I tried this month in my Eurobiz Magazine column Challenging China to look from another view at the cultural issues dissecting investment in China: What are Chinese employees seeing of Westerners in the workplace? I asked. Typically, Westerners are pointing the finger at China workers as reasons for operational inefficiencies. But I’ve noticed these last few years that many times Westerners don’t make it any easier for businesses in China to operate smoothly, or for communications to range as openly as Westerners like to profess.

I write:

“A manager of a Scandinavian home furnishings manufacturer once told me how when he was transferred to the China operation he was appalled to see the Western managers all sitting together in the canteen upstairs, while all the Chinese staff sat together eating in the downstairs cafeteria. ‘I tried several times to sit with the Chinese staff downstairs to converse with them while we ate, but I got the feeling they felt I wasn’t sincere about wanting to break down the separation. The company culture seemed to have a built-in divide between the Westerners and the Chinese that the Chinese seemed quite aware of.’”

Westerners tend to have a Hero mentality to living and working in China. And it shows. It’s not as bad as The White Man’s Burden that colonialists carried round with them like some great bat over which they clubbed many a society over the head in Asia; however, there is a fair share of hubris that hangs around the operations of some Western companies in China like soot from a coal-fired generator.

Now, with the meltdown of the financial system in the West and Western institutions coming to cash-rich Chinese organs, it may not be a bad idea to actually consider creating “a level playing field” between China and the West – culturally speaking, that is.