Mutual Misunderstanding

When we have so many tools and information at our disposal, there’s no excuse for not taking the time to research and understand the needs and expectations of your audience. As product managers we are the voice of both the customers and internal stakeholders. We have a responsibility to sympathize with and attend to both.

When considering the importance of understanding your audience, I like to recall the hysterical story of Britain’s first engagement with China, starting with Lord Macartney’s mission to entreat the Qian Long emperor, at the height of China’s Qing dynasty, and later followed by the Opium wars with Sir George Elliot taking Shanghai and Ningbo. I first read about these stories in Bamber Gascoigne’s The Dynasties of China: A History. While seen as a huge failure for Britain, and a personal embarrassment for the British ambassador, the Macartney mission marks the start of tiny Britain replacing vast China as the world’s pre-eminant power in the 18th century. The hilarious story betrays huge misunderstandings on both sides.

On September 8 the British entourage finally arrived, after a year-long journey, a mile from the imperial summer palace. They set forth for the final leg of the journey in a pompous parade formation. They waited in their designated quarters, but nobody was there to greet them. From 10 in the morning they waited all day, springing at the sight of any passing noble, but eventually retired for bed in disappointment. Despite having just lost the revolutionary war in America, Britain’s economy was booming on the blood and sweat of the laborers in its remaining colonies. Its military was the mightiest in the world and their representative had arrived at the doorstep of the emperor of China expecting to be treated with the reverence any European monarch would have granted. Eventually, the British delegation had to go out in search of their Chinese counterparts, which set an uncomfortable tone for the start of the relationship. Nevertheless, over the next several days, multitudes gifts were exchanged. The British presented their rugs, wools, and cottons, and intimated at the grand scientific displays and mechanical wonders that awaited the emperor at Beijing. The emperor’s representatives in turn gave them an abundance of luxurious fabrics — velvets, silks, satins — along with embroideries, hundreds of fans, jade, a huge assortment of expensive porcelain, lacquerware, and large quantities of top-quality tea. It was in these gifts, however, that we find the contradiction at the heart of the mission. The British sought to impress. They brought the finest products of their science and technology, their burgeoning industry, and their purpose was to awe the Chinese with their advancement. But this was not how embassies traditionally worked in the Qing Empire. When embassies from neighboring countries came to Beijing — from Thailand, Vietnam, especially Korea — they came to trade. While Macartney aimed to negotiate for more advantageous policies in the future, and hopefully gain approval to station a permanent British ambassador in the capital, for the Asian diplomats who came to visit the emperor the embassy itself was the opportunity for trade. Thus the large quantity of high-quality trading goods that the emperor gave to the British — the silks, the porcelain, the tea — he was under the assumption that these were what they wanted above all, so they could bring them home and sell them. Furthermore, the embassies that came from tributary states like Vietnam and Korea did not come to impress the throne; they came to seek the emperor’s approval, which gave them political power back home. Whether they actually recognised the Chinese’s emperor’s pre-eminence or not, they followed the ritual kow-tow (9 kneeling bows to the ground) so that in representing their recognition of the emperor’s supremacy, the emperor would in turn recognize the legitimacy of the leaders that they represented.

Macartney didn’t understand this relationship. He wasn’t even required to humble himself in such a way in front of his own king, let along someone else’s. He insisted that he would only kow-tow if his Chinese counterpart would also do so in front of a portrait of King George.

The 2 sides were at an impasse.

Eventually, the embassy managed to negotiate that Macartney would bend the knee and bow his head once, as he would do for his own king. This gave Macartney the (false) expectation that trade deals could be closed and that Britain would garner greater respect in Asia for being the only state not having been required to kow-tow.

He actually had huge respect and admiration for his hosts, despite the akwardness. When he did eventually get his audience with the emperor, he was nearly overcome by the ornate pageantry of the tent — the tapestries and carpets, the rich draperies and lanterns, “disposed with such harmony,” he wrote in his journal, “the colors so artfully varied.” It was as if he were inside a painting. The “commanding feature” of the ceremony, he recalled dreamily, was “that calm dignity, that sober pomp of Asiatic greatness, which European refinements have not yet attained.”

Nearly a week after their arrival, on September 14, the British were summoned for their audience with emperor Qian Long. At 3 o’clock in the morning, Macartney was dressed in the appropriate ceremonial robes and whisked off in a litter carried by Chinese porters. The porters scurried him off so fast that his own marching band entourage had broken off their musical efforts to avoid the herds of pigs and donkeys on the busy early morning streets as they ran behind.

The letter from King George had been translated into Chinese with the assistance of the European missionaries in Beijing. The king’s language was full of lofty praise in a manner he thought the emperor of China might expect, which the translators preserved — and even amplified, so what Qian Long actually read was not just that he was, as the king wrote, “worthy to live tens of thousands and tens of thousands thousand years,” but also that he “should rule” for that long, an endorsement that was absent from the original. The translators also weeded out potentially offensive references to Christianity, deleting for example a reference by the king to “the blessings which the Great God of Heaven has conferred upon various soils and climates.” Furthermore, they rendered the letter into standard honorific form, elevating the word “China” one line above the rest of the text whenever it appeared, and elevating all references to the emperor three lines above the rest. In the form in which Qian Long read it, the letter scarcely appeared to come from the pen of a sovereign who considered himself to be Qian Long’s equal.

Little did Macartney know, four days previous Qian Long had already made up his mind. The dithering over the kow-tow ritual had affirmed his opinions, and his hubris. “When foreigners who come seeking audience with me are sincere and submissive, then I always treat them with kindness,” Qianlong wrote. “But if they come in arrogance, they get nothing.” He issued an edict to his officials to have the British evicted from Beijing immediately after the planned banquet.

On the surface though, the politeness was maintained. It was on October 3, a few days before they were escorted from the city, that the British delegation received Qian Long’s response. Embroidered on yellow silk, the emperor explained his reasons for rejecting each and every one of Britain’s requests. Fortunately for Macartney, he couldn’t read it. He remained hopeful.

Qian Long had in fact pointed out that he had already given the British embassy an abundance of gifts, and they should simply be grateful and go home. Trade was in fine hands, said Qian Long, and there was no need to change more than a century of precedent just to please one country. The East India company spoils that Macartney had gifted were accepted not out of need nor desire for them, but merely as “Tokens of your own affectionate Regard for me.” In words that would sting the British for a generation, he added, “Strange and costly objects do not interest me. . . . We possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures.” Qian Long did not propose to punish King George for his naiveté in making these requests, and he noted that it was entirely possible Macartney had acted without the king’s permission. Instead, Qian Long expressed his sympathy for remote England — whose people, he observed, were so unfortunate as to live far away beyond an expansive waste where they were ignorant of the civilization of China. Finally, he also suggested that the British had betrayed their own ignorance by even making so many pointless requests in the first place.

To add to Macartney’s problems, the crew of his ship had got sick and so the captain had sailed back down to Macao. He faced a long overland journey back South, with the emperor’s permission of course, empty handed. This at least gave him plenty of time to reflect on his failure. His admiration gave way to anger. He fantasized about taking just two English frigates to destroy China’s entire navy and coastal economies. But — and this was an extremely important caveat — he also realized full well that if Britain showed any aggression toward China, the emperor could simply shut down their trade entirely. He concluded that the best course for Britain was patience, and retained hope for a trade deal.

On eventually returning home, Macartney was a running joke. Caricatures and poems ridiculed him in the papers. His own servant, who had no vested interest in upholding the reputation of either the government or the East India Company, published a scathing expose on the failings of the country’s first official embassy.

Despite, however, having initially failed so utterly to understand his audience, Macartney had learned a great deal from his experience. He recognized Qian Long’s hubris and his long travails through China had equipped him with knowledge about the country’s legal system, education system, economy, agriculture, and science. Despite being depicted as a feeble figure in front of bloated and decadent Chinese officials, Macartney had come to understand that China wasn’t in fact as prosperous and stable as the European powers believed. He understood that any pre-eminence that remained in China was artificially bolstered by it’s history, size, and reputation alone. The grandeur and power was now illusory.

He correctly surmized that the Qing empire, despite being at its height at the time of his visit, was in fact adrift, and even headed for revolution. Macartney described it instead as “the tyranny of a handful of Tartars over more than three hundred millions of Chinese.” And those Chinese subjects, he predicted ominously — fed at least in part by his own wish to see the Manchu emperor humbled — would not suffer “the odium of a foreign yoke” for much longer.

He didn’t understand the language, didn’t have a network of advisors, and had only witnessed a tiny fraction of the vast country over the course of a few months. And yet, despite his own pride and raw emotion, he drew correct conclusions in essays that went on to inform British strategy in China. This strategy was 2-pronged — finding a product that China’s people, if not its government, did desire — opium — and raw military intimidation. In 1840, those British frigates Macartney had fantasized about did sail up the Yangtze and casually cut off the grand canal, limiting the Qing’s ability to distribute grain throughout the empire. As Western powers gathered treaty ports through such tactics, a number of devastating internal rebellions, as predicted by Macartney, saw the Qing empire into a slow and irrevocable decline.

In 1861 the Qing officials laid out plans to modernize their military but it was too little, too late. By 1895 China lost out even to “little Japan”, it’s Asian neighbour that had observed and learnt from the mistakes made by Qianlong and those that came after him. In 1911, the Qing fell and China would remain in turmoil for another 70 or so years.

I like to imagine the what-ifs of history. Had Macartney kow-towed might a fairer trade relationship have been established? Unlikely, given the British appetite for exploitation. Had the British delegation been better prepared for the expected rituals, might they have been better able to present the image of power and majesty they had intended to represent?

What if the Chinese, equipped with a view on Britain’s rise and military might, had requested guns and military training instead of the cloth and tea and spices that the British were peddling? Would Britain have found an opportunity in strengthening their enemy to gain advantage over their competitors? Might the Qing have gained the might to see off those revolts and, later, Japanese incursion?

Moral of the Story

• Macartney probably wasn't the fool he was later characterized as, but he hadn’t done the groundwork for his original goal of establishing a trade relationship — understand your customer, their needs and expectations.
• The Qing government did not recognize the military power of Britain and the other Western powers, even as they were carving up the world and conquering their neighbors — understand the competitive landscape, understand your own organization’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Hubris is the downfall of empires — never underestimate your competitors.

If you want to read more about this story, it’s background and what happened next, then I thoroughly recommend Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age, by Stephen R. Platt.