By World Business Tuesday, 03 April 2007
One of the key factors in the Chinese success was how they
settled across Asia. They did not pour into a particular location,
but fanned out across the region, thus ensuring that they had a
ready-made network of international connections within which they
could trade and raise capital. The legacy today is a web of
personal connections that allows commerce to proceed on the basis
of trust - and if anyone betrays the trust of another, that person
is soon frozen out of trade and other business opportunities. It is
a powerful enforcer.
Commerce like this does not need sound laws to function.
This is why the Chinese have been so astoundingly successful in
south-east Asia. For much of the last century, practically all the
region was relatively lawless and this has made the networks
invaluable. The Singaporean who trades with a Bangkok relative or
other contact knows he will be paid. Pre-existing networks of trust
mean opportunities can be exploited quickly. while their Western
competitors must arrange buyers and letters of credit, losing time
and opportunities.
The ability to do business in those business environments that
are so rough that they are no-go areas for anyone else means that
the Chinese get in on the ground floor when an economy is about to
take off. It is the early bird that catches the highest margin. The
overseas Chinese have been instrumental in building up the
economies of Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam and even Laos. They were the
first investors to go back into China, using their family and
ancestral links to scout out opportunities, while multinationals
were still trying to find consultants who could do the same.
Dialect is important to understanding the Chinese outside China
because it is a key signifier for different cultural groups under
the broader umbrella of Chineseness. Mandarin is the language of
northern China and is the native tongue of almost three-quarters of
all Chinese who live in China, but it is the ancestral tongue of
only a tiny proportion of the Chinese who live in south-east Asia -
perhaps less than 5%. Because most overseas Chinese have their
origins in China's south-east, their languages are the various
dialects of that part of China. However, the written form of the
language is the same. In the absence of a common third language or
an interpreter, someone who speaks Cantonese will be able to
communicate with a Mandarin speaker by exchanging written
notes.
- Hokkien is the dialect for those with origins in southern
Fujian province
- Fuzhou is spoken by those from around Fuzhou city in the
north-east of Fujian, Hokchia is the closely related dialect of
those from the area around nearby Fuqing and Henghua is the dialect
of those from the Putian area, south of Fuzhou
- Hainanese (or Qiongwen) is the language of those from Hainan
province
- Cantonese is the ancestral dialect of those with origins in
much of Guangdong and Hong Kong
- Teochiu (or Chiu Chow, as it is spelt in Hong Kong) is spoken
by those from the Shantou area of eastern Guangdong
- Hakka (or Keh) is the language of a group of Chinese sprinkled
throughout northern Guangdong, southern Fujian and further
inland
Particular dialect groups tend to occupy certain business
sectors: the Hokchia-speaking people, for example, were rickshaw
drivers and this explains why the largest manufacturer of tyres in
Indonesia today is the Gajah Tunggal Group, owned by the Hokchia
Chinese Nursalim family - they started by supplying and repairing
rubber tyres for rickshaws. Similarly, the medicated ointment Tiger
Balm was first manufactured in the 1920s by the Hakka Chinese Aw
family, who lived in Burma at the time. Historically, Hakka
families ran Chinese herbalist and pharmaceutical shops.
In alertness to information such as this can help outside
investors to truly understand business in south-east Asia today and
how it came to be the way that it is.
