Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY 227
I’m happy when I can treat them [officials and commercial connections] to a
meal. The more they eat proves that my business is increasingly successful.
We’re all mates, and its all very low-key (moqi). Sometimes they’ll even help
you without you asking. Like the time when I wanted to lease a market stall
and was told I had to get a collective licence [i.e. as a ‘collective’ not ‘private’
operator], the market manager helped me to set up a firm… You’ve got to
have a family so you can have kids, create the next generation, and that’s the
social role of wives and kids. But here is where I am. I’ll give the wife and kids
whatever they want, take care of their needs. But my life is here. My life is
my business and my mates.
(Shi 1993:301)
Although they did not approach the macho solidarity of Shi Xianmin’s informant,
my own wealthier informants also felt the importance of reputational concerns and
peer expectations in their lives. One businesswoman, formerly an engineer in the
People’s Liberation Army and now in charge of a bulletproof clothing exporter,
described the expensive and tiring process of doing business:
You might think I got the car [a new Mercedes Benz] because I’m stuck up.
But you’ve got to show your stuff (ba fenr), or nobody takes you seriously,
especially a woman. And if nobody takes you seriously…it hurts business.
Sometimes I get sick of buying meals and buying expensive clothes, but
that’s what capitalism is like, isn’t it.
Although perhaps disingenuous, this informant and others expressed a strong
belief that their potential success could not be separated from the image of success
they wished to project among their peers and rivals. And an essential aspect of this
behaviour seems to be soliciting the trust and respect of others. 9 Another
interviewee, a lawyer in his late twenties, explained: ‘I don’t believe in guanxi’,
that’s for Hong Kong people. Who you need above all is good friends. So if I have
problems [at work], I can go and find my old classmates. I know they’d stand by
me because we’ve got feeling (renqing) as well.’ This desire for respectability and
trustworthiness is reflected not only in individual-level exchanges, but also in the
involvement of several individual business owners I interviewed in charitable
works, especially Project Hope (Xiwang gongcheng). While they all knew that they
were ‘expected’ to make a contribution, all but one said they would have done so
anyway. The one interviewed at greatest length, a taxi driver who made well over
3,000 yuan a month, claimed that: ‘I’m not trying to pretend I’m more virtuous than
anybody else, but it feels good to show people that I deserve some respect
(zunzhong).’
As Alan Smart has observed, the instrumental dimensions of social ties should
not be confused with a view that such ties are purely instrumental: