I was told this saying by a chinese person who was complaining about how Chinese companies abroad are taking over massive projects effectively, yet, within China companies are ran horrifically (not all, but many), having such traditions such as bribing your way to the top, hiding errors from your boss to save face which in turn affects production, floods of poor quality products. Yet, when you look at some of the chinese companies abroad they can pretty much compete with anyone. Pakistan have some new state of the art ports, they’re building hydro dams in africa, many solar panels and real estate projects in the U.S (they’ve got one of the biggest offices in the twin towers). One can only take such a saying to heart. It really does make sense. When the Chinese are individual, or outside of China, their work ethics magically change, but when there is nothing but chinese in China, something changes. I wonder what that is? Is the fact that within China they follow chinese culture/tradition?  and abroad they have to be more modernized and use global standard? Imagine what would happen when china finally breaks free from  its save face culture, and really starts to have an open mind and evolve from it’s older style way of thinking. Tradition is great, but we no longer think the way we did in the 1500s, and times have changed, it’s time to get with the program. And when the Chinese are on the program, they are dragons, it’s proven.