China's super-efficiency leaves me longing for West

Even as I was ridiculing the hypocrisy of western management, I started to think about it rather more fondly

'HOW WAS China?" everyone asked last week when I pitched up at home bleary-eyed after an overnight flight. In reply, I found myself repeating the line from Noel Coward's play Private Lives. "Very big, China."

This was not an especially impressive insight given that I’d just spent six fabulous days swanking around Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Neither was it something I’d learnt from being there. When you are whisked round from flight to car, distance ceases to mean much.

In accepting the invitation to go on a debating tour, I had expected to return with a mind full of management ideas and a suitcase full of rip-off handbags. The former, I was sure, would be as plentiful as the latter: you can’t have an economic miracle on the scale of China without producing the odd management lesson that other countries can learn from.

Within 30 seconds of my arrival in Beijing, I’d had my first workplace insight. Waiting to help us manage the airport was the neatest young woman I have ever seen, wearing a uniform of a belted blue coat and white gloves. At the hotel, the staff were wearing smart grey dresses; the men driving the tourist rickshaws were in fashionably rustic beige jerkins. China really knows how to do uniforms, while the West has forgotten: it sacrificed them on the temple of individuality a long time ago. Uniforms, I saw, are smart, good for the consumer, give some pride to the job and take the stress out of getting dressed in the morning.

The next lesson was more profound. Everywhere was speed and efficiency. Workers were conspicuously doing the very thing that workers are meant to do – work. As we drove around, we saw lines of uniformed people being given a stern talking to by their bosses before starting their shifts. It seems that in China the long-forgotten management tool “do it because I say so” still works a treat. All rather impressive, if a little scary.

On day three, I met a Chinese journalist who writes about the workplace and compared notes. She told me that Chinese workers moan the whole time and have conniptions if any colleague is given any privilege they are not. The place is riddled with office politics – promotions on merit are almost unheard of; the rules that govern relationships and status are all important – and impossible for any westerner to grasp.

In return, I tried to explain the ludicrousness of western office life to her. “People skills?” she repeated, looking entirely baffled. “Anger management classes?” She shook her head in disbelief. In China there is nothing wrong with shouting. Everyone does it all the time. When I explained “360-degree feedback” to her she nearly keeled over. In China, she said, workers are often asked to appraise their peers, but this turns out to be less feedback than snitching. Only when I talked about team bonding she perked up. Ah yes, she said, very popular in China, only it happens at the weekend and if you don’t show up your pay gets docked.

As we talked, something peculiar happened. Even as I was ridiculing the nonsense and hypocrisy of western management, I started to think about it rather more fondly than usual. I stopped wanting to bring home any management lessons from China at all. Evidently she felt the same way: after our lunch she e-mailed to say that her next column was on why it’s easier to be a boss in China.

This left shopping for handbags and watches – which turned out to be equally perplexing. On the street, the going rate for a fake Calvin Klein watch is £1.80, less than a cappuccino. What invisible hand decreed this set of relative prices?

An even bigger puzzle were the luxury shops. In Beijing and Shanghai there are almost as many Louis Vuitton and Chanel stores as there are Starbucks and Costas. Everyone knows that in China there is the greatest luxury boom the world has ever seen. But when I walked past these stores, the only signs of life were squadrons of eager shop assistants. Westerners don’t shop there, as the stuff is much cheaper at home. But I didn’t see a single Chinese customer in any of the stores either.

Are the shops a front for something? Or will some of the big luxury companies soon admit – like Mattel did recently with its Barbie store – that they dashed into China too hastily? What’s at the bottom of it all, I asked our Shanghai correspondent. She shrugged. The better she got to know China, she said, the less she expected to be able to get to the bottom of anything. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011)