Modern missionaries - the WTO-colum

(later in Chinabiz)

What have media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and US trade union leader Any Stern in common? Both of them came to China with a mission, and both have seen some - but it limited - successes. Murdoch wanted to introduce modern media to China, Stern wanted to help the Chinese trade union to organize Wal-Mart and maybe more. In both cases the question is: what will happen to their heritage when they have obtained Chinese characteristics?

China has a pretty mixed reputation when it concerns receiving foreign guests. Early Jesuits were gladly offered a place to stay in Beijing, but in the 19th century the heads of foreign missionaries occasionally were chopped off. Both gentlemen seem to fit excellent in that missionary tradition that has dominated the relations between China and the rest of the world for centuries. Mr. Murdoch came closest in getting his head chopped off, at least in the early 1990s when he denounced authoritarian governments like that in Beijing. Those days are long forgotten and after some years of unease, Mr. Murdoch became good friends with those same people he sought to overthrow earlier in his life.

What Stern and Murdoch have in common with the earlier generations of missionaries is that making money is not topping their agenda, but more a more ideological drive is bringing both to China. Mr. Stern is educating China's trade union in grass root organization skills, skills they first applied last year when they organized the US retailer Wal-Mart. In the end a better-organized trade union in China might help to raise the Chinese wages and that might indirectly be beneficial for Mr. Stern's members back in the US, but that seems a target for the long haul. Most business people are more driven by quarterly figures and that makes them rather different from the missionaries, modern or old.

Mr. Murdoch is equally in the media business for the very long haul, if any, as he has discovered the hard way. While much of his efforts to educated the state-owned news media had been gratefully accepted, earning money himself has - possibly forced by the difficult circumstances for foreign media to work in China - obtained a lower position on his agenda too. Each of his media projects in China was seen as a sure winner but invariably ran into problems with backstabbing regulators, lackluster attention from the consumers or a combination of both. The recent launch of his elsewhere successfully social network MySpace has not been the instant success in China it was expected to be.

What both gentlemen have in common with the earlier generations of missionaries are their sky-high expectations on how they can change China. Changing China was high on the agenda of missionaries, as it seems to be on the agenda of Stern and Murdoch. Both work in industries that are heavily dominated by government-driven political agenda's and in both cases it looks very unlikely they might even make a dent in China's spurt forward. At best China will reuse some of the tools they offer and use it for their own purposes. They might leave behind some nice churches and maybe that is rewarding enough.

The illusion of being able to make a change in China keeps the missionaries running and makes them sometimes admirable people. It does not mean they will be successful.

Fons Tuinstra