What’s the big freakin’ deal?
Have you ever tried doing anything in China?
It’s impossible if you don’t bribe.
If you don’t bribe, you don’t get in the country. (You suddenly have issues with your visa?)
If you don’t bribe, you get a hotel room with a disgusting hole in the floor instead of a western toilet.
If you don’t bribe, your car breaks down in the middle of some god forsaken scrub land in the hills outside of Beijing. Then you have to sit on the side of the road while your driver laughs at you and then proceeds to sacrifice a chicken and cooks the legs for lunch using his cigarette lighter.
If you don’t bribe, you don’t do business in China.
But it really doesn’t take much. It’s not nearly as expensive as the bribes I had to pay to American officials and union bosses.
You would be amazed how much work you can get done in China just by dangling a carton of Camel Turkish Gold cigarettes in front of someone.
Funny story – I was in China a couple of years ago visiting my girlfriend on the set of our movie “Tae Kwon Doug”. When I got to the set, no one was doing anything. The Chinese crew was playing some bizarre game with colored tiles and drinking some white lightning dragon fire pure alcohol.
I started to ask the American actors what the fuck was going on and I was told the bribe we paid in order to start shooting was in local RMB currency and not in American dollars. Local RMB is like toilet paper to the Chinese. American dollars are preferred.
I immediately fired the American producer, pulled out a few $1 bills from my pocket, spread them around – and suddenly, everyone was ready to work.
As a bonus, I threw in a carton of Camel Turkish Gold and a bottle of American whiskey. We finished shooting the entire movie in three days. It was supposed to be a six week shoot.
That’s what I call results.
So… memo to the Department of Justice… if you want me to cooperate with your little investigation into our business practices in China, it’s going to cost you a few dollars, a few cigarettes and a whole lot of booze.
Khan Manka, Jr. – Chairman & CEO – Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company
Make bribery legal, like prostitution is: long-lived, oldest, impossible to weed out.
US companies bribe?????
Never! Say it ain’t so, Khan! Only Chinese are corrupt.
Hilarious and exactly right. It’s doing business in China, of course bribing government officials was involved.
Bribery? In China? Are you sure about that? I’ve been here 5 years and I’ve never known anyone willing to take a bribe!
Seriously though, you’re right Khan, this is how things get done over here. It is one of the reasons the disparity between rich and poor is so high and why the students I teach sometimes can’t get Canadian Visas to go study. You have to show the government you are applying to how you got the cash (i.e. receipts).
I really must challenge whether you have ever been anywhere even remotely close to China – indeed, anywhere beyond the borders of Fantasyland
I have lIved in China for several years, and there is indeed corruption; this is true of many places including the continental USA, as discussed in your article.
However, the idea that locals prefer US$ to RMB, Camels to Chinese cigarettes, or American Whisy to local “baiju” is a fallacy. The standard perception of most Americans – and I draw this from my employees, my business contacts and my wife’s Chinese family and social network – is that they are superficial, immature and ostentatiously emotional. This stereotype is of course no more valid than that which you express of the Chinese themselves, but goes some way towards dispelling the impression that the Chinese in some way kowtow to American’s innate superiority or superior wares and technology.
It may consequently come as a considerable surprise to you and some of your readers that the US “strategic pivot” towards Asia has not been well received amongst the natives – and not just the Chinese. The unease expressed in Okinawa and Japan is echoed elsewhere – notably the Philippines, in Thailand and surprisingly also in Singapore http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/NE08Ae01.html
The world is changing, and “The White Man’s Burden” which Kipling ascribed to the USA 110 years ago is no more onerous than ever. Read the poem, and weep :
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5478/
Don’t fret, Andrew. Khan Manka and his studio are the figments of some very active imaginations, as is the content of this post.
http://www.tiawood.com/articles/news/2-internet-news/511-manka-bros-worlds-biggest-online-media-company.html
What?
Thanks, Khan. We always love when you come to China.
Trying staying at a hotel in the U.S. without passing money to the people who lift your bags, open the front door, make your bed or hang around the restaurant while you help yourself to a self-service buffet.
The only difference between a bribe and a tip is in the spelling of the word.
Come on, guys. Corruption is very common in every Asian country, it is their culture. It is just a matter of how well it is covered.
Plus, think about it, who support and promote this kind of activities? Take big US Investment banking firm for example,they tried their best to hire the children of chinese leaders, give them extreme high salary, for what? For being able to do business in China.
This is nothing compares with what is happening in Wall Street everyday. Wall Street is real money.
All I can say is that I’ve lived in China for 4 years on & off, and the only thing mildly correct about this article is the idea that bribes work. The chicken legs, USD…..it’s all henkie