Good Horse Sense
goes a long way in the Countryside!

Jim Cook's presentation at the China Rural Reconstruction Seminar
Ross School of Management, University of Michigan
and the China Enterprise Network (March 3, 2014)


I feel privileged to be at the University of Michigan in the renowned Ross School of Business. For this opportunity, I want to thank Mr. You XiaoJian and the China Entrepreneur Network for inviting me to speak on a topic about which I am passionate: the destiny of Chinese people. Above all, I am profoundly humbled by Dr. Wen TieJun's lifetime dedication to China's forgotten half, the peasants who, we must not forget, made Modern China possible!

Above is a collage of China's rural enchantment from 30,000 feet up, not from an airplane, but from the land itself. The diversity is striking, beautiful, and full of life's pleasure and life's pain.

We cannot help but being overwhelmed! How could we possibly even know where to begin - a voice inside answers, "take one village at a time." OK, but they're so diverse, how will we know what to do - "relax, and let the village inform you … listen, relate." But villagers are backward. "Really?" When your mechanic fixes your car, he orders a replacement part, when tractors breakdown, villagers fix the part, sometimes even making a new part right on the farm. They resist change. Since the revolution, they put aside Confucius, embraced literacy, took over stewardship of the land, worked alone and then in communes, and adapted to markets. That may be more change than urbanites did over the same interval! Now they're dealing with change: radically improving their quality of life. And that's so challenging that everyone is grappling with it in the dark. I assure you, going to the Moon is much simpler!

Here's a couple of questions for you to consider: Villagers have time for their children, for their friends, for their land, and for themselves, do you? Villagers during planting and harvesting push themselves to work grueling twelve hour days in the hottest sun, can you (I never could)? So, when you visit the village, bring respect and only then will you be allowed to see that they deserve it. Treat villagers badly, and you will fail. The Central Government realizes this; that's one of the drivers of The Three Rural Challenges: Farmers, Agriculture, and the Countryside.

In consulting and in China's Rural Reconstruction, the first hurdle is to gain acceptance, then to have engagement, and finally to have it sustained long after you leave. Sun Jun, artist, author, and genius at gaining acceptance, engagement, and sustaining progress has chronicled an amazingly articulate account of ten years, 2000 to 2010, of trial and error his book, The Rural Way. Additionally I'm informed by: the year I spent living in DaXing village outside Beijing, my high school years training horses in upstate New York, and a decade of management consulting.

I'm going to develop some advice based on my consulting and my time training horses. Consider this the advice I might give to consultants contemplating jumping into the challenges of upgrading rural China. At first sight, the giant chemical factory below might seem like the farthest thing from rural China, but the factory is in the American rural countryside and its workers are overwhelmingly villagers.


Confronting Rural China's challenges is not the first time where the situation seemed overwhelming and I felt so inadequate. Imagine this: it's a warm, sunny day, and I am walking up to this seven story nylon factory, my first chemical factory encounter ever. See me in the image up here? While feeling terribly vulnerable due to my own inadequacy, I was greeted with, "so you're the fella who's going to solve all our problems, welcome." How's that for a "welcome"? Seizing my wits, I jumped back with, "No, I'm here to listen to your ideas … and to help you get the support you need from headquarters."

This encounter was at a fiber factory in rural South Carolina. They didn't produce cotton, rather they produced Nylon thread and a lot of it, a million pounds a day; 10% was wasted due to thread line breaks. DuPont's Ph.Ds had worked the preceding 5 years to reduce these breaks with very little success. So, DuPont sought an outsider to do something different. Well, at least, I qualified as an outsider.


After a day of discussion and walking around where I saw the spinnerets like the first picture and wind-ups like the second, we ended by going to the technical support area, much like that picture on the right. In the technical area, I was startled by a rash of seagull posters much like those below. "What's with the seagulls?" "Oh, it's our warning that someone from headquarters is visiting. Yeah, they fly here, look down on us, crap all over, and go away leaving us to clean up their mess." "Gulp!", then "Wow"; I was definitely gaining their trust! Here's hoping you're skeptical of how this trust was developing so fast; in just a moment I'll give you the secret.




Horses, yes, Horses. Horses taught me to listen, to observe, to recognize, and to empathize, before jumping to conclusions. Listen with your eyes; observe how their ears and tail speak volumes. Their eyes are bifocal, so approach from below. Behavior on their right side is not necessarily like their left side. I discovered they tried hard not to hurt; remember the advice given Gandhi in South Africa: "Tell the protestors to lie down in front of the oncoming horses." Why? Know thy horse: the horse will do everything possible not to hurt you, including disobeying its master! It's not the values you might expect; you have to live amongst them to get to know them! And, live amongst them I did, all through high school I trained them to show and to jump. I loved it! An aside, it was the horse that propelled Genghis Khan to rule the world.

So, remember the Horse. When you go to the village, approach from below, not from above. Listen to their eyes, their arms, their gestures. Be quick to acknowledge, slow to advise. Discover what are their priorities, you'll fail if push yours. Be on the lookout for what might be possible, not what might not be possible. Chinese bias this in their language: "Kě néng" ("possible") and it's very frequently used, whereas "Bù kě néng" ("absolutely impossible"), is seldom used. It's as though, everything that is not absolutely impossible is possible.

If you directly ask villagers, "what would make you happy?" Villagers might simply say "more cash", then, what have you learned? Maybe that that is what they thought you wanted to hear or they didn't want to reveal their true wishes to you, because you hadn't earned their trust. Rather than simple questions, "listen" or construct a menu based on previous conversation or observations. Eat with them, mingle amongst them, and you'll hear their concerns. Listen for better health, fewer worries, reliable electricity, more automation, cleaner water, more flexibility, more education, bigger face … Maybe some of them are their concerns, maybe not. What they really mean is for you to discover. See if you can discover why they deserve real respect as the measure of your astuteness. For if you can't discover that, you cannot be effective.

Be sure to learn their language. Don't speak of speed, profitability, the law, rules, big businesses, big cars, big paychecks, or big anything. Think about the land, their agriculture, and the people. "The Right Time, the Right Place, and the Benefit to the People! 天时地利人和". If some local cadre is resistant, withdraw and come back a month or two later with no mention of the resistance. If some comparable village nearby has success, offer them a chance to visit, no strings attached. Remember, the receptivity may also flow with the seasons. I have a lot of learning to do, and so, unless you're a rural Chinese person, do you. And, if there is a receptive attitude, strike quickly in the form of promises based on the season, even if the right season is NOW. But make good on your promises as that becomes your reputation -- ten times the value of face in the countryside.


I pass along these contrasts adapted from The Rural Way by Sun Jun for you to consider when communicating.

URBAN  SPEAK RURAL  SPEAK
Work is an exchange for money   Work is an exchange of sentiment
Governance is central and by rule of Law   Governance is local and by rule of Nature
Law trumps sentiment   Sentiment trumps Law
Rules are made to benefit people   Rules are made to benefit Nature
Economy is by symbols (brands, markets, ...)   Economy is by accommodating the earth
Motivation is for money   Motivation is for sons
Old age care is from pensions   Old age care is from sons
Wish is for Spring all year long   Wish is for four well behaved seasons
Pets are there to be served   Pets are there to serve
Boasting and bragging are commonplace   Honesty and frankness are commonplace
Face is a vital part of identity   Reputation is a vital part of identity
Social order from contracts and laws   Social order from trust and integrity



Because the countryside is not consistently predictable, it is a complex system. Consequently, I suggest the following "First Principles" to guide actions and policies:

  1. The countryside will have contradictions (farmers will milk cows every single morning before 8, but would hate punching a clock).
  2. The countryside will have stability up to some unpredictable tipping point that involves extreme stress of an organizing principle (like dependency or status).
  3. Once a wide fluctuation (like the US Dust Bowl in the 1930s) upsets a symbiotic balance, it may take decades to, or may never return to, the countryside to its previous stable and robust health.
  4. The experience of the countryside in one place will not necessarily transfer.
  5. Diversity is at the core of the sustainability of the countryside's existence; destroy diversity and you will destroy the countryside.
  6. The Countryside is more like a baby than like a machine; it will flourish with love and die with exploitation.

The Urban cities are much less complex as demonstrated by their degree of repeatability. Already, airports cannot be distinguished one from another without a bit of effort. Western cities' Chinatowns are not that distinct, either. Denver and Phoenix, one a mile high surrounded by mountains in a cool climate is not that different than the other situated on a flat desert in a brutally hot climate. Orthogonal streets, global cars, macadam pavement, cement high rises, and sets of laws so similar as one moves from one city to another there seems to be no need to ask what's legal. This repeatability also leads to predictability (rush hour, traffic jams, violence and crime, corruption, …) that is qualitatively different than the countryside. The city is more like a machine than it is like a baby!

That city ways should not be applied to the countryside would be a direct conclusion of complex systems versus simple systems. Simple, here, is meant as a formal mathematical term. A Boeing 727 is simple whereas a mosquito is complex. As such, a whole different paradigm of logic should, I dare say must, be applied. Now go make friends in the Countryside! Thank you.

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