East Asian Business Specialist

Asia Literacy for Westerners

Asia Literacy:
"Quixotic illusion, engaging mind-game, or realistically achievable skill-set?"
By Professor Robert M. March
Paper delivered at International Business Colloquium, Central Queensland University, October 1997

ABSTRACT
"Asia Literacy" is a phrase often used in media discussions of Australian business and trade in Asia, but rarely examined or defined. Amongst scholars, there seem to be at least two main discussants of the concept - Stephen Fitzgerald, especially his 1997 book, "Is Australia an Asian Country?", but also publications of the Asian Studies Council dating from the time that he founded and chaired it in the 1980’s; and Robert March, especially his 1995 paper, "Asia Literacy and Australian-Asia Business Relationships", but also his papers on the concept in 1989, together with a limited correspondence with Fitzgerald at that time. Examining these materials indicates that there are urgent needs in the Australian community for an Asia literacy comprising, one, an understanding of "Asia", and two, interpersonal and business skills appropriate to effective relationships with Asians. However, some policy-like pronouncements on Asia Literacy are elitist, intellectualised, quixotic, and often irrelevant to everyday human needs, and so frustrate fruitful discussion about the subject, and prevent the "intelligent man in the street" from developing informed views on the subject. The core ideas for an informed view, stemming from an appreciation of real needs of Australians who deal regularly with "Asians", are presented, followed by proposals to guide the "proper" and long-term development of "Asia Literacy" in Australian education and training.

INTRODUCTION
Literacy, as the ability to read and write, has been much in the news recently in Australia. A survey has been interpreted to mean that up to half of the population have difficulties reading and writing. The same concept of literacy is variously codified in Asian languages. In Japanese and Tagalog (and many other Austronesian languages), it is rendered as "the skills of reading and writing"; in Chinese, it is a compound word meaning "recognise words". Chinese, English, and most other Indo-European languages, are fortunate to have a single word that possesses metaphorical flexibility, so making it easy to coin an expression like "Asia literacy".
How might we define this expression * that has come into use only since the late 1980’s? Its use raises at least two questions. One - literacy per se is regarded as the essential foundation stone of a more equal society today. Literacy is the means to participating in a democratic society and to grasping its economic and cultural opportunities. Literacy the word is also used metaphorically to refer to non-ignorance and sophistication in fields other than reading and writing. Economists talk about economic illiteracy. In recent discussions, people who assert that tariffs on imports save local jobs have been branded as "economic illiterates", but the term has been applied with special scorn to government policy makers who have used that argument to justify tariff policy (see, e.g., John Quiggin, Australian Financial Review, 18.9.97, page 20). No doubt the concept of literacy has been or can be applied to many other fields - architectural/archeological/anatomical, etc. literates or illiterates. At the least, illiteracy used in this way clearly connotes someone who has both a shallow and uninformed knowledge, and a clear lack of understanding, of the subject.
How does Asia literacy equate in this respect? Are Asia specialists to be thought of, and respected, for their professional understanding, knowledge and training, as are economists or architects or archaeologists? This is a very moot point. Asian is a very large and diverse region, comprising countries of wide cultural, historical and linguistic differences. Can one person really be an Asia specialist? Of the Australians who write about Asia (though actually restricting themselves to East Asia) and are discussed here, Fitzgerald and Blackman are China specialists, and March is a Japan specialist. What does March know of say China, or Blackman and Fitzgerald of say Indonesia? we might ask.
March (1995) has commented indirectly on this question, under the heading, "Common Points in East Asia", observing that the countries of East Asia generally differ from Australia in respect of formal behaviour, detail orientation, and their ideology of friendship and close personal connection, which three he sees as "remarkably similar" in Asian societies. So what he is saying might be interpreted as a view that in-depth knowledge of one Asian society facilitates a transfer of learning about other Asian societies. Simply put, if you are a specialist on one Asian country, it is easy to know what or what not to do in others.
A second question to ask is - we assume that "literacy" is and must be taught in the classroom, but is it true for Asia literacy as well? In what I believe was the first public document to use the expression, published by the Asian Studies Council in 1988, it was proposed that Australia should become an "Asia literate society", where "Australians have some understanding of Asian history, cultures, geography and economies, are comfortable with Asians in their work environment and ... the knowledge of an Asian language is unexceptional". More portentously and ominously, the paper declared: "the structural transformation of our economy and the forces for economic change in Asia present a challenge which we cannot meet successfully without Asia-related skills". Can we accept such a statement? Personally, I find there are too many implicit assumptions here that I cannot accept - assumptions as to what the "challenge" is, as to what ‘success" is, what "Asia-related skills" are, etc.
Since 1988, "Asia literacy" has been put forward as the necessary goal of many Asia-related training courses and Asian language courses, and is sometimes used to describe the goals of international business departments in Australian Companies. The rationale for becoming Asia-literate is often said to be to better the economic relationship with Asia. This is misplaced because most Asians expect, as a matter of cultural course, that business relationships throughout Asia are in the first place friendship relationships. The reality is that it is Asian-type friendship relationships that sustain their business relationships, not economics in the first place. Even common economic interests, as in Australian-Asian joint business ventures, only survive when there is trust and solidarity between the parties. Being spurred by economics alone is about as attractive as trusting a confidence trickster; and it will not take "Asians" long to weed out those Australians whose sole interest in Asia is profit. Both Fitzgerald (1997) and March (1989 & 1995) have stressed the dangers of an Asia orientation that is stimulated solely by economic motives, lacking a genuine interest in the people and their cultures.

Not Literacy, But Understanding
This is not by any means all the problem. At high school, I studied French and was passably good at learning it. But I learnt nothing about France, its society or culture. If anything, all I acquired were crypto-racist stereotypes of the French, inherited from our Anglophile, Francophobe culture. It was only as an adult that I began to learn something about France and its great culture, and knowing or not knowing the language had nothing to do with developing a better appreciation of France. Such experience has led me to believe that it is understanding, not literacy, that is important in the development of good inter-cultural relationships. Literacy, if it has connotations of mere language competence, is no more than a staging post on the way to understanding and insight. Amongst the many fluent non-Japanese speakers of the Japanese language that I know, there are a number who hold distorted and racist opinions of the Japanese people. I suspect this is true for most other languages as well. You can be literate but racist. You can be literate but insensitive. The dangers of a bookish or intellectual view of Asia literacy (which is how I view many of Fitzgerald’s pronouncements on the subject) is that it too often puts books, ideologies, academic orientations, between us and real life experience. In my view, being Asia literate is about being able to manage life and business in interpersonal dealings with "Asians" on the ground in "Asia".
Another danger of Fitzgerald’s approach is that it is ultimately driven by what I read as an over-dramatised ideology of inevitability. He thinks like someone driven into a corner. "We [Australians] are alone, exposed ... We have nowhere to go but Asia" (page 14). Again he says, Australians are "outsiders in Asia", and "will never be truly part of the in-group ... unless they are able to enter into the fullest possible two-way communication" (page 173). "We have to find our pilgrim soul" ( page 179). To me, he is too idealistic, too quixotic, too detached from the reality of everyday living. Change does not come about through, nor is it motivated by, such grand visions. It comes through innumerable small daily endeavours of individuals, or through events beyond our control.
There is also more to the matter of Asia literacy than language proficiency. I do not dispute that Asian language learning, combined with study of the contemporary culture of a country, should be promoted on a national scale. It would at least spark some to be interested and want to pursue deeper study. But the really key skill for interpersonal relationships with Asians is not language, but communication, ability. There are many successful Western businessmen in Asia who have only rudimentary skills in the local language, but enjoy warm relationships with their local employees, colleagues and clients. They demonstrate that friendliness and interest in others bridge those gaps that mere language competence may not. In short, we come back to genuine interest in the other party as often more critical to the establishment of good relationships than literacy. This means, to me, that education to promote what is being called "literacy", needs to be broadly based on both language and environmental learning including history/culture/society. Languages should certainly be emphasised, but people with good human skills and cultural sensitivity but mediocre linguistic skills should not be frightened off by the scare-mongering of language specialists.
One of the problems with policy-type discussions about Asia literacy in Australia is that they can be dominated by various vocal vested interests or "lobbies" - comprising language teachers, bureaucrats, journalists, and other professional Asia apologists, as well as lobbies of Asia "bashers", who periodically come out of the woodwork . Generally speaking, such lobbies keep the focus and vision narrowed in respect of Asia literacy. It is only what I will call the Asia pragmatists, people who have lived and worked in different parts of East Asia for a good part of their lives, who know that Asia literacy is most importantly (if not completely) "the learning of ‘Asia’ in the classroom of everyday life". Living unprivileged lives in Asia, they have learnt what it takes, in the trial and error of everyday life and relationships, to develop interpersonal skills and networks for more than survival living and business success in alien societies. We should listen to these people. We should learn from them. If the term "Asia literacy" is to have substantive meaning, inter subjectively agreed upon, the meaning should come from the "literacy" that Asia pragmatists have wrought for themselves from their lives and studies and reflected-upon experience.

Language Skills In Business
How important is Asian language skill? One Asian Studies Council paper states that a number of major Australian business organisations said, in a joint statement: "Australian business and industry recognises that language limitations represent a major commercial handicap in our dealings with Asia". I am sceptical about the truth of this statement. In fact, I believe that the Asian Studies Council has always been out of touch with, and secretly and condescendingly critical of, "business people". Again, I take issue with the words of Fitzgerald (1997) that "Australians trying to do business in Asia .. do almost none of the things they would do by way of preparation in Australia. They will send someone ... who not only has never before been outside Australia .. [but who also] has no language or other Asian-related skills" (pages 12-13).
I suppose that this is meant to be a generalisation, admitting of some exceptions to the case, though it reads less like a scholar’s statement (for no evidence is offered) and more like much of Australian journalistic comment that revels in finding fault with Australian businesses allegedly cavalier behaviour in Asia. In respect of Australia alone, he might have referred to Blackman’s 1995 survey of "Australian Executives in China", which found a severe shortage of executives who "know the way the Chinese conduct business", as well as a lack of pre-China training, with 8% of companies having executives who failed the assignment because they could not cope with China. March (1997) has also reported the results of 24 largely successful case studies of Australian companies in China and Japan, many of whom have been highly successful over a long period of time (Pacific Dunlop, for instance, for a period of over 20 years. Cited in Blackman, 1994).
Perhaps there is a difference in background between myself and Fitzgerald and Blackman. Unlike them, I have been a management consultant to multinational companies in Asia for many years, and know first hand that many professional international managers have learnt how to use the skills of locals - interpreters in meetings, marketing and business consultants, etc - effectively. Language competence, for the most part, has been helpful, but not necessarily necessary.
In the Fujitsu multinational corporation, the CEO of the Australian subsidiary is Neville Roach, an Anglo-Indian. Mr Roach speaks only a few Japanese phrases, but they are pointed and ones highly useful, in the hands of an urbane and charming man, in lubricating social contacts with the Japanese. Otherwise, he has managed a distinguished career within Fujitsu with English only. The American factory manager of Richardson Merrell in Japan for many years supervised 220 Japanese workers in Osaka. Though he spoke only "broken" Japanese, he was a deeply loved manager who communicated with everyone with his smiles and manifest concern for them as individuals. Mr Ken Davis was manger of a BHP subsidiary in North East China for 3 years, and did learn Mandarin, which he put to good use in being able to deal with operational problems of the factory on a daily basis. Australian engineer, Mr Peter Nash, nine years ago established and today still manages two successful joint ventures in Jiangsu province, managing with very modest Mandarin. Mr Ron Gosbee, formerly with AWA Defence Systems, was highly successful in selling navigational systems to airports all over China. He speaks very rudimentary Mandarin, but developed warm and family-like relationships with Chinese everywhere - because, in the first place, he liked and trusted them, and they liked and trusted him. Australian agricultural specialists (with little linguistic skills) from the Australian subsidiary of Case Corporation spend many months each year in North East China, dealing with Chinese farmers - they have endeared themselves to the hearts of Chinese farmers because they know all about farm life, and are willing to pitch in to help solve all kinds of problems. They behave like family friends, not tractor salesmen. The lesson for me is that the equation about the relationship between business or personal success in Asia should see linguistic skills and cultural sensitivity and understanding being added onto the number one requirements of human qualities, kindheartedness and good attitude.
The absence of linguistic skill as a major limitation to doing business has never been complained of by the Japanese in the People's Republic of China, or Brazil, or Thailand. Many US businesses have successfully penetrated the Japanese, German and South American markets in spite of language limitations. Other examples are easily listed. So is there some problem here that is specific to Australians? If there is a problem, it is not a linguistic one; most likely, it is due to the relative lack of international experience amongst Australian businesses, especially in non-English speaking countries.

What Are Asia-Related Skills?
It is true that ASC publications mention not only Asian language, but also "Asian languages and studies" . However, Asian Studies is never singled out separately, so we have no way of knowing what "studies" means to the ASC. Again, the phrase "Asia-related skills" is used frequently, but never defined. At one point, they state that Qantas, in addition to a major language training program, "has also given high priority to Asia-related skills in recruitment". When I contacted the Qantas manager in charge of this recruitment program and asked what "Asia-related skills" meant to Qantas, he said, after an exclamation of surprise and a pause, that it could be described as "cultural awareness", and that it was assessed by both analysis of actual experience overseas, and by interviews of applications by established Asia-specialists within the organisation.

Cross-Cultural Skills
The Qantas approach seems perfectly sensible, but it is not appropriate to describe cultural awareness and foreign experience as skills. I am not being picky about semantics here. There are identifiable skills of value to and appropriate to cross cultural work and personal settings. To identify them, we need first to move into the well-established behavioural scientific field of cross-cultural communication, which provides very significant guidelines and insights into ways to improve cross cultural relationships, be they with Asians or any other foreigners. For example, there is a well recognised process of cross cultural learning and adjustment through which most people will pass as they adjust to another alien culture. Called the W curve of crosscultural adjustment, it is in part a trial and error process, involving confusion, misunderstandings, culture shock, some anger and other emotions, which need to be experienced and passed through. Basic understanding of this should be essential in any culture learning program. The stages of the W curve are presented in Box 1.
Moreover, the cross-cultural field of study also indicates what skills are appropriate for smooth adjustment to foreign cultures, what skills are necessary for better interpersonal relationships with foreigners (at home or abroad), what the personal barriers are that we each must overcome in order to have more effective relationships with those of a different culture.

STAGES OF ADJUSTMENT TO A SECOND CULTURE
1. Initial Contact
This stage is characterised by feelings of excitement and euphoria. The foreigner perceives the host culture as intriguing and enchanting. He is attuned to superficial differences such as, "They don't use chopsticks here" or "Families are smaller here". The foreigner finds many similarities between his culture and the host culture and often makes the statement, "We do it the same way in my country".
2. Initial Culture Shock
This stage is characterised by a sense of increasing confusion and loss. The foreigner experiences disorientation because of a lack of familiarity with everyday cues such as language, bus schedules, foods, newspapers printed in his native language, and gestures. He experiences periods of depression, withdrawal, severe homesickness, mounting tension, frustration and fatigue. This stage is also called DISINTEGRATION.
3. Superficial Adjustment
The foreigner temporarily overcomes the negative effects of culture shock and has learned how to "survive" in the host culture. He knows the bus routes, can communicate basic needs in the host language and appears to others to be settled. However, cultural differences begin to intrude and the foreigner experiences a loss of ties with his own culture.
4. Depression/Isolation
The foreigner experiences a growing loss of self-esteem because of awareness of deep cultural differences. He feels alienated from members of the host culture. Frequent misinterpretation of cultural cues and lack of ability to "fit in" cause the foreigner to feel a loss of control over his environment. His sense of identity and personality are threatened.
5. Reintegration/Compensation
The foreigner develops coping behaviour to deal with low self-esteem. Cultural differences continue to cause the foreigner to make negative judgements, however. The foreigner develops strategies to help deal with anxiety, nervousness, frustration and sometimes anger. The strategies may include suspicious, stubborn and rebellious behaviour. The strategies may cause members of the host culture to develop stereotypes about the foreigner and to feel hostility towards him. The foreigner may appear to reject the host culture and its members by conveying a hostile attitude. The negative behaviour may be a way of overcompensating for previously felt inadequacies. The "rejection syndrome" will disappear with successful and complete adjustment.
6. Autonomy/Independence
The foreigner accepts and sometimes even values differences between his own and the host culture. He realises that there are good and bad aspects of both his own culture and the host culture. The defensiveness that the foreigner exhibited in the stage of reintegration/compensation begins to disappear. The foreigner feels more relaxed and demonstrates self-confidence. He is capable of interacting socially in the host culture. The foreigner is convinced that he can cope with the cultural differences and even benefit from them.
But there is more to be said about the gaining of language competency. It is something which is usually out of the question to acquire as long as you remain in Australia (I hold this to be generally true even for University honours graduates in Asian languages). Only by living, working, studying in the country can one really achieve the kind of result that the Asian Studies Council seems to be hoping for. In Japan, what is working to improve fluency in English, and what would help greatly here, is a marked expansion in the exchange student system from junior high school on through university. Not only does it virtually guarantee "fast track" language competency, it also guarantees what the ASC have failed to recognise as the biggest need of all: the building of networks of personal friendships between Australians and Asians. Fitzgerald (1997) seems to have come round to this viewpoint, but it was never a view that the Asian Studies Council put forward.

OPTIMISM ABOUT ASIA-LITERACY
If language fluency is not the universal answer to becoming more able to do business long term with Asians, many may ask pessimistically, what hope is there for us? Some years ago, I proposed that Australia annually send 1,000 of its younger managers, engineers and other professionals to live and work in Asia for at least a year, and keep it up for at least ten years. My idea was based on what the Americans had done for South Korea in the 1960's, when they had funded the post graduate education of young Koreans in the USA, each person staying for at least a year and some, taking advanced degrees, up to 3-4 years. Those Koreans are today the people who put Korea on the industrial map in the seventies and eighties. It seemed a good idea at the time, but I couldn't interest any politicians in the idea.
If we cannot send massive numbers of our people to Asia for total cultural immersion, a good alternative exists. This is to provide simulated experience and study in Australia, as in business workshops for Australians, with Asians participating as representatives of contrast cultures. Such workshops, with local managers and Asian expatriates participating, have been conducted by "Asia specialists" in Australia since 1980, and even the Australia Film and Television School has conducted these for marketers of Australian films and documentaries since 1990, where expatriate Japanese groups play roles as teams of film and TV buyers, negotiating with Australian teams.

Conclusion
The Special Interest Of Atmosphere Management The greatest challenge for Westerners with Asians lies in successfully managing the relationship atmosphere: ie, learning to maintain a good meeting tone, understand subtleties of communication, and sustain a friendly relationship. The little research done to date on relationship atmosphere is only slightly informative, and suffers from the serious defect of assuming that atmosphere is culture-free - that is, atmosphere has the same dimensionality whatever the culture. This breaches common sense even when we compare Western countries with one another - Australians versus Americans, for instance, have quite different ideas about what is a good atmosphere. Moreover, when we compare Western countries to North-East Asia, a major dimension of atmosphere, missing in the West, emerges. This is the presence in North East Asia of an insistence on friendship - that is, a friendly meeting tone - and on socialising. They are seen as essential parts of the overall business relationship management in that region, whereas in many Western countries, friendship of this character and socialising between client and supplier are deliberately factored out of the atmosphere and thus the total relationship. Campbell's (1985) research was one of the first indications of this dramatic difference between East and West. His research, by the way, involved case studies of the ways members of the packaging industry in Japan and Germany maintained long-term relationships.
Australian business culture too may lack Asian-type sophistication about atmosphere management, but I am sure that we as a business community are open to learning more and becoming wiser and more effective atmosphere and so relationship managers. Learning about this will only come from more such comparative case studies or from those focussing on understanding the Asia-Western business interface.

SUMMARY AND FINAL REMARKS
I have no reason to change the definition I proposed in 1995. "Asia-literacy in business is very much about communication, cultural sensitivity and knowledge, long-term friendliness, Asian-style socialising, and culturally appropriate behaviour in meetings and negotiations". Language skills can be an added bonus in some cases, as when friendship and socialising are facilitated and enhanced by the ability to speak the other language, but Australians and other Westerners should not be deterred or intimidated, by a lack of linguistic skill. (This is not to say that Australian business people will not benefit from a knowledge of basic linguistic etiquette and polite expressions. Indeed, I regard these as a natural component of broadened Asia-literacy training).
Asia-literacy is also a skill that improves with maturity - that is, with training experience (reflected upon). Amongst Australian business relationship managers working with Asians, it is my judgement that people in their 20's or 30's rarely have the maturity to adjust to Asian business expectations. Or, put from a different angle, the development process for such a manager is a long one - there is much to learn, many mistakes to be made and lived through.
How we define and understand Asia-literacy affects how we educate those coming to Asia for the first time. Clearly, I believe that the pragmatic approach, that concentrates on skills and understandings that promote better interpersonal relastionships, that make living easier for non-Asians living non-privileged lives in Asia (that is, they are not diplomats or managers living in luxurious and artificial environments, nor are they students living outside of adult and business worlds), is the only appropriate way to go, and that this should be the orientation right from the beginning. Language in my view should be taught within a communications and cross-cultural framework, even in high school. Would it not be exciting to be telling students about the real contextual nature of life, rather than teaching language as though it was unrelated to nothing excpet some exotic cultural doings in an alien land. Rigid ideological approaches to Asia literacy should be anathema. If I were to take Stephen Fitzgerald seriously in his dark prophetic utterances about what Australia "must do" to survive and be master of its own fate in the Asia Pacific region, all the excitement would be gone out of learning to live and work and love and learn with Asia. I think life is more fun, the future more indeterminate, and change more a matter of countless individuals doing their own thing, than of the masses doing what prophets tell them is wise.
* In my 1995 paper, I defined Asia Literacy in Business as "very much about communication, cultural sensitivity and knowledge, long-term friendliness, Asian-style socialising, and culturally appropriate behaviour in meetings and negotiations" (page 24) Is Asia literacy then to be thought of as a means to understanding and participating in Asia as a larger regional society, and thereby being a means to the Asia-literate Australian grasping her economic and cultural opportunties? I haven’t come across this viewpoint anywhere , but I wouldn’t be surprised to find many "intellectuals" agreeing. For instance, Fitzgerald (1997) says, with a touch of an old testament prohpet, "it is with Asia that {Australia} has cast its lot" (p.38), and, "Every Australian has an obligation to think deeply about what the engagement with Asia will mean for our society in thirty years time" (p.159). March (1995) is more pragmatic, his central concern being with assisting Western business people to have more effective relationships with Asians. Unlike Fitzgerald’s scholarly emphasis on "thinking deeply", March puts a practical emphasis on personal and professional development - via experience, reflection, training, and maturation. The implicit distinction here in respect of Asia literacy seems between an "intellectual" or educational policy approach, and an "experiential" and professional skills one.

REFERENCES
Asian Studies Council, A National Strategy for the Study of Asia in Australia. Canberra: AGPS 1988.

Asia in Australian Higher education: A Report of the Inquiry into the teaching of Asian Studies and Languages in Higher education (The Ingleson Report) Sydney: University of New South Wales. Jan 1989.

Blackman, C., Australian Executives in China: The Management Challenge Melbourne: The Australian China Chamber of Commerce and Industry Limited, 1995.

Blackman, C., Negotiating China. Allen and Unwin. 1997

Blackman, C., Being Successful in China: The Pacific Dunlop Story. Allen and Unwin. 1994.

Campbell, N.C.G., "Buyer/Seller Relationships in Japan and Germany: An Interaction Approach", European Journal of Marketing, 19,3,1985, 57-66.

Fitzgerald, Stephen, Is Australia an Asian Country?, Allen and Unwin. 1997.

March, Robert M., "Expatriate Managers and their Japanese Staff", Winds. August 1983. Pages 29-33.

March, Robert M., "Asia Literacy and Australian-Asian Business relationships: Defining Asia-literacy, and assessing its importance for business relationships with Asian partners". Working paper 2/1995. University of Western Sydney Nepean. Dept of Marketing. 1995

March, Robert M, "Managing East Asian Business Relationships". Working paper 4/97. UWS Nepean. Dept of Marketing, 1997.

Copyright © Robert March 2001