Diversity, race or caste?

Source: trendy Meditations (id:xinchaochensi)

Author: Zuo Qianhu

In the past two years, as the United States vigorously promoted the diversification policy, some multinational companies have also responded in succession to promote diversification activities within their Chinese branches.

The author previously worked in the Chinese branch of a foreign enterprise and found that his former colleagues roast in the circle of friends that what else does this company do to diversify?

This colleague doesn’t mean that he realizes that diversification is bad, nor does he mean that foreign enterprises take the opportunity to promote their ideology in China. After all, they are rewarded with food. According to my understanding of diversity, this company already has cultures from different countries and regions, and people of different races are tolerant of each other and develop together. Except that no one in the company studies the diversity of sexual minorities, the company is already diversified, so there is no need to engage in any diversification activities.

Current situation of foreign enterprises

Let’s take a look at what this diversified company looks like. The world’s top 500 companies, ranking between 50-100, have businesses and branches all over the world, with more than 100000 employees worldwide,

Decision making level: the company is headquartered in Western Europe.

Management: the Asia Pacific region, Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa are divided under the headquarters. The headquarters of the Asia Pacific region is in Singapore. The Asia Pacific region is divided into North Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia. The headquarters of North Asia is in Hong Kong.

Executive level: North Asia is divided into Japan and China. China includes Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong, and is headquartered in Shanghai China. The following is divided into East China, North China, South China, southwest and other regions.

Operation level: there are branches in East China, such as Shanghai Branch, Suzhou Branch, Nanjing Branch, Hangzhou branch, etc.

The company’s employees also come from all over the world. Take the China headquarters in Shanghai as an example, there are Singaporeans, Hong Kong people, Taiwanese people, Italians, Turks, British people, French people, Americans, Dutch people, Germans, poles, Mexicans, Brazilians, South Africans, Indians, Vietnamese and other people from all over the world. Almost all the skin colors and races in the world are together.

Network diagram, not the actual picture of the company

Since it is a company, there will be positions and wages, senior leaders and ordinary employees. There are thousands of employees in the Greater China headquarters in Shanghai. If you meet someone you don’t know in the Shanghai company, you can distinguish the position level of each other according to their skin color and accent, because the position level basically corresponds to their ethnicity.

The highest ranking leaders in the Shanghai company are directors led by the president of China, generally from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

The department leaders who are directly subordinate to the head office and stationed in China to play a certain supervisory role and have no subordinate relationship with China, such as finance, compliance and other departments. Its leaders are generally white, Indian, Middle East and other non Chinese groups.

At the next level are the leaders of specific business operation departments. More than half of the staff in this position are from Hong Kong, Taiwan and a few from Chinese Mainland.

Parallel to this level is the Department responsible for contacting specific regions. The work of this position is similar to that of ordinary employees, but the level is higher. Generally, it is other non Chinese people, such as Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Vietnam, etc.

Further down, the district leaders are generally mainland Chinese from Shanghai

Only at the lower level of branch leadership can it be the turn of non Shanghai mainland Chinese

According to my guess, the decision-making and management of the company are similar, because many emails in the company are forwarded from the decision-making level of the headquarters in Western Europe to the executive level of the lowest branch. Pull the email from top to bottom and see the signature information of the Forwarder at each level, including address, position, name and other information. Based on these, we can infer the ethnicity of leaders at all levels.

For example, Koch, Muller and wolfgan are germanic in their names; Ahmed and SEYD are middle eastern people in their names. The two words of their names have dozens of letters. Indians send emails to dozens of people if they have nothing to do; There are IP, ng, TSE, Leung in the name. Those whose signature contains traditional Chinese are Hong Kong people, Taiwanese people or Singaporeans.

Network diagram, not the actual picture of the company

The outlook system used to send and receive e-mail in the company, and the skype/lync system used to chat and make phone calls can see people’s avatars, usually photos in suits. Looking at the avatars and faces, you can also guess their ethnicity.

The positions of the headquarters’ decision-making level are generally Anglo Saxon and Germanic surnames. It is said that in the history of the company, the only Chinese who climbed to the position of the headquarters’ decision-making level is a Hong Kong person. The management of the Asia Pacific region is generally Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, with Indian surnames occasionally appearing. There are many Hong Kong names in North Asia. Therefore, it can be seen that more senior management positions and higher decision-making positions in the Asia Pacific region above China are also corresponding to ethnic groups.

So how does the company keep this kind of ethnic group basically corresponding to the position level?

Tell three stories.

First, a mainland Chinese and a Taiwanese with the same job grade had differences of opinion on business. At a meeting, it was found that Taiwanese had disclosed the company’s bid price to their opponents. Then the Mainlanders were forced to resign.

Second, in a certain department, a Taiwanese and a German competed for a higher-level position. In terms of ability and performance, the Taiwanese formed a comprehensive crush on the German, and won the higher-level position in the competition. After a few months of organizational restructuring, the Taiwanese were surprised to find that the German he defeated became his superior.

Third, the business volume of a department was relatively small, the number of people was small, and the level was low. A low-level leader and all members were mainland Chinese. I don’t see how talented these people are, but their cooperation is passable. At least they can speak clearly and do what they should do. Due to the environment, the business volume increased rapidly, the number of people expanded, and the level increased accordingly, so China sent an Indian as the leader. Within half a year, all the backbone members, including the former leader, resigned, and the local business collapsed.

Once I chatted with a colleague who left the Department and asked what had happened. The former colleague’s evaluation of the Indian leader is only eight words: more lenient than self-discipline and more strict than treating others. In fact, I know that this Indian leader also has two characteristics. One is that the PPT is very good. I have used it as a template to copy and paste it many times. Second, the ability to throw the pot is very strong, but everyone knows it, which is counted in the basic skills of foreign enterprises.

Network diagram, not the actual picture of the company

Well, wait, if the members of an organization are composed of multiple ethnic groups, it is called diversity. In addition, each ethnic group has a relatively fixed position grade range. According to the name, we can roughly infer the position grade of this person, and there are measures to protect this ethnic grade correspondence system. Isn’t this caste system?

Apply the concept of authentic Indian caste system: the decision-making level of the headquarters is ansa Germanic Brahman, the management level of the Asia Pacific region is the Middle East India Singapore shatili, the executive level of the China region is Hong Kong Taiwan Barker, Shanghai sudala, China, and the operation level of branches all over China is other non caste Dalits in China.

No wonder Indians are like fish in water in European and American multinational companies. They are familiar with this system.

Of course, it is Europe and the United States that dominate everything. Their use of this management method can be traced back to the colonial period, almost throughout the entire colonial history. In the colonial period, an alien nationality was generally introduced into a single ethnic area, and then the method of supporting the alien minority and suppressing the local majority was adopted to provoke contradictions, and either balance offshore or divide and rule.

Britain is best at this. For example, it introduces and reuses Tamils in Sri Lanka with Sinhalese as the main body, and reuses ethnic Tamils to restrict the Sinhalese who account for the majority of the population, leading to decades of civil war in Sri Lanka; The introduction of Jews in the Arab dominated Palestinian area has been in chaos since the war; Rohingyas were introduced into Myanmar with the Burmese nationality as the main body, and the war has been going on since then.

Indians were also introduced into Hong Kong and Shanghai as policemen to safeguard British colonial rule. Up to now, there are still about 40000 Indians in Hong Kong. It was previously reported that Indians beat Hong Kong people in the subway. On May 10, 2021, the Hong Kong court heard that Indians concealed their itinerary and caused the outbreak of the epidemic in Hong Kong, which are all products of this background.

As a British conjugate father and son, the United States not only has ethnic divisions, but also uses identity politics to label people with various labels, such as women’s rights, sexual minorities, environmental protection, abortion, which is called diversity. But behind all this, the Jewish Ansar alliance still firmly occupies the dominant position, and colored people are still in a weak position in economic and social aspects.

The corporate caste system in foreign enterprises was nothing more than the reincarnation of the colonial rule strategy led by Europe and the United States at that time in multinational companies still dominated by Europe and the United States.

For Europe and the United States, China is their economic colony, and foreign enterprises are the management institutions of economic colonies, so they will use the method of managing colonies to manage their branches in China.

Beneath the surface of diversification is the colonial rule strategy of divide and rule since the colonial era, which aims to maintain the special status of the ruling class by vertically cutting society and provoking contradictions.

Chinese employees under the caste system of foreign enterprises

Like the caste system in India and the United States, the foreign high castes at the decision-making and management levels are heartfelt contempt for the low caste Chinese, and some low caste Chinese are extremely flattering to the high caste in order to eat that leftovers, which strengthens the arrogance of the high caste. They think I’m here to teach you stupid Chinese. You must worship us. Take my words as an oracle, an edict.

In the early stage of reform and opening up, when Chinese people first came into contact with the international market, they may have some rationality when they did not understand the modern enterprise system. If Chinese people, like Indians, have not made progress for decades, it’s OK to suck as usual.

Early foreign enterprises attracted a large number of excellent Chinese talents by relying on the advanced technology accumulated by foreign industrialization for many years and the modern enterprise system under the market economy. At that time, entering a foreign enterprise was a symbol of identity.

With the rapid development of China’s economy, the growing Chinese enterprises have attacked cities and occupied land, and the technological and management advantages of foreign enterprises have almost been lost. Or rely on the impression of Chinese worshipping foreigners to charge IQ tax. Either use the market inertia caused by the first mover advantage to continue the previous business, or use the standards, environmental protection, human rights and other non-existent standards to build barriers. The business situation of the company is not closely related to the personnel operation of the company. The commonly known as tethered dog is also competent in this position. Changing a person is changing an email address, which generally has no impact on business operation. Even if there is an impact, as long as you throw the pot well, you can be safe.

Why does this happen? As we all know, the most important thing to decide whether a person can be promoted is loyalty in addition to ability. When the external environment is superior and there is no threat, the personal ability of employees is not very important. Loyalty has become the most important measure. In the past, there were cronyism in state-owned enterprises, who decided to be promoted according to the distance between their fellow villagers, teachers and apprentices.

For the actual controllers of the companies that implement the caste system, it is needless to say that ansa Germanic is a native. The most important thing for the promotion of other ethnic groups is loyalty. See if you will obediently obey the order set by the high caste, safeguard the interests of the high caste, learn from the high caste, do well in PPT, and have perspective. Foreigners are much tighter than Chinese people because their hearts must be different from ours.

Of course, Chinese people don’t have any opportunities in foreign enterprises. They just have to pass the loyalty test. Using the saying of “three bodies”, you have to issue a security statement to show that you won’t threaten the high caste. For example, Indians use madness to find their European and American fathers, use the open caste system, and use decades of rotten to issue a safety statement to themselves. Hong Kong and Taiwan people have used hundreds of years of obedience to history and enslavement education from small to large to reassure foreign high castes. What about the Chinese? The ability is particularly strong, not to mention, but also has bad deeds: just after the founding of the people’s Republic of China, the Korean War was fought, reform and opening up achieved industrialization, competition with foreign enterprises everywhere, known as the developed country crusher… How can you reassure the high caste?

I don’t understand how the caste system continues in foreign countries. The low castes and Untouchables under the Indian caste system may not resist, and all kinds of labeled teams under identity politics don’t know to resist.

But I know why the caste system cannot be continued in China, because the eight words “princes and generals, rather have seed” are engraved into the bones. What the Chinese want is fairness, fairness, or fairness. When foreign enterprises implement the caste system, there is no place for fairness.

Low caste Chinese employees who have never lacked ability will have ideas. People’s ethnicity cannot be changed, and the position corresponds to ethnicity, so the employees’ enterprising spirit will be seriously hit. When they find that no matter how hard they try, they can only be fixed at a certain level according to ethnicity, capable employees will choose to change jobs, and incompetent employees will fish for a living, thus forming a reverse elimination system. Only the working ability of the remaining people does not develop, and the others are booming. In addition to throwing the pot is a basic skill for all employees, the higher the position, the more skilled they are.

In this company atmosphere, the hearts of the people within each team are scattered. For example, I find a situation that may lead to the loss of the company. Under normal circumstances, I will give early warning to the leaders in advance, help the leaders coordinate other departments, mobilize certain resources, and work together to solve the problem.

But under the corporate caste system, the leader and I are not of the same caste. I know that if I send an email to report the potential danger, the result must be that the leader blames me for being troublesome and pushes things in front of him, so that he has to face it. Then let me solve it alone. If it can’t be solved well, put the responsibility on me and get rid of it perfectly. Then I might as well not report it, think about the reason for throwing the pot in advance, and wait for the accident to happen.

After all, the pot of natural accidents at work is easy to throw away, but the pot thrown over by leaders is difficult to do. You take over. The responsibility lies with you. The performance appraisal is recorded. The year-end bonus is affected, not to mention the promotion. Your skills of throwing the pot are not necessarily better than those of leaders, and your voice must be worse than that of leaders. Even if you can get rid of it, the leaders will hate you in the future and put the blame on you if something happens.

The idea of the operation layer is already like this, and the executive layer is to report good news rather than bad news. The management doesn’t want to listen at all. Let’s build an information cocoon room and live in it happily. China’s market is also a rapidly developing market, and changes in one year can top changes in other regions in ten years. Over time, the foreign high caste management will gradually lose their ability to perceive the Chinese market.

Moreover, due to the same caste and thinking mode of the management, it can form a unified opinion, and often produce some very international policies and campaigns. At this time, the Hong Kong and Taiwan people at the executive level come in handy. They can always use all kinds of deceptive means to execute. Their slogan is no exercise. Generally, they will open a workshop first. When everyone puts forward a proposal, everyone will buy and form an action plan. There will probably be a general/senior manager to monitor.

Someone is responsible for coordinating different sectors, someone takes lead, someone supports All actions and deadlines are recorded in the meeting minutes, supplemented by the company’s SOP and implementation. Very standards. Every decision is very reasonable, every arrangement has follow up and feedback, and all involved relative parties and team members are functioning.

The only problem is that it is disconnected from China’s environment and not workable. We common staff who are responsible for the operation of front line will feel very ridiculous.

But this is not the priority of these people. Anyway, the procedure has been completed, which is really not good. Review and find a personal challenge, even if EBIT is still negative. As long as comments are written well, salary and bonus will still exist, but the allowance and entertainment should be slightly controlled. After all, we still need to save cost.

(the above imitates the daily language habits in the work of foreign enterprises, and pictures are fun)

Network diagram, not the actual picture of the company

Chinese employees have seen this situation for a long time, and their hearts can’t help being angry: their superiors are fools. They can occupy high positions with their own faces and don’t have to do anything. They can spend all day drinking and singing all night. There is no place to show your talent, no one listens to your suggestions, and watches the opportunity be wasted. Every day, even if 996, it’s just a little salary. I’ve worked hard to do something. If I have achievements, it’s my superiors, and if something goes wrong, it’s my own.

In this case, in addition to a few people who can climb to a certain position, some people dream of climbing to a position incompatible with their ethnicity, and some people who have not been promoted desperately want to show their loyalty to foreign high castes. Another group, who probably haven’t seen the world, still feel that speaking English in foreign enterprises is a symbol of high quality, trying to behave differently from the Chinese. They hate that they are Chinese, hate other capable Chinese employees, and hate that Chinese enterprises make foreign high castes feel threatened, and try their best to please foreign high castes.

The vast majority of the remaining low caste or non caste Chinese.

Some people will run away: if you don’t stay here, you will stay there. If you don’t stay everywhere, you will go to the eighth route.

Some people will be silent: being a monk for a day and hitting the clock for a day, I get a salary, which is regarded as an integral part of the socialist market economy.

Some people will practice favoritism: they ostensibly work for the company and secretly use their power for personal gain.

In this case, how can foreign enterprises face market competition?

Some employees of foreign enterprises go out to talk about business with people, full of English words, open mouth internationalization, closed mouth process reengineering. Compared with these words, which pain points, closed loop and granulation of the Internet are grounded.

Arrogant attitude, often want to teach customers: in line with international standards. International, international, look at my mouth, international, do you understand? Look at my PPT, which is all in English. I spent all night copying my Indian boss. This international standard is so full that it is about to overflow.

When it comes to practical problems, just ask three questions. If the preface doesn’t match the Afterword, the customer can recite the following lines: This is not make sense. I want to record this on the issue log, and I want to ask the supporting department.

Some employees of foreign enterprises are not even in the mood to compete. The customers they worked hard to develop before were directly robbed by the high caste, and they also pretended to look up to you by robbing your customers. I blame you for your ignorance and poor service during the handover.

The problems of product quality and after-sales guarantee have been raised hundreds of times. The high caste in the company never cares. It’s difficult to climb the sky if you want to do something. You feel like you’re doing nothing at leisure. The superior of the high caste doesn’t even approve the money for inviting customers to dinner and apologizing. What do you say about save cost? Why don’t you say save cost when you have so many reimbursements? The front is tight, and the rear is tight, right?

Network diagram, not the actual picture of the company

When you meet a new round of bidding from customers, you always have to go through the process. Sometimes you can meet former colleagues who have changed jobs to Chinese enterprises. When you meet them, you can have a look at the title on your business card: haven’t you seen you for months? Have you become a Manager? I’m still an assistant.

Former colleagues are accompanying smiling faces: make a living, make a living. When it’s your turn to introduce yourself, say something that you can’t even listen to. Customers and peers look at you with serious nonsense and almost laugh. You can only count on the customer to give you a face, and don’t ask any practical questions that you can’t answer.

It’s not easy to stay up until the end. I was dragged by my former colleagues to talk and chat. In the past, I was angry with the high caste, scolded the company’s retarded policy, and fooled my superiors together, which is a love affair. Everyone is still in the same industry. The news in the industry and the gossip of old companies are synchronized with each other. Finally, the colleague proudly settled the account, patted his chest and said: I know you have old and young people, come out for a meal, report for sale, and write a bunch of reports, don’t you understand? It’s report. At the beginning, those high castes sang all night, leaving our brothers to work overtime. Today, my brothers also take you to chic, go – turn to the next venue.

Then there is singing, bathing and pedicure. When the atmosphere is almost over, you don’t need to be reasonable and emotional. Just lead the topic to the high caste of foreign enterprises. The old employees of foreign enterprises scold their mothers and scold their sexuality. They will give a clean account of the recent trends of foreign enterprises, what products they are developing and what market plans they have. Some things that foreign companies and high castes don’t know, former colleagues of Chinese enterprises have known first. When the former colleague wants to ask more specific data, he can say with a straight face that there is a reply issue, and then he may joke that you should be responsible for being opened by the company because I ate with you today.

The former colleague would pat his chest and say: I’ll try my best about brother. I’ll go back and discuss it with the leader.

Well, try your best to discuss, which means that the leader may not agree, but at least this guy has settled the account, and he has a conscience.

At present, Chinese enterprises are far from strong, and they don’t feel that they are better than foreign enterprises on the whole. However, Chinese enterprises have been making progress. 40 years ago, Chinese enterprises had little resistance to foreign enterprises. 20 years ago, Chinese enterprises could only provide support to foreign enterprises. 10 years ago, Chinese enterprises were struggling to compete with foreign enterprises. Today, Chinese enterprises in many industries can face up to foreign enterprises and win.

This trend of becoming stronger and stronger is irresistible. If people want to achieve something, it depends on both personal efforts and historical progress. Everyone hopes to be in an environment where winning means toasting and losing means fighting to save. They don’t want to be in an environment where you are discriminated against because of your birth. It really depends on what kind of face you look like. If you want to do something, you’ll pull your legs, dig a hole for you, complain that you have nothing to do, and wait to see your jokes. Once you make a little achievement, everyone will take the credit to themselves and trample you to death.

Once, the preferential treatment of foreign enterprises depended on extremely high excess profits, which came from the technical barriers, monopoly, pricing power, exploitation of late developing countries, and so on,

Now it is obvious that in more and more fields, the myth of excess profits brought by this barrier has been broken.

At this moment, foreign enterprises are just like state-owned enterprises at that time. They rely on policies, eat old money, lose morale, overstaffed, pull gangs and form parties for personal gains. Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river. Now, in foreign enterprises that can maintain the advantage of excess profits, it is more suitable to muddle along. If you just want to work without any idea and don’t care about being inferior, you can also choose to go to this kind of foreign enterprises. If a hundred feet die without being stiff, it is estimated that you can still muddle along for a few years. The risk of layoffs is not absent, and the compensation generally given will be relatively sufficient. The biggest problem may be that in this environment of boiling frogs in warm water, people will lose the ability to adjust themselves, and China outside is already a sea of vicissitudes. As more foreign enterprises lose the ability to earn excess profits in China and quit, once you lose this environment, you need to consider whether you can survive independently. After all, there are a few who can run. Even if run goes abroad, it is not necessarily heaven.