I’m already paid for!

Book cover from Red Lights, by Zheng.

I’ve been sitting on this story, waiting for an appropriate time to share it—and by appropriate, I mean, a context that would allow for it’s use as a teaching example and not just the sharing of a some-what sordid tale. This week’s very public drinking and sexual abuse/rape case at Alibaba is just that kind of situation.

Drinking and Entertainment in China

My position on banquets and KTV (B&Ks) in China is that they are a necessary evil. They are to be managed with full knowledge of what they are for and limits need to be set before you ever go (how much are you going to drink, what activities will you participate in). I don’t like long dinners, hotpot, or KTV, but I understand that others do like these events and they can indeed serve a purpose beyond the food and entertainment.

Like anywhere else, B&Ks in China can be held for any number of personal or professional reasons—weddings, births, graduations, friends nights out, just-for-fun, no reason at all. Banquettes are ubiquitous in China. If you are associated with and middle-age professionals in urban China they are almost inescapable as the weekend standby activity. Depending on the friends and food these have the potential to be tolerably fun every now and again. I’ve been treated to some great meals and honestly had fun a couple times at KTV too—but I’ve also likely attended hundreds of B&Ks and most are tedious with average food and most people can’t sing well, despite liquid courage.

Business banquets are often unavoidable. These events are often sponsored for clients and employees and so become an excuse to eat/drink on someone else’s dime. When these events are required by companies or expected by superiors and clients they are significantly less fun and often much more is expected than most foreigners realize. There are legitimate business reasons for B&Ks; they are held as a public celebration of a contract, a hiring, a promotion, a completed project, and even just the confirmation of quality relationships. Business banquets are often long, but usually tasty and, honestly, necessary to build trust, promote face, and solidify relationships. Some people avoid them (me) when possible, while others absolutely love them. I think that it’s best to just learn to value the necessary ones and try to enjoy the celebratory excesses. Regardless, they are a vital part of Chinese business culture.

I guess that I should clarify, meals and friendships are not a bother. But much of the excessive drinking and post dinner activities are neither necessary nor cultural. So I set some limits. I’m a teetotaler and happily married, so my rule of thumb is that when other guests are drunk enough to not miss me, I try to check out. A secondary line I will not cross is when people start to grope and fondle hostesses and clothes start coming off I’m definitely out. Regardless of your personal moral values there are legal (Chinese law) and ethical (corporate rules) issues regarding this type of behavior. And I’ve found that if you drink or stay too long one time you will be expected to do it again and again.

There are a couple of not insignificant reasons that these activities are common in China (and other places like SEA too). First, is the novelty of association with strangers. Understand that capitalism is less than 50 years old in China and the first 20 years of it were mostly local entrepreneurs, government officials, and large SOEs. This means that doing business with strangers that potentially can provide a product/service for the best price/quality is still a relatively novel concept. No matter what the CCP and some foreign “friends of China” try to tell you, business in China is still conducted primarily through personal connections. If you need to be competitive and the people you don’t know have the best product/service, then you need to find a way to quickly build relationships of trust. Banquets and drinks over sexy hostesses are the venue of choice for this.

Recently I head that getting drunk together shows that you’re willing to sacrifice (your own liver) for the good of the relationship. Without this token of commitment, there are limits to the trust you can hope to gain with others. While I find this explanation to be useful, meaning I realize that people say this and believe this, it’s not true for everyone. I never drank in China and was able to develop very good relationships with factories, suppliers, and other friends. Some of them mentioned to me that it took them longer to trust me, but eventually they did and they respect that I kept my personal values despite peer/financial/social/professional pressures.

B&Ks are common because everyone needs food and a meal is relatively cheap and easy to access. Breaking bread together is primal, I think. And meals were often not included in the lists of gifts that were illegal for officials to accept. Of course, most people think that alcohol makes everything more fun too, and drinks also increases the quality and cost of the meal, which in turn raises the level of public face for the host (and the level of social debt incurred by the guest). It’s a convenient option and often a simple win/win for all involved.

Another reason why B&Ks are common is that there are no Dunn and Bradstreet reports for China. There is really no other way to find out who your potential partner is without you personally spending time with them. B&Ks are a way to do this casually. I’ve heard this need to know your partner expressed in different ways, for example, “Can you pay a larger deposit?” Or, “Can you pay the balance before we ship?” When working in a volatile and corrupt system, if you don’t know who you’re working with you need security (better payment terms). Often clients can’t pay more early, so it becomes incumbent on you to know your partners and take the time to create a long-term relationship.

Systemically, despite real advances, there is still not much of an independent legal system in China. The Chinese legal system is not for legal outcomes based on precedent but rather for social outcomes to keep the peace (and keep the CCP in power). So, yes, there is a legal system but not one that you’d like to bet your company’s future on. Chinese who know the risks of the system have to have a back up plan. Personal relationships, blackmail, threats, etc. are all on the table. And I don’t say that lightly. I’ve had a boss try to trap me with girls to get out of a contract. I’ve had a factory kidnap our QC manager to force payment. I’ve had a factory place an employee in our lobby for 9 days to make sure we didn’t run away from payment on a large project. In payment negotiations once a factory manager told me, “We know you’ll pay. We know where your family lives.”

Finally, I’ve been told that the logic is this: you create a bond together if you have a professional relationship, a degree of friendship, some shared sacrifice (liver damage), as well as some shared danger (illegality/intimacy, i.e. sex with KTV hostesses or massage parlor girls). A relationship that crosses multiple social categories is significant, and B&Ks are an easily accessible venue to create those bonds quickly so that work can be done.

This complex relationship also works to keep “respectable” people in line through the threat of exposure and loss (of money and face). I’ve heard this from multiple Chinese and Thais, that the threat of public shame keeps people in line. So I assume it’s true, but personally I don’t get it. In my mind, random sex and drunken nights with colleagues are too common to be a real threat—everyone’s wife already knows, right? Is it just the public confirmation of the wink-wink already-known behaviors that poses a threat to personal face and social standing? If so, then face and guanxi are even more important in professional relationships than most people are giving them credit for. Regardless, B&Ks are one common way to establish face and guanxi.

So all of this brings me to an evening in 2010.

We were completing a 6 month project totaling almost $500K with a factory that we’d not used before. They knew I didn’t drink and they knew my wife, a project manager that had been involved with the factory on this very project. During the course of the contract, banquets were common but polite. I was told it was their company culture to eat together often and they had their own hotel and entertainment complex (KTV and massage parlor) on the factory grounds. After a couple of dinners in the first months of the project they stopped pressuring me about dinking and KTV. I felt they were good people and it was a very professional factory. They were doing tens of millions of dollars of business with clients from dozens of countries and I often ran into other foreign clients in the lobby and on the factory floor. Over all, a very professional experience.

On the night in question, the banquet was for the end of the project and so was larger and longer than usual. There were project managers and QC people, sales managers and client managers, a couple of people from our company and C-level people from their corporate office too. Lots of drinks, lots of toasts. It was nice for all of us to have completed the project, which was difficult for them and they were rightly proud of their work. This is the kind of dinner that I don’t mind—we were celebrating the completion of good project and the start of a new profitable relationship.

As the banquet entered hour three or four and most people were hitting their limit of baijiu, one of the senior people suggested that they move upstairs for KTV and more drinks. This is usually where I check out—in the move to a second room it’s easy to lose someone, even if I was the only white guy in the group. My experience is that when the party moves upstairs it is typically the time of night when most of the older women and anyone else that is uncomfortable (or not invited) leave as well. I was pretty sure I could get out. But no, not only was I shepherd into the room but also assigned a hostess and scheduled to sing. Nightmare. Well intentioned, but a nightmare none the less.

The night went as expected. Lots of bad sining, more drinks, even more grabbing and lots of young girls on older mens’ laps. I sang one song and told my assigned hostess that I’d tip her well if she quietly helped me get out. She understood and helped “lead me to the bathroom” and I was able to leave.

I got to my room turned on the TV and was about to shower when I heard a knock on the door. In China, late-night knocks on the door and phone calls are common. Girls that work in the hotels’ massage parlors solicit business each night by calling/visiting the rooms of guests and offering their services. While this doesn’t happen as much in global-brand hotels in large cities, and it was MUCH more common a decade ago, it is still happens in factory-owned and smaller hotels and even in nice hotels in 2nd and 3rd tier cities. Usually a simple “No thanks” is enough to end the conversation. Tonight the girl at the door was the hostess assigned to me from the KTV lounge, which I was not expecting.

I told her no thanks and began to shut the door. She insisted that it was OK, that she could come in, that she was happy to join me. I again said no, and she responded that the factory had sent her to help me relax, and she again tried to enter. I said no thanks again and she repeated that it was OK, that she could help me and it would be comfortable. We went back and forth a couple more times as she insisted that since the factory sent her up it was ok and she was professional. I tried various excuses for not being interested and finally, in exasperation she said, “It’s OK, I’m already paid for” and tried again to walk in. At this point I realized that she didn’t understand my moral excuses as anything more than polite declinations (or bargaining tactics to lower her price). I said “I’m married, I’m not interested, I’ll talk with the factory in AM, thank you but no thanks,” and shut the door in her face. She knocked again but I didn’t answer.

I don’t share this to make anyone think that I’m some paragon of moral virtue. Rather I share to make a very clear point—the same relationships and conversations are not understood the same way, even by the people involved themselves, not to mention to others observing from a distance.

I was looking at the transaction as a purely moral one. I’d made commitments (religious, marital, ethical) that I was going to keep. It was a question of right or wrong, and finance and professional relationships didn’t really enter into it at all. I was telling her my moral excuses for not letting her in and she heard what I said but didn’t understand that I wasn’t talking about price.

The young hostess on the other hand was looking at it professional and financially. Like it or not, this was her job. She was paid and told to go to work. She was assuming that I was negotiating the price by refusing her entry, as was likely typical of some of her past clients. She was coyly pushing back and affirming to me that it would be worth it without making it too much a crass financial transaction in a hotel hallway. In the end she just must have figured that the dumb foreigner just didn’t get it and told me the bottom line, her services were already paid for! In the years since I’ve realize that she was likely afraid to go back and tell her bosses that I had refused her.

And indeed the factory was confused at my refusal. The next morning they had one of the men that I’d worked closely with ask me if there was a problem with the woman they’d sent to me. They wondered if I left because I was angry at them or disappointed in the nights actives or service. If I’d felt offended or left out. They were concerned about our relationship—not the money, or the morals, or the hostess. I assured them my issues were personal and had nothing to do with them. I couched it in religion to give them a “hook” to hang the excuse on, since they didn’t seem to accept the fact that I didn’t want the company of a (free) pretty young lady.

Takeaways

The general point again is that just because you’re looking at the same situation does not mean that it is being understood/processed the same by all participants. Moral, financial, relational perspectives, just to name three here, elicit and/or force different solutions, understandings, and responses. And when you’re having these situational differences across cultures and languages, there are likely even more misunderstandings.

In a corporate setting taking the time to both really listen to the concerns of those you’re working with as well as work to establish an environment where you can have misunderstandings and still maintain good relationships and work together without prolonged frustrations is not just a good idea, but mandatory for success. Even when you’re not aware of misunderstandings, reconfirming important values via communication techniques like comparing what was said or asking for someone to paraphrase back to you what is understood, or contrasting what you’ve said or heard, take only a few minutes and can become good and transferable habits quickly and easily.

A secondary point here about saying no. No doesn’t mean no in China. Often no is used just to be polite and not look too greedy or anxious. Most of the time you’ll need to decline an offer multiple times before you’re believed to be telling the truth. And even then, if it’s something that is common (drinking) or privileged (free sex), you’ll likely not be believed. Remember, in much of atheist/poly-theistic Asia avoiding conflict is usually valued over telling the truth—there are multiple truths and most are only situationally appropriate. Telling you what you want to hear is usually seen as the way to manage exaggerated western emotions.

A third point is about gender roles and sexual harassment. People are not thought to be equal. Women are not perceived to be as important as men and do not rank as high on the social ladder, even when they are educated and/or have significant professional titles. This is obvious when you realize that most Chinese companies don’t have policies for dealing with sexual harassment—not because it doesn’t exist, it does and much more so than in the West, but because it’s not seen as a “real” problem. It’s “just how things are done in China.” “Given that even major companies like Alibaba currently don't have mechanisms addressing workplace sexual harassment or assault, taking to social media has proven the most effective way for victims to seek justice.” (Shen Lu, Protocol China, Aug. 10, 2021)

Like so many issues in China, the laws are significant, but the enforcement is random and localized, hence the endemic corruption. “Though various laws contain provisions that prohibit workplace sexual harassment — for example, China's constitution enshrines gender equality — the rules are generally abstract and lack teeth.” (Ibid.)

Finally, drinking culture (and gender roles, again). This brings me back to my introduction about the ubiquitous and uncomfortable nature of B&Ks. Women are often considered weaker and not given outside travel assignments. Usually company women don’t go to business drinking events, often women are not even put in professional positions where they would have to work with external clientele. Specifically because they are seen a less capable of holding their alcohol and also because of the extracurricular actives that often accompany heavy drinking.

The drinking culture is ubiquitous in China (and Taiwan, and Thailand, and Japan, and amongst the Chinese overseas in Asia) and deemed mandatory for business. I have friends in sales positions in Shenzhen who are out 2-4 night a week—and by “out” I mean with bosses, co-workers, clients or suppliers drinking until later into the night. (It’s no wonder that the CBD areas of Shenzhen are still relatively quiet at 7AM and Starbucks are more or less empty until 10 AM.)

As you can probably tell, the combination of women being excluded from positions which include heavy drinking, a lax attitude toward sexual harassment, and an almost universal acceptance/expectation of drinking culture means that women are not promoted as much as men and are regularly abused and harassed.

But like the recent education policies, which are well-intentioned but completely misguided (attacking the symptoms of a much larger problem), stricter enforcement of sexual harassment laws and policies (which is a good thing) is not going to end the rampant harassment if the drinking (and prostitution) culture continue unabated.