Offended – the WTO column


(Later also at Chinabiz)
Would it be offensive to say that the Chinese have no sense of humor? I guess so, especially to many of my friends who do have a sense of humor. But when the cultural dignity of a nation comes into play, you do end up making generic statements that do not allow too many exceptions.
I’m not really a clairvoyant but when I heard about the McDonalds commercial that caused first a row in Xi’an and then engulfed the nation in indignation, I could already set out the scenario for the rest of the week, including McDonald’s pulling the commercial and apologizing for hurting China’s dignity.

China’s media followed the scenario that has been extensively tested in previous incidents and quoted angry customers and likewise indignant academics who all condemned the culturally insensitive American company. I have not been reading all the nonsense about the commercial, but even the token exception on the rule that Chinese have no sense of humor lacked from those media reports.
What happened in de commercial? A customer kneels for the owner of the shop to beg for a bargain. McDonalds goes on to explain they have a bargain every day of the week. I saw very little reason for any Chinese to feel offended.
Mostly we Dutch tend to like it when jokes are being made about our cultural sensitivities and we pay even people – we call them comedians or columnists – who try, mostly in vain, to ignite a bit of a row. There are exceptions, as our Prime Minister Balkenende asked for a retraction when the Belgium minister of foreign affairs used in interview in Beijing to characterize the Dutch government leader as a ‘small-minded Harry Potter’. That was quite an achievement from the Belgians. They succeeded of course because our prime minister is a small-minded look-alike of Harry Potter.

Of course there are cultural sensitivities you should take into account. Last week I attended an international conference where the Belgium representative – yes, again – explained how he used humor to promote his campaign of this website. A Spanish delegate said he could make jokes about anything in Spain, as long as it was verbally. He could never write it up. A Polish journalist said they could write up jokes about anything. “Only not about work, people find work too serious to make jokes about”.

Jokes should be on the edge of what is permissible in a society. That is the function of humor and a way to explore and challenge value systems. Doing that in China, especially when you are a foreign company, seems to be rather tricky. When you watch the famous New Year’s shows on Chinese TV you see that Chinese themselves can go pretty far in challenging their own cultural obsessions and display a huge sense of humor. Obvious foreign companies in commercials do not have even half that leeway Chinese comedians take for themselves.
Maybe it is for the same reason Polish people do not accept jokes about work. Chinese think commercials are too serious. You cannot use commercials to makes culturally challenging jokes that would be perfect permissible in another setting.
Get a life, I would say to people who feel offended by commercials.

Fons Tuinstra