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If A Chinese Tree Falls In The Woods....

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

A friend of mine went to El Salvador for a few weeks to help a small village with various business matters. She returned proclaiming how CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) had been horrible for this village because it had done little more than increase its food costs, especially corn. I asked her how she knew CAFTA was at fault and her response was that the village leader had told her this. When I expressed my skepticism at how CAFTA could be at fault for this (while hedging this by making clear I knew very little about CAFTA and even less about El Salvadorean food prices), she responded by implying it was ridiculous for me to act like I knew more about food prices in El Savador than a native. That got me to thinking. Thinking of how many times our clients tell us they have done something in China based on "legal" advice they have received from their Chinese manager or (my favorite) from their Chinese-American significant other. The idea here is that if someone is ethnic Chinese, no matter what they do or where they live, they are qualifed to dispense international legal advice. It would be like my asking the grocery store checkout person for advise regarding Seattle zoning laws simply because that checker lives in Seattle. Thinking of how Frenchman, Alexis De Toqueville, spent two years in the United States and wrote the definitive book on Americans. Thinking of how I had a discussion in my office today with one of our attorneys who is from Germany and our Russian specialist who is from Russia on whether there is still gender and race discrimination in American law firms (I am absolutely convinced that there is), but how would I know that as a White male? And then I come across these two extremely deep think articles on Western perceptions of China that go so far beyond the "When in China you must use both hands when accepting a business card" as to http://uselesstree.typepad.com/useless_tree/2008/03/an-epistemologi.html

Full post as published by China Law Blog on March 11, 2008 (boomark / email).