Negotiation Archives - Page 4 of 9

Jiang Gan’s Visit

In chapter 45 of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Jiang Gan tells Cao Cao: “Since childhood I have been Zhou Yu’s schoolmate and close friend.” He offers to talk Zhou Yu into surrendering.

Zhou Yu welcomes him, drinks with him late into the night and shares his bed. Jiang Gan finds papers on the desk, among them a letter from Cao Cao’s admirals, Cai Mao and Zhang Yun, and reads it in secret. Back in camp, he hands it to Cao Cao, who has both admirals beheaded. Then Cao Cao realizes: “I have fallen for a trick.”

An older account, quoted in a commentary to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, tells it differently. There, Jiang Gan says that he and Zhou Yu come from the same region. After a meal, Zhou Yu sends him to his lodgings: “I have a secret matter just now.” Three days later, Zhou Yu shows him the camp and its stores. Jiang Gan only laughs and in the end says nothing.

The Kowtow Question

On August 14, 1793, the Qianlong Emperor issued an edict. Everyone who came to the court with tribute had to perform the three kneelings and nine kowtows, san gui jiu kou (三跪九叩), even a king in person. The British envoy Lord Macartney refused. In the end, the emperor gave way and allowed him to kneel on one knee, as he did before his own king.

At the audience in Rehe on September 14, Macartney knelt on one knee. Later Chinese records said that he had been so overawed that he fell to both knees. Chinese Wikipedia calls this claim unfounded. One Chinese article holds that he performed the full kowtow at the emperor’s birthday ceremony three days later. The sources still disagree.

In 1816, another British envoy, Lord Amherst, also refused the kowtow. The Jiaqing Emperor expelled his embassy from the country.

Tea at Yingtai

On the evening of November 11, 2014, Xi Jinping met Barack Obama at Yingtai in Zhongnanhai. “As night deepened, the two heads of state kept talking, and strolled to the Yingxun Pavilion for tea.” Xi said the two countries should talk often and closely, “not about matters case by case,” but frankly and in depth about fundamental questions. Xinhua later reported that the tea, planned for thirty minutes, lasted nearly an hour.

The Vocabulary of Sounding Out

打招呼 To call out a greeting. Also to tell someone about a matter beforehand or afterward, or to remind them of it.

吹风 To blow wind. To let information out, or to make an opinion known.

通气 To let the air through. To keep each other informed.

摸底 To touch the bottom. To find out the real situation and the inside story.

探口风 To probe the wind from the mouth. To sound out what another person thinks. The Handian dictionary’s example comes from marriage. Instead of proposing a match, the other side first sent someone to “throw a stone to test the road” and sound things out.

Face and Favor

The psychologist Hwang Kwang-kuo built a model of how Chinese people decide on a request. Starting from Fei Xiaotong’s idea of ties that are closer or more distant, he divides relationships into three kinds: expressive, mixed and instrumental.

Each kind follows its own rule. For expressive ties, the rule of need applies. For instrumental ties, the rule of fairness applies. For mixed ties, the person who controls the resource follows the rule of renqing (人情). He weighs what helping would cost against the return that may come in the future.

Tian Ji’s Horse Race

Tian Ji, a general of Qi, often raced horses against the princes for high stakes. Sun Bin noticed that the horses on each side were not far apart in speed and fell into three classes. He told Tian Ji: “Race your lowest team against their best, your best against their middle, and your middle against their lowest.”

Tian Ji lost one race and won two, and he took the king’s thousand pieces of gold. Afterwards he introduced Sun Bin to the king, who made him his teacher in war. (Records of the Grand Historian)

Su Qin Repays His Debts

When Su Qin set out for Yan as a poor man, he borrowed a hundred coins. Years later he was chief minister of six states. The Records of the Grand Historian says that he repaid the lender with a hundred gold and “repaid everyone who had ever shown him kindness.”

One follower received nothing and came forward to ask. Su Qin said: “I have not forgotten you. When you came with me to Yan, you wanted to leave me again and again by the Yi River. At that time I was in trouble, so I resented you deeply. That is why I put you last. Now you will receive yours too.”

Gifts and Renqing in Xiajia

The anthropologist Yan Yunxiang did fieldwork in Xiajia, a village in Heilongjiang. As The Paper summarizes his finding, a gift “creates a spiritual bond between the giver and the receiver, which the villagers call renqing (人情).”

On Protracted War

From May 26 to June 3, 1938, Mao Zedong gave a series of lectures in Yan’an titled On Protracted War (论持久战). He rejected two views of the war against Japan: that China would win quickly, and that China would be conquered. The war would be protracted, he argued, and the final victory would be China’s.

The Vocabulary of Delay

从长计议 To plan from a long view. Not to decide in a hurry, but to discuss the matter slowly.

缓兵之计 A plan to slow the troops. A delaying tactic, used to gain time before acting.

推三阻四 To push three and block four. To decline with one excuse after another.

含糊其辞 To keep one’s words vague. To speak unclearly on purpose and take no clear position.

欲言又止 To want to speak and then stop. To hold back what one has to say.