From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Idiotic Japan Bashing
Distribution: world
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 10:58:00 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1992Dec28.080944.7939@pegasus.com> tleylan@pegasus.com writes:

 > You take a trip to Germany and you sit yourself down in a brewery that
 > has been brewing beer for 600 years and you get yourself a sense of
 > continuity.

Also the Medical School at the University of Vienna, I understand is
over 600 years old.

 > There are places throughout Europe that existed when Columbus sailed
 > to the U.S. still operating... though to be honest the management has
 > changed hands.
 >  
 > This is surely the case in Asia.  A company that made steel for swords
 > hundreds of years ago is probably still in existance.

Indeed, the Chinese medical tradition remains unbroken since around
2,700 BC. The *same* basic texts are still in use today, the Canon of
Herbs written by the Emperor Shen Nung (died 2,698 BC) was revised
only recently in the sixteenth century. The Nei Ching, written by the
legendary Yellow Emperor, Huang Ti, about 100 years later to formalise
medical theory and practice on the basis of knowledge and research
(instead of "insisting on the presence of ghosts and spirits") was not
updated until the sixth century, and again during the seventh century.

The ceramics industry manufacturing the same fine porcelain copied by
Josiah Wedgewood and others following the first European incursions
into the Pearl Delta is still very much in business. My wife, whose
home village is only about 50 Km from Foshan, states quite vigorously
that nobody can remember any more when the porcelain industry started
there, just "thousands of years" ago.

Similarly the complete flood control system of levee banks, drainage
and irrigation canals along the entire Delta nobody can now remember
being built, but the same social structures maintain it and the whole
productive ecosystem benefits from it, making that area (bounded by
the "five towns" focused on Jiangmen City) the most consistently and
sustainably wealthy region anywhere on earth.

Those people simply scoff at the Europeans (especially Americans) as
barbarians and invaders, complete newcomers to commercial integrity and
prosperity who simply cannot be trusted to remain loyal to established
business relationships through the thick and thin of centuries.

 > You're trying to wedge your own definition of "100 year plan" into the
 > works and if you mean "show me where they say how many units they will
 > sell in 2092" then by all means there is no plan by your definition.
 >  
 > In short they plan to exist 100 years from now, and they plan to serve
 > their customers and to have employees and your stock certificates will
 > still be worth something.

Traditionally oriented commercial enterprises are indeed very much
less concerned with "doing deals" than the frantic Westerners of the
New World. They do their business on the basis of, as you say, serving
their customers and striving to retain the quality and value of their
operation.

 > Get it ?

I hope so. There is nothing paranoid in seeing Western corporations
come and go with the wind, while traditional business just plods away
at it for hundreds and hundreds of years without worrying about the
state of the economy, or what governments are doing, or anything else
whatsoever.

The Cantonese have a saying, "Don't worry, just make money and look
after the family". That's how they stay in business for so long.

Gil

Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.econ