Mijn eerste column voor Intercultural Stories, de nieuwe blog van KIT Intercultural Professionals:

When a foreign company gets in trouble in China, usually the reactions in the western world are not very China-friendly. Take the case of the British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (aka Glaxo or GSK). When last July the Chinese police accused them of massive monetary ($489 million) and sexual bribery of Chinese officials and doctors, the emphasis in western reporting was on the corruption scandals which are endemic in China’s health care system, and not on GSK’s blatantly illegal practice.

True, this system is tremendously underfunded. Nearly all Chinese hospitals are state-owned, but they receive almost no government funding. No wonder healthcare is fraught with corruption: patients have to bribe underpaid doctors and nurses in order to receive decent treatment, expensive medicines and chirurgical interventions are easily prescribed without medical reason, doctors get a percentage of the drugs sold by the hospital, which depends on these sales for its survival. Indeed, the medical world is no exception to the corruption scourge which has pervaded Chinese society.

Xi Jinping, the new Chinese leader, wants to clear up the national Augean stables. Indeed, official corruption on all levels is at the root of many protests all over the country, undermining the legitimacy of the Communist Party. This clampdown, however, is hampered by the absence of a system of checks and balances, by powerful vested interests, and by the usual secrecy of the Party and its fear for initiatives from the people. Nevertheless, Xi’s anti-corruption drive is the most substantial one since Mao Zedong’s Spartan times.

In this offensive against malpractices, foreign companies are not spared. Glaxo is not the first non-Chinese firm to be unmasked, and it certainly will not be the last one. Some observers in the West suspect the Chinese leaders of having a hidden agenda: legal actions and other campaigns against foreign companies would be one of the methods to get rid of unwelcome competitors and to make life for foreign companies in China more difficult, now that these are less needed for national economic development.

Although this consideration cannot be ruled out, the main purpose of the anti-corruption actions against foreign companies is the same as the drive against the wrongdoings of national firms and officials: the political need for the Party to regain the trust of the people. The many corruption scandals in essential matters as food safety and healthcare have been particularly harmful to the Party’s image. A thorough eradication of these plagues is not only good for the health of the Chinese people, but for the health of the Party as well.

Glaxo is not the only multinational enterprise operating in China that, once caught in corruption practices, has blamed its (ethnic) Chinese managers of their China branch. But how is it possible that they didn’t discover the wrongdoings themselves? The answer is simple: the business opportunities on the vast Chinese market were so irresistible that everything was allowed as long as it made money.