China's Identity Crisis?

From wsj.com

Caroline Swartz was hired as a project manager at a Chinese public-relations firm in Beijing in 2006. For the majority of the year she worked there, she was never asked to do anything except sit in meetings, quietly. She would be called in with no knowledge of what the meetings were about or even who the clients were. Afterwards, she would be told to go back to her desk.

"I was presented, always visible and on display. But I didn't have any responsibility," says Ms. Swartz, now a student in New York City. She got paid to do basically nothing because she's white, she says. The firm had both Chinese and Western clients so they wanted to look international. This business approach may not seem politically correct but it reflects a new dynamic between China and the West: Westerners, especially Caucasians are getting employment opportunities because some Chinese firms want to use them to portray an image of high status and sophistication.

The relationship between China and the West has been fraught with ambiguity since the two Opium Wars in the mid-1800s, which triggered both a nationalistic reaction against imperialism and feelings of national self-loathing and idolatry for anything Western. In the early 1900s, following the collapse of the Qing Dynasty, some Chinese literati argued that China's military, economic and spiritual weakness made it an easy prey for aggressive foreigners. In order to save the nation, they said, China needed "total Westernization," rejecting traditional ideals embodied in the Confucian system and adopting European systems and values—so-called Mr. Democracy and Mr. Science.

The Chinese superiority/inferiority complex is rooted in what is known as the "one-hundred years of national humiliation," and has never resolved itself, even after Chairman Mao announced in 1949, "The Chinese people have stood up." It exists even though China has transformed itself into an economic power in the past three decades. On the one hand, China demands more respect from the West in the international arena, but it treats Westerners as superior on a personal level.

Having said that, I think these attitudes are changing among the younger generation, especially in bigger cities.

Two to three decades ago, Westerners could go to hotels, restaurants and department stores that catered to them exclusively and paid in a special currency called "foreign exchange certificates." Now at restaurants and department stores Chinese are often the ones who splurge on champagne, designer clothes and luxury cars. But even in Beijing and Shanghai it's not uncommon for anybody who works or socializes with Westerners to suffer from less favorable treatment from the service people. Some restaurants give Westerners better tables and serve them first. A friend, married to a European, has had trouble getting into her Beijing apartment complex when she forgets her security pass while the guards have never bothered to ask her husband for his pass. The truth is my friend owns the place.

Some Chinese have gone to the extremes to take advantage of the notion of Western superiority. A top Chinese executive at a multinational manufacturer in China (one with a U.S. permanent resident card) has a "white guy" business strategy: when he travels to smaller cities: He always makes sure he brings along a Caucasian employee. "The locals always treat us better when there's a white guy around," he says. The guy is often an engineer who doesn't need to open his mouth at the meetings. But his presence somehow makes things go more smoothly or, at least, makes the atmosphere friendlier.

But there's a drawback in the "white guy" strategy: when locals meet the executive and his team for the first time, their initial reaction is always that the white guy is the boss and the executive his interpreter. The executive says he doesn't mind at all as long as they get the business done.

For some white people hired for this purpose, it's not an easy situation to deal with. Ms. Swartz felt she was treated like a child and even a "zoo animal" at the firm. But she needed the job to take care of her newborn baby. She didn't start taking on any real responsibility, such as overseeing clients, until a manager overheard her speaking Mandarin. "They didn't even read my résumé," says Ms. Swartz, who studied eight years of Mandarin before moving to China. But she also believes that it's good for white people to experience racism because most people on earth have to deal with it, and "it doesn't feel good."

The European husband of my friend provided a different perspective. When I asked him what he thinks of the way the guards treat him better than his wife, he says there's nothing wrong with that. He says the guards should treat everybody like him, but that won't change until Chinese learn to treat migrant workers and poor people with more respect. I think he has a good point.

Write to Li Yuan at li.yuan@wsj.com