|
East Meets
West
Nancy S. Barber
It
was startling to realize that the meeting with Yang Hai and Xu Jiali
from China with Bob Fenech and myself was all done through three
or four e-mails among our offices. To set up a meeting among ourselves
this quickly and easily reflects the tremendous changes the Internet
has brought to us in the last ten years. It also reflects the dynamics
and potential of globalization in terms of economic, social and
political endeavors. The visit highlighted the similarities and
differences that we must acknowledge and accept when we travel outside
our own culture.
The first thing made very clear by Yang Hai is the Chinese custom
as the guest to pay for the meal. Yang Hai insisted that there was
no negotiation for this business practice and now Bob and I have
been invited to Beijing to return the favor in kind. It is only
a two-hour trip from Kuala Lumpur and Yang Hai insists that as long
as we are the neighborhood. GIN folks should just come on over to
Beijing. If Bob and I are along, lunch is on us!
As when I was at the GIN Conference in Chicago, one of the greatest
frustrations was language difference. Yang Hai and Xu Jiali were
kind enough to bring their translator. Xu Jiali spoke English Better
than some of us who live in the United States. He told us that he
learned English while attending law school in China. Many Chinese
learn English in their universities. He has the opinion that English
is easier for a Chinese-speaking person to learn than if an English-speaking
person were to attempt to learn Chinese. By the way, Chinese is
a generic Mandarin. It would be hard to imagine United States students
even considering an attempt to learn Mandarin and /or Cantonese.
This is Yang Hai's first visit to the United States and after his
visit in San Francisco; he was leaving for New York City, Washington
D.C. and Los Angeles. While only in San Francisco for a few days,
he had some initial reactions to the United States. He observed
that, while our lives seemed more modern, he felt he had a better
quality of life in China. He is not the first to make that observation.
What we trade off for an industrialized technological society is
often questioned. Many of the United Stated GIN members who attended
the GIN Conference in Chicago learned that Europeans take extended
summer vacations and seem to have a slower pace about life.
Probably the most important aspect of learning about China today
is that it is a world rife with change and dynamic to the point
of breath taking. All of that said, it is important when dealing
with any country outside of our own experience to understand how
their political, economic and social history impacts how business
is conducted. You cannot judge another country by your own cultural
standards. For more than forty years China's entire system was based
on a centralized government controlled economy. There was no developed
business class that supported the market place. There is a huge
rural population with little experience at practicing business as
the Western world knows and understands.
As China joins the globalization of the world market, we have to
keep their history in mind. There is no centralized computer database
system of information regarding corporations and/or individuals.
Most business is centered in the urban areas. The information sources
we take for granted in the United Stated simply does not exist in
many other countries. This is especially true in China. There remain
strict government controls on information. Public records do not
exist and there is no centralized record system for companies. The
concept of civil litigation does not exist.
As we learned this from Pawan Ahluwalia at the GIN conference last
year, when he described investigations in India, much is the same
in China. Investigations require the gumshoe approach of an investigator
developing and maintaining his/her own contacts for information.
Yang Hai is the only investigator authorized to conduct his business
in China. He is a former police officer and is certified to conduct
his business. This fact alone suggests the tremendous change afoot
in China and provides a significant clue to the barriers of conducting
investigations as we in the United States regularly experience.
The success of an investigation in any culture where the information
is dependent on the investigator's experience and connections will
provide different results than we in the United States are used
to seeing. It is important when we take on international investigations
that we educate our clients as to what they can expect and not expect
in a report.
With that outlook in mind, the Western world is also changing. Investigators
in the United States are faced with evaporating sources of information
due to the wave of privacy laws afoot and the changes wrought by
the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Investigators in Europe are also
faced with the constraints imposed by the Data Protection Act. One
of the things I realized when we were talking with Yang Hai and
Xu Jiali is that soon U.S and European investigators may find themselves
conducting investigations more as they have to in countries such
as China and India. We have much to learn from each other.
Finally, we all could agree on one thing. Yang Hai asked if Bob
and I had met James Brewer. We all smiled at the same and spoke
the same thing in two languages: "GIN is the best and James
is a good guy for putting us all together." No translation
was required!
|
