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TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE WHOLE BOOK

Title page

Copyrights

Dedication

Note from publisher

Foreword

Preface

Introduction—Communication, China, a transformation?

I. KNOWING THE CHINESE CULTURAL FUNDAMENTALS: WRITING, HISTORY AND TRADITIONS

1. The characters speak: 10 characters of communication explained

2. Machiavelli against the Master of the Valley of ghosts: influence strategies

3. The weight of the past: respecting family and traditions

II. HERMES IN CHINA: THE GOD OF INFLUENCERS, BRANDS AND HELL

4. Influencers and today’s discourse: the faces of communication

5. Towards a sinicization of Western brands: is translating a betrayal?

6. Hermes in hell: the wrong steps of communications

III. TOWARDS A 5th POWER: POLITICS, THE MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY TOGETHER AT LAST?

7. Chinese GAFA: a communication revolution invented in China

8. Communicating in the City: New helmsman Xi and Macron’s Long Walk

9. Similarities between China and the West: what if we spoke the same language?

10. Perspectives: China today

Conclusion—中西合璧 tomorrow, a Sino-Western harmony?

Glossary

Thank You

Bibliography

To Mathilde Tison, my gateway to China,

To Bruno and Elvine Legrix de la Salle, for their appreciation of people.

NOTE FROM PUBLISHER

“Better understanding China” presents some chinese caracters that can be not properly displayed on some e-readers devices.

Hence, we recommand you to read this eBook on tablets or smartphones through your traditional reader application (Ibooks, Kindle, Google Play Books…), or through your web browser (Chrome, Mozilla…) using the “EPUBReader” plugin.

FOREWORD

“Which is the most credible of the two? Moises or China?”

thoughts, Blaise Pascal1

Why did we write this book?

Based on our personal experiences, time, travel and studies in China, this book was born from the observation that China is a growing presence on the world stage without being really understood. Understanding China is not about translation but comprehension. Meetings and friendships were formed between our two countries. With four hands, we have written articles, interviews and deciphered texts and phenomena for economic and general Media and have interviewed Mrs. Yan Lan, CEO of the Banque Lazard for Greater China and Monsieur Badault, CEO of Alibaba France. 

To whom is this book addressed?

To all those who are interested in China. It seems wise to understand China under the prism of communication. From the great historical texts and mythological tales to the words repeatedly used on social networks, from the tech giants to the new Silk Road diplomacy, communication is everywhere. Thanks to the principles developed here, we want to help Westerners improve how they communicate with China and enable them to enjoy its culture. We hope that this book will please you.

What will you find in the ten chapters?

Deciphering the words of communication and influence

Adopting an indirect approach to communicate

By understanding their tradition, you understand your interlocutor

Being empathetic to make friends

Tips for doing business with the Chinese

How to avoid communication errors

Finding an alternative to GAFA in order to better communicate

Refining your view of political communication

Marveling at the cultural bridges between China and the West

Listening to today’s voices in the West and in China

1. Blaise Pascal sentence quoted by the sinologist François Jullien in his speech at the Central School of Marseille.

PREFACE

When will Europe wake up?

When you tell a Chinese businessman that his country is trying to conquer the world and become the majority shareholder by acquiring all-out, he replies that the Chinese were never conquerors and that they have, however, long been humiliated by the Europeans: the sack of the summer Palace, Opium wars resulting in what the Chinese call ’ Unequal treaties “ ,concessions imposed as in Shanghai by foreigners…

No more foreign invasions! The roles are reversed with the great commercial war machine and the colossal budget of 1,000 billion dollars, launched by President Xi Jinping. The launching of the ‘New Silk Road “is, among other things, a communications masterpiece, with all the ingredients of an international marketing launch.

The name” New Silk Road “is reassuring. By no means aggressive, it sounds pacifist, poetic and is easy to remember. This name evokes the oldest living civilization in the world, where, under the Han dynasty (second century BC.), caravans were traveling across the countries of Central Asia to sell silk, tea, porcelain, precious fabrics … trading these goods for gold and horses.

Today, caravans are replaced by boats and trains that speedily bring to 124 countries, the excess stock and new products related to the upgrading of China.

For the Chinese giant, this new initiative is the way to boost its growth based on investment, particularly in transport infrastructure: highways, railways, harbors, airports, warehouses…

Beijing has already injected more than 150 billion euros to advance its strategy and acquire European “family heirlooms”: German Kuka, Italian Pirelli, and Swedish Volvo. Greece, Portugal and Hungary chose to go it alone. Italy, frowned upon by France, yielded to Beijing and its shimmering proposals, selling the harbors of Trieste and Genoa. Serbia sold its copper and gold deposits. France was no more virtuous, letting China have a stake in Marionnaud, Lanvin, and the Louvre Hotels.

No country turns its back on this Asian money! But it is scary, and concern is growing in many countries, as these exchanges are not always “win-win” ones, not to mention that the debt trap is not far off. For example, every week, a train makes the journey from Wuhan to Lyon in France (11,000 km). It arrives in Lyon fully loaded and returns empty to Wuhan!

But this windfall could be a great growth driver for the economy of France, provided that there is a rebalancing of trade between our two countries—in a spirit of reciprocity—in terms of access to the Chinese market, with “New Silk Roads” opened in both directions. The Chinese are certainly our friends but are also our rivals.

We are in the presence of a skillfully developed strategic expansion. And France alone is in no position to impose new trade rules on the world’s second-strongest economy. This can only be done at the level of the European Union.

It is not China that we should fear but our own weaknesses: the Chinese windfall sows and maintains the division among the members of the European Union.

The challenge for Europe, which includes 513 million people, is to unite and build a strong European shield against China thus maintaining a strong growth in order to give birth to companies that are true “European champions,” able to rival with their Chinese competitors. This was not the case with the unfortunate abandonment of the Alstom-Siemens European project.

Divided, the European Union has a far from certain future. Truly united, it would again become a powerful interlocutor.

When will Europe wake up?

Thank you to Mathilde Aubinaud and Philippe Branche for the valuable assistance that this book brings to the different economic actors of both countries in their search for the necessary keys to an effective Franco-Chinese communication.

Harold Parisot, Chairman of the Chinese Business Club

INTRODUCTION

The Word “China is not Chinese.”

“Chinese thought is the other pole of human experience.”

François Jullien

The word “China” is not Chinese. The Chinese word for China is Zhongguo, literally “Middle Kingdom” or “middle country”. There is hardly a mention, either phonetically or etymologically, in the Chinese annals of the word “China” to refer to the country as a whole. Most probably, the Portuguese travelers were the first to give China’s name to the country, as highlighted by the Jesuit Matteo Ricci in the seventeenth century (1552–1610). Ricci added that the country’s name has evolved in terms of dynasties. The western way of naming the country is in fact symptomatic of a flawed approach to understanding the Middle Kingdom.

“China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes up, the world will tremble”, Napoleon reportedly said. The time of observation is over: China has awakened. But we do not feel all the ripples yet. Even if every day we notice more Chinese tourists in France, do we really measure the extent of changes taking place on a global? Has China really transformed itself or is it just the image the country tries to give of itself?

The way China is revealed–evolution or transformation?

“The most important thing in communication is to hear what is not said’

Peter Drucker

Communication? Anything but “com”. Communication is often mocked in newspapers and reduced to being a small tool, yet it is everywhere. It is even indispensable. Whoever communicates is a protagonist and is necessarily in a confrontation—agôn, in Greek, the fight. A confrontation that manifests itself in the most varied forms from the technical channels to the reception of the message. Thus, Frederic Vallois, former government spokesman and political communication teacher at the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris, explains: “In reality, the communicator must know how to juggle with different media according to the imposed constraints and the public it is reaching. Given the abundance of networks, the temptation is to want to communicate everywhere and all the time, which is neither feasible nor desirable.”

Communication, a source of influence, can be summarized as follows: a transmitter, a channel and a receiver: “A transmitter, through coding, sends a message to a receiver that performs the decoding in the context disturbed by noise”2.

This approach can be summarized by three questions. Who speaks? Through what channel? And finally who hears?

The form of speech influences its content — “The message is the medium”, noted Herbert Marshall McLuhan. The medium is in fact a message by itself. To grasp what is at stake, one should not only focus on the content. The medium, to a larger extent, as such, carries meaning in itself.

We must adjust our discourse to be audible to all stakeholders. Who are the groups of people interacting? Shareholders, journalists, faithful customers, competitors… The public is numerous and constantly evolving. The context of dissemination and reception is by no means identical. Their goals are then different: the investor and the hesitating customer do not have the same fears and expectations.

Technological innovations create an acceleration of relations rather than a fundamental change in relations. The pattern remains identical: an entity expresses a message in a format to someone who listens. Certainly, the message tends to shorten and listening skills are reduced today. The public is also more diverse. The amount of information is exploding and tends to drown the listener. But there always remains a speaker and a listener.

Yet, the message sometimes gets across with difficulty. It may be subjected to endless interpretations. The auditors did not seem to understand the same message. We would then have as many messages as listeners, each person filtering information based on his or her own experience. Communication with China or to China is no exception to the rule: diplomatic scandals, bad buzzes, etc… Errors in communication are flourishing.

Conversely, two speakers can express themselves in radically different ways, with different languages, concepts or images, but the message is paradoxically identical. Here is a common intuition that exceeds the temporal, physical and linguistic boundaries. A Greek and an ancient Chinese may speak about the same idea. The idea behind the message is the same.

What about China? How can we to communicate with it?

China—a transformation?

“Today’s China is only meaningful if you put it in perspective with yesterday’s China.”

Alain Peyrefitte

China, according to Général de Gaulle3, is “a State older than history”. Undoubtedly China is also one of the places in the world that has seen the most radical changes in the last 30 years. “The Chinese nation is today facing massive changes” ,4considers President Xi Jinping. This change is the result of the policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s called reform and opening—改革开放. Yan Lan, CEO of Lazard China underlines “the exceptional scale of the statesman to whom we owe the opening of China after the Cultural Revolution”5 and called him “the best man”6.

Society was unrecognizable: mass urban migration, families with one child—it’s as if all the European social changes of the nineteenth century were carried out in just 30 years in China. This change is also accompanied by a revival of Chinese power. A current fact illustrates the new role of the Middle Kingdom on the geopolitical scene “Today, China has become the second-largest country to contribute to the maintenance costs of UN peacekeeping. Its contribution is extremely important”7, considers the UN General Undersecretary.

After suffering stunted growth, China has experienced unprecedented economic changes. Its middle class is growing. Western brands in the luxury sector, now target their strategy toward the East. This new class thus propels China as a normative figure, as highlighted in the report by the World Bank ‘China 2030’.”Many have argued that, since 2030, the influence of China in the global economy could approach that of the United Kingdom in 1870 and the United States in 1945″8. Thus, foreign brands are trying to adapt to what would be allegedly a unique Chinese mindset, while sometimes making mistakes.

History has known few power transfers at this speed. China offers a unique model. In a world dominated by GAFA, China is the one country in the world to offer an alternative option: the BATX. Often little known in the West, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi yet dominate the Chinese technological world. This promises to prove a key fight and very few people are aware of the consequences. In other words, rather than asserting that China is a threat to France, it would be better to say that it also offers real opportunities faced with US hegemony.

China is changing, but is not transforming. There are cultural and traditional constants that shaped China yesterday and will continue to shape tomorrow’s China. Take the example of writing: even if there is no exact number of Chinese characters, we number over 100,000 characters. By way of example, Beijing Guoan Information Equipment Co Ltd estimated the number of Chinese characters at over 91,250. A country in Mandarin is said ‘country/house’, Guojia. In order to establish order in a country, we first put order in our own house. This represents a truly family conception of the State. This ancient culture thus remains a constant in Chinese thought.

‘China needs to better understand the world and vice versa.’9

Xi Jinping

2. Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver in the model that they have defined.

3. Press Conference on January 31, 1964 at the Elysee.

4. When visiting the exhibition The recovery of Voices November 29, 2012.

5. YAN Lan Yan Among p. 127.

6. Idem p. 328.

7. Statement by Jean-Pierre Lacroix, Deputy Secretary General of the UN to maintain peace operations “China is a pillar of United Nations peace operations”, French.xinhuanet.com (09.23.2017).

8. (Subramanian 2011) World Bank and the Development Research Center of the State Council, PR China. 2013. China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative Society. Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-0-8213-9545-5. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 p. 7.

9. In his speech at the meeting of the permanent members of the Committee XVIII of the Political Bureau of CPC Central with the Chinese and foreign press November 15, 2012.

古10

10. Gu is the character to say “ancient”  “history”. It represents “the speech 口 inherited from ancestors 十 ".

Part One

Learning the Chinese cultural fundamentals:
Writing system, history and traditions…

1. THE CHARACTERS SPEAK:
TEN EXAMPLES OF CHARACTERS EXPLAINED

‘The truth is that he heard the secret language of signs.’11

The Chinese characters speak. They are each a prosopopeia — ‘this rhetorical device of making a person or a thing speak that normally does not speak.’ They tell their story. The result of a millennial sedimentation, this language may appear incomprehensible. Indeed, the simplification of characters initiated by Chairman Mao Zedong removed some of their meaning in order to facilitate their learning. A final list was published in 1964 for mainland China. Conversely, in Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the traditional usage persists with fantizi—繁体字. Ironically, the Hong Kong inhabitants call the simplified characters ‘’cantizi“-残体 字—meaning“incomplete, disabled”characters. There are therefore two systems coexisting in the same official language: Mandarin—普通话—literally the standardized language in Chinese.

The Chinese characters each have a story and we must return to their roots and their evolution to fully grasp their meaning. This pathway is complex, sometimes dissonant because of random mutations. Those changes can be synthesized in 4 major steps: inscriptions on bronze called jinwen that date back to the third millennium, the inscriptions on tortoiseshell that date back to the fourteenth century BC, the traditional characters and finally the simplified characters that are used nowadays, for example, in the streets. Communication is inherent to Chinese writing, the oldest in the world still in use. Chinese was therefore and foremost a written language and not a spoken one.

What about the characters of communication used today? What is their origin? What do they tell us?

11. WOU Cheng, The Pilgrim monkey or the pilgrimage west (Zone Books, 2018).