A response from I Ching: Chinese Yuan going global

Citation

Foo, C.-T. (2011), "A response from I Ching: Chinese Yuan going global", Chinese Management Studies, Vol. 5 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/cms.2011.32305baa.001

A response from I Ching: Chinese Yuan going global

Article Type: Editorial From: Chinese Management Studies, Volume 5, Issue 2

I am working on a review of the book, The Party that reports of an investigation into The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers (sub-title) by Richard McGregor for Chinese Management Studies (CMS). His book provides insights into how Chinese in top rungs of society have to master the art of social balancing. The two contrasting worlds: one of politics, where communist ideology reigns and one of business, where extreme capitalism prevails in China.

Nowhere else in the West, whether in Europe or the USA is there such a necessity for quick adaptation of one’s mindset. For example, how Liu Mingkang, China’s bank regulator with an MBA from City University of London (my alumni) is adept at lecturing in English on finance and where the occasion so demands, on the “great invention of Sinified Marxism” (at page 670).

What Richard McGregor writes at the beginning page (xii) in the Prologue has immediate relevance to us as researchers of Chinese management. In particular, on the likely future growing importance of Chinese original sources of philosophy, management and practices:

[…] alongside China’s rise, the patience with which Beijing listened to advice from foreigners had been dwindling. It wasn’t until the western financial crisis that the confidence of the likes of Wang Qishan [vice premier in charge of China’s financial sector] spread through the system and burst to the surface like never before. Many Chinese leaders were beginning to voice out loud the sentiments expressed privately by Wang: what on earth have we to learn from the west? (italics added by author).

Since it is the financial crisis that sparked off this utter loss of confidence in learning from the West, I have decided in this editorial to report on a finance-related query. It is an approach that may be considered as highly unusual in the West: consultation of a 5,000 years old oracle, the I Ching on finance.

Whilst professors have published papers in CMS on the deep, underlying philosophy of I Ching, none has gone one step further: exploring its role as an oracle. A discussion of the role of I Ching for mapping out plausible future trends is what a Chinese strategist can appreciate. For example, in the Romance of Three Kingdoms, Liu Bei consulted the I Ching as to the right time to seek out Zhu Geliang as strategic advisor. Earlier he had failed in trying to meet him.

Few Westerners realize the I Ching was created by one of the most august of three early founding Yellow Emperors of China: Fu Xi, 2800 BC-2737 BC. The text of I Ching that is popularly consulted is the Zhou Yi and this is formulated by another August leader, King Wen of Zhou dynasty, the most revered dynasty in China. So it is not just any oracle – it was created by leaders for use by leaders! For this reason, it remains so highly revered even in modern communist China.

At Sun Tzu Art of War Institute, I had decided to lead a two-half day workshop on the I Ching. As part of the lectures, I had encouraged the participants who had heard my lectures on I Ching’s prescriptive philosophy on the art of leadership to make personal queries. In fact since time immemorial, the role of I Ching is one of an oracle. They are instructed on the three methods: yarrow stalks, coins and by computer. These consultations are treated as experimentations and are integral part of the workshop.

Since time is so significant in interpreting results, for the record we made the consultation on December 16, 2010 at Aventis School of Management, at about 9:30 in the morning. In front of the small but highly involved class, this question was then posed to the I Ching: will Chinese Yuan replace the US dollar?

Figure 1 shows the response from the I Ching.

Now the real difficulty of any I Ching consultation is in the interpretation. Each one of us may develop an intuitive feel for the meanings from the symbolic imagery of lines: only two kinds, unbroken and broken. The very first Chinese writings are simply lines. According to tradition, Fu Xi saw the lines on the back of dragon-tortoise and formulated the trigrams.

Now back to the meaning from the response. Hexagram 19 transforms via two changing lines to Hexagram 2. For me reading the character of Lin (19), it means what is near. That it is Yuan will soon replace the US dollar. My own reading of its transformation to Kun (2): it will be a global (Earth) currency.

It is outside the scope of this editorial to discuss in depth on the theory behind why I Ching is found to work for many people. It ranges from connecting with the unconsciousness (for me), Jung’s collective unconscious and synchronicity and oneness with Universe. From my own experimentations, I Ching is especially useful for resolving human relations issues.

In this issue, we again have a wide range of papers: I am glad of the diversity of topics that reflect Chinese management. My own contribution focuses on uniquely Chinese processes for decisions. The paper was first presented at CEIBS Conference on Practical Chinese Wisdom. “Beyond Jungian synchronicity, decision making via poetical imagery: the case of Kuan Yin, Avalokitesvara and Ling Qian” explores what is a long established Chinese process for decision making.

The second paper, by Xuanwei Cao, Xiaojun Zhang and Youmin Xi, is equally intriguing, “Ambidextrous organization in harmony: a multi-case exploration of the value of HeXie management theory”. It is reflective of the kind of papers that CMS particularly welcomes, a theory originating from the deep Chinese roots of thinking and illustrated through case studies. For it is from such papers, that are seeds to the emergence of Chinese management as a discipline.

The third paper, by Chang-yen Tsai and Chengli Tien, draws on insights from an extensive survey of 1,100 Taiwanese firms from within the veins of Chinese rivers: Pearl River and Yangtze River to answer a important research question: “Does organizational strategic fit in supply chain relations affect the propensity for strategic change: evidence from Taiwanese investments in China?”. This paper illustrates the insights one may gain through implementing empirical studies.

The fourth paper, by Changwei Pang, Hao Shen and Yuan Li, “How organizational slack affects new venture performance in China: a contingent perspective” [italics by author]. As China competes in the arena of innovation, our focus of research must turn to utilizing slack in newborn ventures. I find the paper to be useful for me in my own action research on the innovative enterprise: conceptualizing port in ocean technology and tipper barge system for land refill (Foo et al., 2010a, b).

The fifth paper, by Wei-Ming Ou, Chia-Mei Shih, Chin-Yuan Chen and Kuo-Chang Wang, is what business is all about: fostering customer loyalty. The insights are gained from observations undertaken on China’s other shore: the Taiwanese departmental stores. “Relationships among customer loyalty programs, service quality, relationship quality and loyalty: an empirical study” verifies empirically that only deeply committed customer loyalty programs will achieve results.

The sixth paper, by Jianfeng Wu and Menita Liu Cheng, makes a highly important contribution to Chinese management literature. By way of empirical evidence “The impact of managerial political connections and quality on government subsidies: evidence from Chinese listed corporations” tells CEOs a hard truth: no escaping from achieving superior, relative-to-others performance. In other words, political connections per se are of much less consequence.

I must thank all the authors for these papers in helping to establish CMS. We need much more of such high-quality work to lay the foundation for a discipline. From the stream of submissions to 1st Global Chinese Management Studies Conference, I am confident of us reaching our goal of being the premier journal on Chinese management.

Furthermore, I urge Chinese researchers to draw inspiration from the West in charting out new directions in research on management. For China is transforming to become an innovative society. Studies that contrast Chinese management with other cultures, for example, Indian too are needed. Papers explaining the deep, traditional roots to Chinese managerial thinking are welcomed. From reviewing the book, The Party, it is perhaps timely for Chinese scholars to try to reconcile Sino-Marxism of authoritarian politics with liberal economics and evolving Chinese managerial ethos.

Check-Teck FooEditor-in-Chief