The Psyche of Chinese-ness:

and why the Chinese excel in entrepreneurship.

China is no longer lonely on the planet but lonely in its handling of Capitalism and Globalisation.
Chinas Economy which for a decade been growing at a rate of ten percent per year and now
continues for another decade at the pace of 6 percent, changed the global trade and business
landscape. It seems that it is now the West which has become the yellow submarine floating in
the ocean of globalization. Let me explain this statement.

The probability that your shoes, your laptop, and your smartphone are made in China is more
than seventy percent. It is thanks to China that the West managed to keep inflation very low for
the last two decade, even when the global economic growth has been very strong. Our consumer
ecstasy was initiated by China thanks to ever decreasing prices of goods., what has transcended
Capitalism. Capitalism in the sense of the control body of material en intellectual means
expanded the last century globally. Its political version became the enemy of the late Soviet
empire and the Chinese Communist State. The Old Capitalism gave in to China without any battle.
General Sun Tzu explains how to do. Old Capitalism is replaced by Consumption Capitalism
which is also China has adapted and as such the whole globe. In this way, China is not a capitalist
society without losing face.

For the readers who are keen to understand more about this, here follows an extract from the
book -Signs of Life. Life of Signs,-

Karl Marx put the big economic differentiator in labor, and its opposite capital and master
and/versus slave.' The master will have to feed his slaves properly when he wants that his slaves
work hard and good, what is a condition for the master to compete in the market. The master does
not only compete with the products or service which he produces, but he also competes
psychologically by showing off to other masters, e.g., by living in a bigger house and having more and
better-dressed slaves. The slaves are aware of that game of differentiation between the masters; so
the slaves try to benefit from this situation. They talk to their fellow slaves and even to the
competitor master to obtain better conditions or privileges such as more leisure time. In this way,
more products and services become available that have no longer relations to first peoples needs. A
consumer product does not always have to wait until it happens that some customer wants to own it.
Sometimes the demand is created by just making specific products available. The more some people
can afford new products the more will be differentiated, and a new market created. What started as a
game of productivity between the masters ends now up in a play of consumer-ability by the slaves.
Productivity drives competition and diversity drive consumer-ability.

In this way, have the slave upgraded his name as well. Slaves moved from laborers to consumers. The
output of the new slaves is consumption, and it is the task of the master that this happens in the
most significant volume and diversity possible. The worry of the new master is no longer to manage
labor but to manage consumption. These observations on modern capitalism leave Karl Marx quite
some distance behind us.
Labor becomes dissolved in the machinery of productivity, as work represents nowadays only a few
percentages of the cost price of most goods. Peoples needs dissolve in more prominent patterns of
social needs. Longing for something becomes a need of that something. The value of goods and
services shift to the significance of Signs. The content of the product or service does not count
anymore; what makes the attraction is the quantity, power and the expression of the signs belonging
to the good. Just think of gym saloons. They do not deliver better health; they only produce signs of a
slim body, muscle volume, and a membership sign.

1
To the introduction of Consumer Capitalism, there is a cost attached. Seventy percent of worlds
counterfeit goods come from China. Haly-Bot was read by millions of Chinese children even
before the official Harry Potter arrived on the shelf in our bookstores. Every year some 200.000
people die in China from the intake of fake medicine. So gentlemen are warned when you travel
to China and when you are in need of the blue pill, you better buy it at home for there is seventy
percent chance that the Chinese version is just a sweet.
The world bulges with consumer goods produced in the Far East as Consumer Capitalism has
no country borders anymore. The whole world has to provide the resources of materials and
energy to fabricate the consumer goods (and services like travel). This does not seem any
problem as all resource-rich countries also have to satisfy their Consumers with goods and
consumer tags.
But there are limits which have become very clear in the ecological price the world has to pay
for its Consumer Capitalism. Moreover, fresh air, a clear sky, smooth displacement of people,
etc., have become consumables first rank. China is not even halfway on the Consumer ladder in
comparison to the Western Countries and India and the rest of the world in cueing up as well.

What will China do and how can they handle the challenges?
The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is supposed to give the direction.
Statements that come out of such political events need the goggles of Chinese-ness to
understand.

About Chinese-ness.
Your first reflex might be: just ask Chinese psychologists.
Wrong, psychology is still a very young science in China, and the universities have had
psychology on their curriculum only for a couple of decades. Even in Hong Kong that has been
strongly influenced by the British, there is no strong establishment for psychologists.
This is basically because the Chinese do not want to be analyzed and they consider psychology
as a kind of voodoo-ism, another western product just like religion is.
If you want to grasp the psyche of the Chinese, you will have to study her philosophers.
Do not follow the path of beliefs or religion; they will not give you insight in Chinese-ness.
In fact, never any religion could touch ground in China; the more philosophy does the job.

Basic Chinese philosophical belief is that we as humans are only sure about two things: we
have been born, and one day we will die. What is the first point and what is the last point,
cannot be grasped by human intellect.
But there are other things we are pretty sure of, and that is, that between the major milestones
of our life, all things change continuously. Just look at Nature.
The Chinese say that we westerners let ourselves be manipulated by religion and even science.
When you behave well in your life, you will be rewarded with a ticket to Heaven. Otherwise,
you deserve punishment in Hell. Although it must be said there is some consideration also.
When on a weak moment you misbehaved then you can compensate for it only when you swear
unconditional fidelity to the religious doctrines. According to the Chinese, the West has been
hijacked by the mono religions which have controlled mankind most of the time. But this did
not turn our fortunes or give relief to our burning uncertainty in our mortal life. Thats why a
new strategy was launched at the end of the Middle Ages. The Lord Almighty appointed an
earthy prime minister. One of the first premiers was Isaac Newton. For sure you remember the
2
story of Adam and Eve and the apple. The same apple would change the course of history again.
This time the link was laid between the apple falling from the tree and the sun going down
under the horizon. The New Science explained how both the apple and the sun are controlled
by a mysterious power of gravity. Even more, it all could be predicted with the help of
mathematics. Now mankind started shooting rockets to heaven without angles falling on earth.
But despite the New Science, the uncertainty of life did not fade away, even worse the laws of
science did not explain what makes us happy or sad or where the mood comes from which
influences the stock markets. Even purely physical events like earthquakes completely escape
from any control by our computers and institutes.

Now that it is clear that after religion also science does not give all the answers, a new strategy
is launched in the West: find it out yourself. Je pense donc Je suis said Descartes and from now
onwards you have to take the lead, each for himself.

Also the Orient was confronted all the time with the basic uncertainty of what life brings.
But their approach was different from the West. Much more pragmatic is the East. Just look at
Nature, here also everything is born and dies. Do not fight nature, try to follow and be flexible.
If God has created life, for sure, he knows better. Do not waste your time in speculating whats
in the afterlife. People are not in need of dictates or doctrines. God has programmed his will in
the peoples themselves. Chinese cannot understand why we westerners are searching like
crazy to find a Holy Grail or some better fitting explanation of ancient texts?
You never will grasp the being of being. When you repeat the words of Descartes I think, so I
am in front of a Chinese; his reply will be: and I lie, so I am the lesser. The Westerner feels
flattered with this reply, and most probably he will miss the real point of what has is
said..that the Chinese feel superior!

Out of these basic differences between West and East in philosophical orientations, there is a
whole series of derived differences which have been confirmed by our famous psychological
tests.
Chinese are polychrome which means that for them time is cyclic while the Western time is
running linear till it reaches the day of the Last Judgement. The Chinese will execute more
easily simultaneous tasks than their western colleagues. Chinese New Year which they call
Spring Festival is a moment of celebration, but it is also the moment which appeals for a
change. Many Chinese will reconsider their prospects around Spring Festival and change job or
start a new project or business. Chinese attitude toward fate is also fundamentally different.
Just like everything that happens, also fate comes in cycles. There is bad fate but also good fate
that calls as opportunities to grasp. People should not be passive towards fate; a lot depends
on our awareness and attitude. Fen Shui or geomancy is, in fact, a kind of risk analysis of short
term and long term nuisances. If you build a house near a river bed, there is an increased risk of
flood.
Everything moves in short and long-term cycles along the patterns of chaos. Chaos is a
ubiquitous phenomenon. The course of a chaotic event is very sensitive to the initial or starting
conditions, and it tries to find a path to a pole of attraction, or it aims to keep away from a pole
of repulsion. The Chinese genetic system seems to be programmed to scan directions of fate
and opportunities continuously. Once you have detected a particular wave of fate, it is up to
you to follow or avoid, to cooperate or to obstruct its course. Never confront the wave, just
catch it at the right place and in due time. This attitude makes it that the Chinese excel in
entrepreneurship and flexibility.

3
The lack of psychological benefits which religion can provide in life is by most Chinese peoples
being compensated by their guanxi. This is a network of personal connections, commitments,
and obligations which each spins around him, what provides the Chinese with a buffer to
compensate for the daily uncertainties and problems which everybody encounters. This
network will share experiences and views and act as a last resort or back-up. The personal
guanxi also has a broader version which we call Chinese Bureaucracy. This is the toughest
place where Chinese practice their skills in social navigation which in most cases has the
meaning of acquiring power in the network. No wonder that in China every problem becomes a
political issue.
Since the last Emperor of China returned to citizenship a vacuum in the supreme power has
been created. That explains why the Communist Leadership is so powerful. Nobody anymore
can talk and negotiate with Heaven which was emperors privilege and task. The link to Heaven
is replaced by Science which is Chinas biggest admiration and envy towards the West. Once
China will clear her backlog in science I can bet that a new Great Wall will be erected. It will be
a wall with only a few holes with pipes for the inflow of gas, petroleum, and commodities.
China has no global ambitions nor feels any responsibility. It serves only Chinese-ness and the
interests to serve Chinese-ness, from which the Political System is part of.

Another reality of life is that the world becomes increasingly more complex. Despite the use of
very advanced computer models for forecasting in all areas, we still feel as if we are nowhere.
The economy is driven to a great extent by an unexplained mood. Mathematics does not get a
grip on anything that has to do with the principles of life. It could well be that the Chinese have
an advantage in pattern recognition and handling or processing of chaotic phenomenon, Take
for example indirect communication, what is mainly a feature where patterns of behavior and
expression have to be decoded and returned by the receiver to the sender. The holistic
approach of Chinese medicine is another example of pattern processing. Maybe the most
explicate case of applications of chaos theory is to be found in Chinas language itself. In the
West, our current languages have evolved along a linear stream of decoding simple signs or
characters.
The decoding is processed in a rather small bandwidth of interpretations, which further
translates into a limited set of meanings. Meanings which are black or white, good or bad, short
or long, etc. which are called dichotomies. This should not completely surprise us because our
philosophical operating software is founded on the logic centric version which Aristotle
deployed twenty centuries ago and which is the basis of western culture.
It is because of their way of processing language and content generation that the Chinese need
so much time in negotiations. In fact, negotiations will never end, simply because after reaching
a stage of understanding or implementation, the new situation and its context are also due to
renewed judgments and consideration which search for the next best direction where to
navigate.
Chinese rhetoric has the typical structure of because.so. The western style is one of
sentences like if.then.

Chinese are masters in double thinking, what means that they can easily build up reasoning
along different paths simultaneously. This mental feature makes it easier for a Chinese to live
in a Big Brother state. But to survive happily in such an environment, you need to combine it
with yet another complementary skill, which is the capability of balancing. Chinese have a
micro-genetic program which allows them to keep the balance between many issues at any
moment and still be ready to move in a new direction or another point where they can pause in

4
equilibrium. This skill explains why in the eyes of a Chinese you never may lose your temper
because then you show that you are not able to balance.
How to build up these skills of double thinking and learn to balance your views is written down
in what is Chinas oldest book. The book of Change or also called the I-Ching is composed
regarding yin and yang. The book is much older than the Bible and more widely spread across
the globe. In the West, it is mostly considered as exotic fortune telling because most readers
interpret it in the context of the time that the birth of the book. In ancient time all behavior was
expressed in terms which depicted Nature, like water, wind, fire, metal, the animals, etc. But
when you manage to read the Book of Change in the concepts and dimensions of modern time,
it turns out to be a unique oeuvre which stimulates the modes of operation of the human
brain.' Carl Gustav Jung wrote about the I-Ching: the ideas operate in a way which brings our
conscious and unconscious mental features in balance and which at the same moment points to
acts with targets which are achievable. The Chinese are masters in the navigation of Chaos.

Beside these macro-psychological patterns and characteristics, there do also exist the minor
measurable psychological features in our familiar psychological tests.
The Chinese are better in memorizing which of course can be explained by their language with
its many signs.
Chinese are less aggressive, especially at young age. When a Chinese lose control, he/she will
express it verbally rather than physical. The Mainland Chinese are the absolute best in
motivation. They work hard, and they are prepared for big sacrifice to achieve their goals and
esteem as well.
For a westerner to operate effectively in China, she or he will have to acquire the skills of
indirect communication. Respect and adherence to the Chinese rituals are the first steps to
take. A different type of observation is that the Chinese man seems to pump less testosterone in
his blood than what the western machos do, what can explain why Chinese men have less hair
on their body. As everything is balanced in China, the softer masculine appearance is
compensated by the Chinese ladies who can be very outspoken and assertive. Maybe this
phenomenon can explain why western men so easily get caught with the honey yellow fever.
This is the phenomenon of Westerners falling for the (aggressive) charms of a Chinese woman.
Chinese would explain it as a balancing act of macho behavior which seeks for compensation by
the exotic purity of a white lotus flower.
This again is an example of how the Chinese see life through the windows of yin and yang.
A very effective and simple way to handle yin and yang is to picture yin as the female
psychological features and then attribute a male behavior to yang.
Yin dominates in the East; yang controls the West.

We should give the task to do business and handle diplomacy with China rather to the
Western women because they possess the psychology of the Chinese mind.

Getting women more involved in the guanxi with China will also solve the problem of honey
yellow fever. Forty percent of Western expatriate families living in China or where the husband
is a frequent business traveler to China, who stays longer periods there, break up because a
Chinese Madam Butterfly has broken into their marriage. China not only spreads her spell over
individuals, but she is also charming the new Global Consumer Capitalism. China rich show off
with the Porches, Bentleys and the plenty of luxury stuff for the new Capitalist. This year a
China brand topples the leading market share of Apples smartphone, with the slogan: proud to
navigate China technology.
Ronny Julius C Verlet October 2017.

5
Other publications of Ronny Julius C Verlet:
On www.issuu you can read and order a copy.
On www.scribd.com you can read, download and paste copy.

Signs of Life, Life of Signs.

https://issuu.com/ronnyverlet/docs/signs-of-life-and-life-of-signs

https://www.scribd.com/document/361905022/Signs-of-Life-and-Life-of-Signs-2017

Take a selfie of your Self to boost your mental health.

https://issuu.com/ronnyverlet/docs/selfie_3_english_aug2016

https://www.scribd.com/document/361117665/Take-a-selfie-of-your-Self-to-boost-
your-mental-health

The f(l)ight of the genders.

https://issuu.com/ronnyverlet/docs/the_gender_f_l_ight

https://www.scribd.com/document/361119167/The-gender-f-l-ight

Erotic images in churches and cathedrals.

https://issuu.com/ronnyverlet/docs/erotic_images_in_churches_and_cathe

https://www.scribd.com/document/361118680/Erotic-Images-in-Churches-and-
Cathedrals