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Foreign Business In China. Can't Live With 'Em, Can't Live Without 'Em.

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

In one of my college history courses, my professor was big on emphasizing how much China's mistrust and dislike of foreigners had influenced it. This professor saw the Great Wall as THE symbol of China's attitudes towards foreigners and he ascribed virtually everything China did to its desire to keep its distance from foreigners. Though I have never been a fan of "one motive" analysis, I do think it would be naive to believe China's highly charged history with foreigners does not continue to influence it today. I was starkly reminded of that today when I read this China Source post, entitled, "What Do They Really Think of Us Laowai?" (h/t China Hope Live). Here's the money portion of that post:

I was attending a banquet hosted by a delegation from a foreign [not for profit] organization that?s been in China for a long time, and has maintained a good relationship with the Chinese government. One of the guests at the banquet was a local academic who was helping us understand the government?s attitudes towards foreign organizations. At one point, a delegation member asked the scholar ?what does the government think of us (the organization specifically). It was assumed the answer would be positive. Instead, the scholar, without hesitation said ?They hate you. ?But you are useful to them.?

I completely buy it. What do you think? UPDATE: Just read an excellent post on Mark's China Blog, entitled, "Sometimes the More Information You Have, the Less You Know," that seems at least tangentially related. The post contains a great pull-out from Peter Hessler's book, Oracle Bones, on how China is China and it just keeps on being China and foreign criticism is just not going to have much of an impact on China. Hard really to briefly summarize the post so I urge you to go read it.

Full post as published by China Law Blog on March 06, 2010 (boomark / email).