conceptions of the world, they just give me that side eye look but never mess with me. I always smile and wave at them. If I was there on a regular basis, I'd be more nervous. As it is, they don't know if I've got some sort of dispensation from higher up, so they don't mess with me...yet.
Also, Lei Feng... I'm always helping someone out with little things; it's how I am. My friends all laugh and call me Lei Feng. Lei Feng is like a joke for everyone.
Another interesting piece of work Robert! My thanks!! I'll leave the discussion of trust to others.
I wanted to highlight the issue of selective application of the law. That strikes me (Western educated) as dangerous, with far reaching implications.
When a non Chinese person or entity considers whether to invest in a Chinese company, any discretion in the law is scary. While the Chinese government might give leeway to most Chinese most of the time, a foreign investor would need to be more concerned.
An example might be in the conflict of laws challenge of a Hong Kong issued bond, sold to foreigners, secured by assets in China. Will the security interests in China be secure for a foreign investor? Or will other considerations, such as the occupant or local government's interest in that property? I think you can see which party will benefit from discretion and which will not.
very interesting read Robert! I'd recommend the book Deep China - Moral Life of the Person by Arthur Kleinman, one of my favourites. I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on the "absolute trust/expectation of loyalty and duty" within family/known society 我们, vs the "low-trust" other/strangers society 他们 you focus your analysis on here. it seems to me that china operates roughly on these two extremes. whereas western societies don't seem to make that distinction - including less loyal to family..?
I agree. Chinese people's "over"-trust of people close to us may be equally matched by our under-trust of strangers. This is the topic I think I need to flesh out a bit more. And some topics in Part 2 and Part 3 are related to this.
Thought-provoking essay. I look forward very much to Parts 2 & 3.
Interesting. The high and low trust frame is useful.
From my (rather non extensive) knowledge of Chinese history, vague Chinese laws have been the norm.
The laws often relied on (having faith in) the ethical judgment of scholar-officials for interpretation and enforcement. This vagueness, of course, allowed for not only justice, but also corruption: officials could use their discretion to interpret laws in various ways.
Great work Robert. Thanks
Superb material. Waiting to read Part 2 and 3.
Hi, I think your characterisation of China as a “low trust” society is “state dependent”; it would be wrong (I think) to view the low trust as an inherent characteristic of Chinese society. The low trust seems to be due to China’s recent emergence from desperate living conditions. I feel sure that within one or two more generations, low trust will no longer be an issue.
Let me offer Singapore as an example. Singaporeans were once low trust, but Singaporeans today are high trust. I can see the behavioural difference between Singaporeans and Malaysians, and I would think GDP per capita explains much of the difference. Even in Malaysia, I think trust is rising and higher than it once was a few generations ago.
(That said, I am ignoring the problem of illegal migrant workers in Malaysia. I don’t blame the migrant workers; they live in desperate conditions. We don’t live in a perfect world.)
It's exactly what he said in the article 🤔
Fair enough, perhaps I was misled by the title.
I can certainly agree that high-trust societies exist. We used to see them in (Social Democratic) Scandinavian Societies and I have been told that even there things are changing.
And a typical illustration used to be that they did not lock the front door of their houses when they left.
But something funny seems to happen: now there are reports from China that people leave their phone (i.e. their wallet) at their place when going to the toilet. And we are told that this is because of all the surveillance cameras. Isn't this an example of trust that will be hard to find in the West?
Hi M Blu, those reports are correct. I leave my laptop and phone on the table all the time for toilet. But it’s purely because of the cameras. Only 15 years ago, pre-camera, I lost bikes and phones frequently.
"It's purely because of the cameras"? London UK is full of cameras, and its crime rates are higher than those of NYC.
I believe when Robert says "purely because of the cameras" he is referring to the <rapid, consistent, and inevitable> enforcement of the law that they enable, not the cameras themselves.
[Western] criminology research suggests that the certainty of punishment -compared to severity- has a stronger deterrent effect on lower level crimes like theft. In this sphere China has become higher trust because of the clarity and consistency of the whole process: Instead of trusting strangers to not want to take your stuff, you trust (a) if they do they WILL be caught (b) that they understand this, so they won't take your stuff. This is in contrast to China's business sphere which is still low trust due to vagueness of laws and selective enforcement of widespread noncompliance. Meanwhile, in the West (London, American cities) this sphere is seeing a decrease in trust as people do not believe the police can or want to do their jobs.
Thanks! I have nothing else to add here.
That makes sense. Thank you
In Thailand, outside of the big cities at least, people leave their things unattended most everywhere. Many outdoor stores just put a fabric fence around their products when they close. Idle running cars, motorbikes with keys in, helmets and groceries hang out ng off the mirrors.
If I'm not travelling far I will leave my house open. I have non-working security cameras and what I call ‘auntie surveillance’ - the local gossips who know everything that happens here.
No not really. Some places are less safe than others, but I typically leave my gear when I go to the bathroom and nothing happens. Enough people are around to know that it's mine and a strange person grabbing it is probably theft.
Where is this? In China? In the US? In Europe?
I enjoyed this piece, but I did not understand the point of their story about the Lady Banker and her American client. Did she speak evasively with them because she did not trust them to understand? Could you please explain the relevance of that anecdote to your low trust theme.
It is interesting that business can continue to thrive in an environment where it is possible for the government to imprison just about anybody at any time. In the United States it is much easier for those accused of crime two flee successfully either by going abroad or assuming a new identity in another state.
That conversation is not directly linked with the "low-trust" theme, but the social security non-compliance is. The fact that it's a "small" issue, yet it is really hard to explain, suggests to me that there is a difference in how Chinese people vs western people look at these things.
Also, I think it’s really bad to have laws that are not enforced. It’s better if the government were to formally give a blanket exemption to small scale businesses and enforce the contribution obligations strictly.
Also, there is an unfortunate vicious feedback loop at work. If everyone paid contributions, the small businesses would compete with each other on a level playing field. So forcing all small businesses to comply would make the contributions viable. The contributions become unviable because the small firms have to compete with non-compliant firms. So this matter really needs to be fixed. Either exempt all small businesses or enforce it strictly!
When you say that not paying social security contributions is considered a “small issue” in China, is it because the workers have been told upfront that the firm they are working for will not be able to make the social security contributions? It is one thing to know in advance that social security contributions will not be made as a condition of employment, another to be misled that contributions will be made but are in fact not made. The latter would be a “serious issue” indeed.
Most businesses paid, but under-paid their contribution
Or, those accused of high crimes can get elected POTUS and virtually be immune from prosecution. “I could shoot someone in the middle of Times Square and not lose any votes.”
"Immunity from prosecution", in this case, lay with the weasel Senators afraid for their own worthless asses that refused to impeach. Everyone knew it was wrong. Their primary concern was keeping their job; they knew they'd get primaried out of office if they voted to impeach.
A majority vote of the American people elected Trump. We are all to blame for this travesty. There are still many who gleefully embrace the degradation and destruction of our government. We are all complicit.
Yes, but The People™ wouldn't have been able to vote the guy in if the Senate had done the job they knew they should have done. Voters are wildly and willfully uninformed on anything that matters. The Senate, theoretically, is the opposite. We are ruled by a Parliament of Whores.
Yes, and it was the “Citizens United” ruling that created the pimps who now own the whores. Our system of government is corrupt, broken, and dysfunctional. Even the lowest informed citizens realize this and voted to give MAGA the mandate and the power to destroy the system. It has become increasingly obvious that the American “experiment” has failed. The Republic is dead, long live the Republic…