We all hold stereotyped views of nationalities, people, professions and even towards age groups. For example, Americans are hero worshippers, British gentlemen, French Romantics and Chinese pragmatists... the list goes on. A friend was on a tour of Japan, he never took the trouble to count his change when making purchases because the Japanese has a great reputation for honesty. He was wrong, the one and only time he happened to count his change, he was surprised. From then on, he counted his change carefully.   This is indeed the pitfall we could encounter if we allowed stereotype views to influence our dealings in a multi-cultural diverse world. The stereotype perception we hold towards nationalities and governments can bring serious repercussions to our own benefits, not to mention the risks of jeopardizing relationships.

In the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, many in Asia believes that this can not be  a mistake. “It is not believable. The US armed forces; its air force and their weaponry are the best in the world. “With all that sophisticated technological power, and precision equipment, how can they explain it away as using an old map!” Indeed, the US armed force does have a hard time defending its action. Having a great reputation for being technologically advanced incapable of making mistakes; their reputation has now put their intention in jeopardy. I have always maintained that it is dangerous to generalize, and while governments and nationalities do have a certain culture and trait about themselves, a brush stroke view is not only unfair but grossly misleading. 

This recent example revealed by an embarrassing mistake of NASA testified to this fact. The Spacecraft Mars Climate Obiter went off course by about 60 miles as it approached Mars because of a mistake in its thrust. Investigation revealed that the thrust of the spacecraft specified certain measurement about the spacecraft’s thrust in poundals, an English unit but that NASA scientists thought the information was in metric measurement known as newtons. ‘ The reaction is disbelief,” said Noel Hinners, vice president for flight systems at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, “It can’t be something that simple that could cause this to happen. ”The finding was a major embarrassment for the space agency,  which said it was investigating how such a basic error could have gone through a space mission’s checks and balances. “The real issue is not that the data was wrong,” said Edward Stone, the director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which was in charge of the mission. “The real issue is that our process did not realize there was this discrepancy and correct for it.”

Whenever something major goes wrong, some Asians like to point to the western conspiracy theory and blame the problem on the West. Those of us who have worked and spent time in the West can vouch that  Westerners are not all that smart or unanimous and unified in their actions. Like the case of conspiracy of the West in the Asian financial crisis, MIT economist Paul Krugman agrees that those accused by Asians are not that smart. This NASA misstep is another glaring example to Asians not to hold onto  their stereotyped view of the West. 

It is indeed dangerous to generalize. While this NASA incident may be unique, the universal truth is to err is human. No one is infallible, although the better managed concerns, hopefully with their checks and balances reduce their mistakes to the minimum. At the end of the day it is the vigilance that counts. Think about the amazing safety record of Hong Kong’s old Kai Tuck airport. Anyone has ever landed on that narrow airstrip knows what a hair-clinging experience it is, but Kai Tuck has an impeccable safety record. That explains it. The fact that all pilots know that they are coming in on one of the world’s most dangerous landing strips, they are on their toes. It is such human attitude that makes the system safe for all.
 

Kuala Lumpur, November 9, 1999

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