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Nowadays in China at least in major cities, the buildings,transportation, and miscellaneous infrastructures that make up a modern city,rival and often times are newer than the best of the world.  Routine service provided by these units are adequate. However, when  service request even slightly out of the ordinary occurs, problem often occurs.  A very perceptive high official pointed out to me during this visit of mine to China the  following: “ while in cities China has more than caught up with world class standard  in hardware, she is deficient in the development of software associated with these  hardware”.

Very true!

Hardware can be purchased with just money  or copied relatively easily. Given the abundance of human resources, China since 1978 has accomplished a miracle of development. But software are culture dependent and take years to assimilate and acquire. You cannot easily catch up or conform to the rest of the developed world. Here are three examples I experienced this time in China (before China-firsters rush to accuse me of only  reporting  things that need improvement in China, I let my record speak for itself and urge  readers to examine them with an open mind)

1.    One day I needed a taxi and asked the front desk of the hotel where I am staying to  order one. After 20 minutes with no reply I called again but was told that there were  no taxi  available at that time. Okay. But I asked why did you not inform me of this fact   and let me wait in vain? The reply was “you only asked me to try to get a taxi.   You did not tell me that I need to inform you if I fail”.I was flabbergasted (don’t know to laugh or cry)

2.    I was invited to give a lecture at a research institute in Beijing on a given day and given  time. My host informed me that hewill send a car with his Phd student to pick me up ½  hour before the appointed time. On that day I started to wait for the student and car  to show up at myTsinghua address. They were ½ hour late (of course my lecture was also delayed½ hour with a larger audience waiting). What happened? The student neglected to do two basic things which are routinely done in the West when entrusted with such  responsibility – study in advance on how to get to an particular address so  you do not get lost or be late, get a phone number so that you can call ahead to let the  waiting party know in case unforeseen things happens. I am sure the student is very smart and wanted to do a good job, but he probably is an only child raised by two devoted  parents and four grand parents who see to his every need since birth. Besides getting good  grades and pass exams, this is probably the first time he was asked to undertake a task  on his own. It never occurred to him the need to prepare which most of us learned very  early in life. There is something to be said of sending your child abroad to study. One  quickly learns to take care of oneself and the ways of the world as I myself did at age of 15  some 66 years ago.

3.    On our Fujian tour there were crowds often on narrow walkways. One time  a hurrying  tour guide simply pushed my wife aside without excuse in order to rush ahead.  My wife  was rather upset. So I eased her annoyance by clearly saying (also for the benefit  of the  tour guide) that she probably did not know how to say “excuse me” or  apologize for  impolite behavior. Where upon the tour guide turn around and said  angrily to me “What if I don’t wish to apologize?”.  In the West where “the customer is always right”, such behavior can easily cause the guide to lose her job.  But in tourist area not yet aimed at foreign  tourists, I suppose such occurrences are not unusual.

In this 21^st century, it seems to me China has two choices: 1.Adapt as quickly as possible  to the western cultural norm in external dealings or 2. Force the rest of the  world to  conform to Chinese cultural standards. In this respect, the late great  Singapore premier, Lee Kwan Yew, had a great line when he was asked about Sino-US competition referring  to the fact that China has 1.3 billion human resources vs. US’s  mere 300 million. Lee  replied, “Wrong, the US has 7 billion human resources because of her immigration policy”.