Santander (EFE).- To close an agreement you have to know how to put yourself in the other’s place, says the Cantabrian consultant Julio Ceballos, who has collected in a book his almost half-life experience negotiating with Chinese to shed light on the preconceived ideas that westerners have about them, decipher how they think and, incidentally, show that they are not so different.
Born in Reinosa, Julio Ceballos (1979) stated in an interview with EFE that “Observing the rice grow. How to inhabit a world led by China” (Ariel), on sale since February 8, is not a book “neither pro-Chinese nor anti-Chinese”, as it only seeks to show what the average citizen of the Asian giant is like.
In its 512 pages, this essay offers “tools to understand how the heads of the Chinese work” and understand their mentality, what values govern their society and also what priorities they have.
And because? Because Ceballos is convinced that the world will be “increasingly Chinese.” In fact, he had planned to title his first essay “We will all be Chinese”, but his editor put it out of her mind because he could “scare away” the reader.
Not all Chinese are the same and not all are “superproductive”, Ceballos asserts, in his goal of refuting the multiple clichés that dominate European thought. “The West doesn’t know China well or enough and China doesn’t know the West well either, but it does know enough,” he counters.
An opportunity or a threat
The rise of China can be an opportunity or a threat. “It depends largely on us, on how prepared we are to compete with a giant nation, with a very long history and an overpopulation of people who are in continuous training and who are very competitive and ambitious,” he warns.
Despite the fact that “this can generate anxiety” for the Spanish, Julio Ceballos is in favor of taking China as “a factor in the equation”, without worrying, but trying to “understand it in order to compete with it”.
“Most of the Chinese have a life quite similar to ours,” he stresses, before rejecting the idea that China is “a pressure cooker” and that its citizens are “tired, oppressed and eager to break the chains that they bind them”.
The inhabitants of China are aware that “they do not have a perfect system”, but they are “reasonably happy”, neither more nor less than a Spaniard. “The propaganda of the (communist) party is in charge of teaching them how bad things are outside,” he adds.
In his opinion, the Chinese will gradually want more levels of freedom, but not a freedom like the one the West understands. “They don’t envy us too much, in the same way that we don’t envy them either,” he says.
The Chinese, according to Ceballos, do not aspire to a liberal democracy like the European ones, “indeed, they would be concerned” if there were, because in countries like Spain, with 1.350 million fewer inhabitants, it is already very difficult to reach agreements.
“It’s not because they can’t say it” as is sometimes stated from the West. The Chinese also criticize his system, although “in small committee and with trusted people,” explains Ceballos.
A higher bar for foreigners
When Julio Ceballos arrived in China in 2006, which he considers a “nice and pleasant” country, companies were eager for foreign talent. This has changed.
“They welcomed us with arms wide open and the red carpet. Then, over the years, they have been rolling up the carpet because it didn’t have much justification either, ”he recalls.
It is not that the Chinese are now hostile to visits, but they have set “the highest bar” for foreigners who seek to work there because, today, with high local unemployment, their priority is to address the country’s internal problems.
He explains that Eastern companies now want profiles “with two surnames” of specialization, that provide added value, have a professional career of at least a decade and a high level of Chinese.
But there is something that has not changed: the way of doing business. “It’s apparently simple, but then you realize that it’s hard to hit the key,” she says.
In the opinion of this Cantabrian consultant, lawyer and writer, the Chinese are “great businessmen”. “They welcome everyone who brings business, that has not changed and will not change. The Chinese, before being communists, were merchants, ”he emphasizes.
Which company should go to china?
Did Ceballos, who is dedicated to helping companies that want to land in China do business, decided to write this book in one of the fourteen-day preventive confinements that he had to spend every time, in the first months of the pandemic, came to the country.
The Chinese market “is complicated and requires a long time to mature and understand, a lot of effort and a very clear strategy,” he argues.
For this reason, he believes that “not all companies have to go to China. Companies of recognized prestige that already have an international presence have to go, they cannot give up going because it is the largest consumer market on the planet, ”he says.
But even those large companies such as -he points out- Tous, Inditex, Pronovias or Telepizza “success is not guaranteed”.
Paul G. Hermida