Crime and punishment

A recent, horrific incident in northeast China has been making the rounds in the U.S. news cycle. The official Chinese government response to the incident holds at least one major lesson for Americans in China. It’s a roundabout path, but I hope an interesting one.

On July 24, 41-year-old executive Mr. Chen Guojun was beaten to death by workers at a factory run by Tonghua Iron & Steel Group. The workers were fearing for their jobs in the wake of an announcement that Tonghua was being bought out by another, larger company, Jianlong Group, who employed Mr. Chen. Rumors had been spreading that Jianlong planned to cut jobs; Mr. Chen made an easy target.

The incident was reported in the Wall Street Journal on July 31, in a piece by Sky Canaves and James Areddy. The Journal quoted an editorial from China's official Xinhua News Agency as saying:

Wasn't the Tonghua incident really a matter of failing to consider the interests of workers during the restructuring process?

I was struck by the quote: it seemed pretty extreme to lay the blame for murderous behavior on some abstract "failing" of an unknown actor.

I decided to dig a little deeper. I took a look at the original Chinese version of the Xinhua editorial. What I noticed first about the quote from the Journal is that in the Chinese version there is in fact a named actor: "the enterprise." I also noticed that the Chinese term translated as "consider" has some other connotations.

The term is zhàogu (照顾), and could also be translated as "care for" or "look after." A host will zhàogu a guest, for instance. Parents zhàogu their children. The Xinhua piece, in using this term, is hinting that Tonghua Iron & Steel might not have met a fundamental obligation to care for its workers.

My American mind didn't know how to handle this. On the one hand, I'm generally a believer in mutual and reciprocal care in the workplace, and that there's too little of this in the U.S. So I was sympathetic. On the other hand, I was horrified at the complete absence of rage at the bad people who murdered a man. Where was the talk of justice? Why wasn't Xinhua calling for the heads of the perpetrators?

Ah, righteous indignation. Such a familiar feeling. And so very American. A wonderful asset, and at times a dreadful liability. The American desire for justice is, in my opinion, a vital and necessary force in so many conversations, not just in the U.S., but worldwide. Taken to extremes, though — especially in cases of petty offenses — the consequences can be dire. Just look at the U.S. prison system.

Or take parenting. I have an internal battle every time one of my daughters commits an "infraction," no matter how minor. I just feel there needs to be some form of punishment. Why? Because otherwise I'm "sending the wrong message," or "rewarding bad behavior," and I run the risk of my daughter becoming a person who doesn't know right from wrong — the worst possible offense an American parent can commit. (I've taken a pretty deep dive into these issues in some of my research; I'll take this up in later posts.)If the "typical" American approach is absolute and moralistic, the "typical" Chinese approach is to look at the particulars of a situation, and to give more latitude in how to redress infractions. Per usual, a major consideration will be whether the redress will endanger any important relationships, and whether that's an acceptable price to pay in light of other factors: how everybody looks publicly, what's the influence on the effectiveness of future work…but not, generally, an abstract, moralistic, all-pervading, all-governing justice.

Now, I need to step back for a moment and note two things. First, the overall point of the Xinhua editorial was to lay blame at the doorstep of local officials, as Tonghua — named after the city of its location — had been majority-owned by the local government. Citing Tonghua officials as the latest example, Xinhua argued that local officials have a habit, in such incidents, of blaming "people with ulterior motives" (别有用心的人) who "seduce" (蛊惑) and "incite" （挑动) others who "don't know the real situation" (不明真相). The Xinhua piece aims to point the finger back at local officials. Second, in doing so, Xinhua is following a typical political pattern of central-government-as-good-cop, local-officials-as-bad-cop. In other words, blame is not missing in the article, and "culture" can't explain it all. What is missing, though, is any talk of punishment, or of any consequences at all for the perpetrators.

And that roils  my inner American, who desperately wants to punish. Needs to punish.

Which brings me to why I'm going into all these details. There's a lesson here, and it's: Watch out! At times things will go wrong for you in China. There will be people to blame. All sorts of people to blame. Your American mind is likely to spiral off into that loop of righteous indignation. You'll want heads to roll.

Fine. Just consider this a warning that it won't do you one whit of good. At least not in terms of accomplishing what you want to accomplish in China. Success in China calls for a level of equanimity and detachment that doesn't come naturally to most people — certainly not to me. It takes work. In my own life I have found that it is work worth doing.