Big guy talks the walk with the crowd

Updated: 2014-11-27 07:33

By Hannay Richards(China Daily)

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Addressing the Australian Federal Parliament last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping rather memorably described China as being like "a big guy in a crowd".

"In such a situation," he said, "those in the crowd will naturally wonder how the big guy will move and act, and be concerned that the big guy will push them around, stand in their way or take their place."

He was talking of course about China's rise and how other countries in the region have responded nervously and warily to that rise. But beyond conveying the immediate dynamics of China's relations with the rest of the region, his choice of image is revealing in other ways.

One of the problems the big guy is encountering as his strength and stature grow is that not only is he the big guy in a crowd, but he has grown up indoors, and it is only now it has stepped outside that he is encountering people on the street.

So it is not just that the big guy is being viewed with wariness and suspicion by those in the crowd, there are also difficulties in communicating that need to be overcome to alleviate the crowd's anxiety and hostility, as the big guy does not share all the cultural identifiers that serve to act as the force of attraction bringing and holding those in the crowd together.

A key determinant of successful communication, aside from a shared understanding of the language being used, is awareness of the cultural contexts that inform the exchange. Without shared cultural norms and identifiers communication has to find ways to bridge disparities and divergence.

Thus it is not only the inconsistency between the big guy's view of himself within the crowd and how he appears to those in the crowd that needs to be transcended, but also the discrepancies between the meaning of what is said and the understanding of what is heard.

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