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With the emphasis Confucianism places on social hierarchy, it is no surprise that Chinese are obsessed with status. Individuals within any given social circle know the precise position each holds relative to the others, and this tiny assessment is just the beginning of mental calculations that take place. Chinese understand who is linked to whom, and if one party is indebted to another, each within the group will know the nature and the extent. A holistic comprehension of social relationships helps individual members make optimal use of the social web. Psychology researcher Michael Harris Bond points out that within a network, if an individual (X) needs something from someone not well‐known to him (Y), he can ask a contact they share in common (Z) to get involved. “He is indebted to Z in this case, who can do his collecting from Y.” “Reciprocity is an exact science,” said Arthur Smith, who also pointed out that Chinese make use of a “system of social bookkeeping.” Smith was not describing the art of guanxi, a practice most often associated with government officials (and which was not referenced in English‐language texts prior to around 1980 anyway). Instead, he was commenting on the custom practiced by workaday Chinese who have no connections to power. China's system of reciprocity is complex and is dependent on that almost unfathomable cultural feature—the ability of Chinese to accurately assess the value of any favor performed. In most instances, the value is at once understood, but at other times there may be differences of opinion. Chinese will sometimes speak of “sitting down to tea,” which can be a euphemism for the elliptical chat involving the fine‐tuning of an assessment.
What's Wrong With China
Paul Midler
I use two methods to sort through the deluge of startups contacting me. I eliminate the small ideas and weak founders. Then I double down on the great founders and big ideas.
What happened next illustrated how much American society and values had changed. Seven months after 2,800 Americans were killed at Pearl Harbor in 1941, Adm. Chester Nimitz sailed west to Midway Island, where his carrier destroyed the Japanese fleet and changed the course of the war. Now imagine if Nimitz, when he reached the International Dateline, had decided to turn back, thereby granting the Japanese a sanctuary in the Western Pacific. Such a decision would have been preposterous. Sixty years later, nearly three thousand Americans were murdered in New York City. A few months later, the American military was poised to destroy Osama bin Laden’s force. The al Qaeda Arabs were running for their lives in sneakers, unprepared for the harsh winter, while the local Pashtun tribes were in deathly fear of the enraged juggernaut in pursuit. Fearful of America’s wrath, the Pakistani army was scrambling to distance itself from the Islamist fighters. But when al Qaeda crossed the Durand Line—a scratch on a map ignored by all the local tribes—into Pakistan, the U.S. military, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. president, and the U.S. press stopped as if shocked by an electric current. There was never a serious policy discussion about pursuing and destroying the enemy. By halting on a ridge in the middle of nowhere, we legitimized Pakistan as a sanctuary. Encouraged by our fastidiousness, the Pakistani army regained its confidence and issued dire warnings that the border was inviolate to American ground attack. At the same time, the Pashtun border tribes, due to intimidation, Islamic solidarity, and blood ties, acceded to Taliban rule. Since 2001, Pakistan has played both sides, sheltering Taliban and terrorists while permitting American strikes by unmanned aircraft and accepting American aid. Obsessed with India, the Pakistani army deployed most of its forces along its eastern border and supported terrorist groups in Kashmir. A popular saying was “Every country has an army; in Pakistan, the army has a country.” Inside the army, though, officers were wary of each other’s loyalties. Having encouraged Islamism in the 1980s to divide civilian political parties, the generals weren’t certain which fellow officers rendered loyalty to Islamic parties above loyalty to the army. U.S. aid subsidized the ruling elite in Islamabad. Since 2001, the United States has given Pakistan over $15 billion.2 With only 2 percent of the 170 million people paying income tax, the national budget is sustained by sales taxes that levy the same burden on street sweepers as on members of Parliament whose incomes reportedly average $900,000 a year.3 The goal of U.S. aid was to persuade Pakistan to take seriously the threat from the Islamists it protected, including al Qaeda. But the Pakistani army had proved both unable and unwilling to control the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, along the Afghan border. It remained a sanctuary, sheltering over 150 insurgent camps.
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