East Meets West
                                                                                Nancy S. Barber

It was startling to realize that the meeting with Yang Hai and Xu Jiali from China with Bob Fenech and myself was all done through three or four e-mails among our offices. To set up a meeting among ourselves this quickly and easily reflects the tremendous changes the Internet has brought to us in the last ten years. It also reflects the dynamics and potential of globalization in terms of economic, social and political endeavors. The visit highlighted the similarities and differences that we must acknowledge and accept when we travel outside our own culture.

The first thing made very clear by Yang Hai is the Chinese custom as the guest to pay for the meal. Yang Hai insisted that there was no negotiation for this business practice and now Bob and I have been invited to Beijing to return the favor in kind. It is only a two-hour trip from Kuala Lumpur and Yang Hai insists that as long as we are the neighborhood. GIN folks should just come on over to Beijing. If Bob and I are along, lunch is on us!

As when I was at the GIN Conference in Chicago, one of the greatest frustrations was language difference. Yang Hai and Xu Jiali were kind enough to bring their translator. Xu Jiali spoke English Better than some of us who live in the United States. He told us that he learned English while attending law school in China. Many Chinese learn English in their universities. He has the opinion that English is easier for a Chinese-speaking person to learn than if an English-speaking person were to attempt to learn Chinese. By the way, Chinese is a generic Mandarin. It would be hard to imagine United States students even considering an attempt to learn Mandarin and /or Cantonese.

This is Yang Hai's first visit to the United States and after his visit in San Francisco; he was leaving for New York City, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. While only in San Francisco for a few days, he had some initial reactions to the United States. He observed that, while our lives seemed more modern, he felt he had a better quality of life in China. He is not the first to make that observation. What we trade off for an industrialized technological society is often questioned. Many of the United Stated GIN members who attended the GIN Conference in Chicago learned that Europeans take extended summer vacations and seem to have a slower pace about life.

Probably the most important aspect of learning about China today is that it is a world rife with change and dynamic to the point of breath taking. All of that said, it is important when dealing with any country outside of our own experience to understand how their political, economic and social history impacts how business is conducted. You cannot judge another country by your own cultural standards. For more than forty years China's entire system was based on a centralized government controlled economy. There was no developed business class that supported the market place. There is a huge rural population with little experience at practicing business as the Western world knows and understands.
As China joins the globalization of the world market, we have to keep their history in mind. There is no centralized computer database system of information regarding corporations and/or individuals. Most business is centered in the urban areas. The information sources we take for granted in the United Stated simply does not exist in many other countries. This is especially true in China. There remain strict government controls on information. Public records do not exist and there is no centralized record system for companies. The concept of civil litigation does not exist.

As we learned this from Pawan Ahluwalia at the GIN conference last year, when he described investigations in India, much is the same in China. Investigations require the gumshoe approach of an investigator developing and maintaining his/her own contacts for information. Yang Hai is the only investigator authorized to conduct his business in China. He is a former police officer and is certified to conduct his business. This fact alone suggests the tremendous change afoot in China and provides a significant clue to the barriers of conducting investigations as we in the United States regularly experience. The success of an investigation in any culture where the information is dependent on the investigator's experience and connections will provide different results than we in the United States are used to seeing. It is important when we take on international investigations that we educate our clients as to what they can expect and not expect in a report.

With that outlook in mind, the Western world is also changing. Investigators in the United States are faced with evaporating sources of information due to the wave of privacy laws afoot and the changes wrought by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Investigators in Europe are also faced with the constraints imposed by the Data Protection Act. One of the things I realized when we were talking with Yang Hai and Xu Jiali is that soon U.S and European investigators may find themselves conducting investigations more as they have to in countries such as China and India. We have much to learn from each other.

Finally, we all could agree on one thing. Yang Hai asked if Bob and I had met James Brewer. We all smiled at the same and spoke the same thing in two languages: "GIN is the best and James is a good guy for putting us all together." No translation was required!