A Bicultural Professional:
Divided Loyalty or Best of both Worlds?  (Part 2 of 3)

By George Koo

To be an effective listener in a cross cultural situation is even more 
challenging because it requires the person to be constantly switching the 
contextual background.  A Chinese may be saying certain things that have 
certain significance while an American might be saying similar things but 
mean something quite  different.  A bicultural person has to have the 
ability to put the remarks in context and be able to explain one side to 
the other.There are many occasions when I have been called upon to assist 
with the interpreting between Chinese officials and American business 
executives.  My command of the Chinese language is never good enough for 
me to be a professional interpreter.  But ironically, because I cannot be 
a word for word interpreter, I concentrate on making sure that the meaning 
and intent is accurately conveyed.  For this, I get expressions of 
appreciation from both sides of the conversation.

To be a truly bicultural person is someone who can explain what one side 
is saying in the context such that the other person from the other culture 
can understand it.  To be honest, I think I am pretty good at this and I 
do it naturally and do not really think about what I am doing.  In that 
environment, my brain is constantly switching back and forth from the 
Chinese context to the American context, to the point that I am not even 
aware of what I am doing.

While I take a great deal of satisfaction in being able to help bridge the 
cultural gap between the Chinese attitude and the American one, sometimes 
the line seems blurred between explaining a position and taking a 
position.   Sometimes one has to be able to distinguish between explaining 
China's policy versus defending China's policy.  As an American citizen, I 
have an interest in helping Americans understand China's policy, but I am 
not sure that I should be in any way defending China's policy and be 
labeled an apologist for China.

For example, China has been criticized for their one child policy and 
their sometimes rather draconian ways of enforcing such a policy.  I would 
point to the alternative, namely without the policy there would be 300 
million more Chinese today than there already are.  Certainly, I would not 
defend or even try to explain the extreme lengths some officials in the 
countryside have gone to enforce the one-child policy.

On the matter of protection of intellectual property (IP), I would explain 
to my American client that this is a big headache and needs serious 
attention.  I might indicate that lack of respect for software is part of 
Asian culture endemic throughout Asia, that the solution will take a long 
time and require not only enforcement and prosecution but a great deal of 
education to promote understanding and respect.  Again I would not defend 
or even condone piracy.  In fact every chance I get when I am in China I 
would point out that protection of IP is in China's self interest and is 
crucial to China developing a serious software industry. 

China, of course, has been severely castigated over their so-called human 
rights record.  Usually, this matter does not come up in my business 
assignments but does come up when the overall bilateral relationship is 
the issue. Again, I do not feel that it is my duty to defend China's 
practices, especially since I have no way of gaining enough expertise to 
say anything authoritative about many of the practices.  What I have said 
to my American clients and political leaders is that human rights 
conditions in China are better now than ever. I have on occasion while in 
China with my clients, and as we stroll along the Shanghai Bund, to 
quietly ask those first time visitors if the China they see is what they 
expected. Did China seem like a police state to them as portrayed by the 
American media?  Of course, I have no respect for individuals who go the 
other extreme, i.e., those who fabricate and distort the situation in 
China to increase bilateral tension in order to make a living from it.

In explaining China, it's important to avoid using the party line from 
China for the simple reason that words from China tend to be doctrinaire 
and sound like slogans.  For example, I think it is less persuasive to 
label the [Falun Gong]t a dangerous evil cult, than it is to describe
someof the teachings of 
their founder.  Such concepts as levitation, power of the spinning wheel 
to ward off bodily harm, and sickness as punishment for sins that cannot 
be cured by medication, do a lot more to show the cult aspects of this 
movement than does all the name calling.

(About the author: Born in China, George P. Koo immigrated to Seattle, 
WA as a child.  He
has BS and MS degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a 
ScD from Stevens Institue of Technology and a MBA. from Santa Clara 
University.  Dr. Koo is the Deputy Director of Pacific Rim Services 
at Deloitte & Touche in San Jose, CA, and is a board member of the 
Chinese American Forum, Inc., a non-profit corporation which publishes 
the Chinese American Forum, a cultural and educational quarterly magazine.)