ABSTRACT
>This chapter presents a primer to help Western business businesspeople to access and engage with traditional Chinese culture and ethics. The primer is based in part on the writings of Confucius and The Art of War. Three distinct and interrelated foundational principles—Context-First, Interconnectedness, and Awareness—comprise an Ethical Triad for Understanding Traditional Chinese Culture. The chapter describes successful uses of these principles by Bill Gates of Microsoft and Henry Paulson at Goldman Sachs. The Ethical Triad is then applied to one of the most vexing ethical issues foreign businesses face in China—the protection of intellectual property (IP). Even though there is a significant cultural divide in the way China and the West view the law of intellectual property, fluency in traditional Chinese ethics enables effective communication and relationship-building tools for protecting patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other forms of IP. This is but one example of an important theme running throughout the book that ethical fluency in being able to understanding and apply traditional Chinese ethics does not mean abandoning one’s preexisting ethical values and business objectives. Rather, ethical fluency can be the most effective way to support those values and accomplish objectives.
