Do Germans trust Chinese?
That was a question, I encountered during the last 10 training days from Nanjing to Suzhou to Shanghai.
First, the question puzzled me. In my experience, Germans trust very easily (sometimes too easily). In fact, if you work for the same company, you believe in what your colleagues tell you. Should we notice, however, that one information was not true, we start to be on our guard. If we encounter a second lie, we definitely mistrust the person that brought the information. In this case, it’s very hard to re-install a trusting relationship.
I was told by several Chinese that they, in order to convince (in their eyes) stubborn and arrogant Germans, started to say: “That’s the Chinese government’s request”, “That’s the law in China”. If that is not really the truth, and your German counterpart finds out, you might be in deep trouble!
To establish trust when coming from different cultural and educational backgrounds is not easy. We trust people who use the language the same way. That’s definitely not what happens naturally when Germans and Chinese collaborate. Therefore, more effort has to be put into getting aware of the other’s way of using language, of finding good ways in adapting to some of the other’s structures, and of communicating frequently with your counterparts.
