Job Discussion Forums

[Xenophobe]

While in Kaohsiung I dealt with employers who had questionable managerial skills and could be downright rude. However, the only employer that ever ripped me off for money, harassed me and actually committed criminal acts (at least by Western standards) was an American. He also caused problems for several other people, including friends of mine and his own former employer, as a result he is no longer in Taiwan teaching , even though he has/had a Taiwanese wife.

[MTurton]

I have seen that too -- the worst rip-off I ever experienced teaching was from a foreigner who had established an illegal school. Most of the Chinese rip-offs I have experienced have been nibbles on the paycheck -- deductions for services not received, overcharging for services rendered, taxes removed but not paid to the government, and so on. Ironically, working under the table, as so many foreigners do, eliminates a lot of the possibility of rip-offs, since they have to pay you exactly the agreed-upon salary. I think that is why so many foreigners experience Taiwanese employers as "honest" -- getting paid illegally reduces the possible scope for rip-offs.

As for wombat's claim that:

"In fact I would go to the opposite end of the spectrum and suggest that the Chinese in Taiwan (and those on the mainland to a lesser degree) are actually more honest than the average person back home."

that is simply comedy, pure and simple. There is simply no equivalent in the States to the widespread abuse of corporations and institutions here -- for example, the mobsters who stage fake kidnappings using recordings taped off cellphones by accomplices in the phone companies, or the whole system of various ATM ripoffs and cons that require inside men at the bank. The idea that people who live in a low-trust, heirarchical, honor-and-shame, and authoritarian political and social culture that is heavily interpenetrated by organized crime in cahoots with the police are "more honest" than people raised in a democratic and high trust culture is completely absurd.

In any case the whole dishonesty/honesty spectrum is in my view the wrong way to think about Chinese ethics in interactions with others. Chinese are neither honest nor dishonest but simply acting out a whole different set of principles. A better way to view it is to see it along a spectrum of Insider-Outsider dichotomies. If you are an Insider you will be treated with solicitude; if you are an Outsider you do not exist. Thus, one of my close friends down south treats me with great generosity and kindness since I am an Insider and equal, as well as an Honored Guest, but she drives and parks her car and conducts other personal affairs with an appalling indifference to the needs of others who are Strangers. Ethics of honesty don't enter in to it, rather, it is her perception of where you stand relative to the little Bubble of Self that she extends around Others. As Foreigners we often receive the Honored Guest treatment which makes us Honorary Insiders and thus we are treated with generosity and solicitude. This has nothing to do with honesty or integrity, ethics the Chinese do not consult because they do not see those as ethics that govern relationships with Others (not because they are evil or inherently dishonest); they are outweighed by more important factors like whether you are Inside or Outside and where you rank status-wise. When the man fixed Wombat's motorcycle for less than it cost (if indeed he did so), he was not being Honest, but Generous, and probably because he perceived Wombat as Honored Guest and thus, Honorary Insider. The two stances, honesty and generosity, should not be confused.

An additional issue is politeness. In Chinese society the polite person gives way to the impositions of others. Thus when I bitch at my neighbors for burning trash and filling my house with smoke it is I who is being impolite, for I should endure their impositions as a polite person. Thus Foreigners receive a greater latitude than they should, and correspondingly accord the Chinese higher marks. This ethic also encourages the abuses that I see all around me in Chinese culture, for Chinese find it almost impossible to say "no" giving great opportunity for unscrupulous people to exploit this cultural pattern. Real freedom is the ability to say "no" and westerners have that amply. For example, there is a scam here that surfaces from time to time, where the con man calls the mark and pretends to be a long-lost friend and wants to borrow a large sum of money. Westerners can say "no" in such a situation, but Chinese find it more difficult. Hence this kind of scam probably does not exist where I come from, but scams that exploit Chinese cultural attitudes toward generosity are common here. In the west the analogical scam is those sponsor-a-child-in-Africa scams that take advantage of the mark's generosity. Crime is cultural.....

The final problem is one that plagues foreigners everywhere: because cultural signals are neither given nor received, foreigners are more likely to impute maliciousness where only stupidity is occurring. I've heard dozens of comments from Chinese in the States about US prejudice where in fact everyone was getting the same treatment, but the foreigner did not know. Many of the same things happen here, for I have heard foreigners in Taiwan make similar complaints. There is no question that anti-foreign prejudice is real, but it can be overstated and it is often seen where it does not exist (while being missed where it does).

MTurton

[wombat]

I stand by my comments that schools that employ foreigners here are on the whole above board. I am only talking about legal employers however, as in my opinion those who choose to work illegally are throwing themselves to the lions.

Michael comments that he knows of lots of people who have been ripped off, but concedes that none of these were ripped off by schools. As most users of this board are/or will be working at schools, this confirmation is very pertinent.

Michael mentions trouble that he has had with translation work. For most of any translation work that we did in addition to our school teaching would be illegal work. Michael may have an APRC and therefore may be entitled to undertake this work legally, however the majority of us are working here under ARC's which are issued from a single employer. It is this main employer that I am referring to as they are the bread and butter, and the legal employer. Private students, part time work etc. are all illegal for most of us, and therefore those choosing to do this type of work need to exercise due care.

What was interesting were the couple of comments about being ripped off by fellow foreigners, and not actually by Chinese. While these are of course isolated cases, they are symptomatic to me of general attitude among a small minority of foreigners here. There seems to be a feeling that they are somehow special and above the law. The foreigner that ripped these people off probably felt that he was in the right and that there was nothing that anyone could do about it. I think that some foreign employees of schools here have the same attitude here, and this is what gets them into so much trouble. In the knowledge that they could find another job elsewhere, or just go home, these individuals become totally unreasonable with employers.

[MTurton]

[wombat]

It seems that there is some confusion here so let me attempt to clarify things.

Firstly, I am posting in reference to a claim made that 'the majority of Chinese are dishonest' and from the context of that original post it is clear that the individual who made the post was referring to the staff and management of Chinese schools that employ foreign teachers. As this is the main topic of this board, I too am talking about this relationship, and am not really referring to Taiwanese gangsters or politicians etc. To attempt to describe Taiwanese people as a whole as either honest or dishonest would be impossible.

In the context of the foreign teacher/Chinese employer relationship, when I say honest I mean that they are not out to intentionally rip someone off. Conversely, a dishonest employer in my eyes would be one that intentionally doesn't pay a teacher for their work. It is really as simple as that as far as it comes to foreign teachers. Sure there are other aspects of honesty and dishonesty, but in the terms of what we have been discussing here in this thread, honesty clearly means paying someone what is due, and dishonesty is withholding money unfairly.

I am not overly concerned about a schools business practices, provided that they are legal and not abusive. Sure, I accept that just because a school may be nice to its 'foreign guests' doesn't mean that they are either fair or generous to Chinese staff, students, parents, nor other schools. However as most of this does not directly concern the foreign teacher, I think we need not concern ourselves with those areas. If one happened to be working in a school where the owner was clearly not running the school morally, well one would have the choice to either attempt to guide the owner or just leave at the end of their contract. In my opinion this does not come into the honesty-dishonesty equation as far as I can determine that A.K.A.T.D.N. is looking at it.

I have seen very few if any substantiated claims of a school employer intentionally ripping off a foreign teacher who was working for them legally. It doesn't take a genius to work out that this is because this type of situation is extremely rare. This is not to say that working here in Taiwan is all rosey, but it certainly puts into perspective claims made otherwise.

[MTurton]

[Rice Paddy Daddy]

Wombat sounds like a dingbat.

[wombat]

[TaoyuanSteve]

[Aristotle]

I suspect that Wombat is Brian re-incarnate. If so I would have to voice my support for him as his being banned was entirely inappropriate.

[TaoyuanSteve]

[wombat]

[Rice Paddy Daddy]

did Seeburn get the boot too?

haven't heard from him in a long time?

Too busy with law school maybe

[TaoyuanSteve]

[A.K.A.T.D.N.]