China and the West

Clavell, James. Noble house : a novel of contemporary Hong Kong [ID D33472].
Sekundärliteratur
Noble House is set in 1963. The tai-pan, Ian Dunross, struggles to rescue Struan's from the precarious financial position left by his predecessor. To do this, he seeks partnership with an American millionaire, while trying to ward off his arch-rival Quillan Gornt, who seeks to destroy Struan's once and for all. Meanwhile, Chinese communists, Taiwanese nationalists, and Soviet spies illegally vie for influence in Hong Kong while the British government seeks to prevent this. And nobody, it seems, can get anything done without enlisting the aid of Hong Kong's criminal underworld. Other obstacles include water shortages, landslides, bank runs and stock market crashes.
In Noble House, Dunross finds his company the target of a hostile takeover at a time when Struan's is desperately overextended. He is also embroiled in international espionage when he finds himself in possession of secret documents desperately desired by both the KGB and MI6. The novel follows Dunross' attempts to extricate himself from all this and to save Struan's, the Noble House.
Struan and Company is based on Jardine Matheson Holdings, which continues to exist as an Asian trading company.

Gina Macdonald : In a time of crisis, Dunross takes over Noble House, a private banking house and international shipping firm, and sells public stock in the firm to prevent the bankruptcy pending from an uninsured billion-dollar cargo lost at sea.
Perhaps the mos striking theme of the novel has to do with Hong Kong. Cavell argues that the city is a unique experiment in capitalistic venture and cross-cultural relationships. It epitomizes the good that can result from the peaceful meeting of East and West.
A recurring theme given more weight in Noble House than in Clavell's other books is a warning against Soviet expansionism. Two of Clavell's other recurring themes, cultural differences and gender differences, have a changed focus in this book. The dominating cultural differences are between the English and the Americans, with the Chinese sharing the English reaction to Americans.
Oble House is a tribute to a fascinating city that has become an international definition of successful interface between East and West. Hong Kong has always had one of the highest population densities in the world. Two interlocked characteristics of Hong Kong that Cavell illustrates again and again are its inhabitants' willingness to gamble- to gamble their lives, to gamble on life and, especially, to gamble on business ods – and their lust for money and for power. Cavell captures this gambling spirit and makes it the essential ingredient of his most successful entrepreneurs.
The Struan legacy has a Chinese sense of family continuity and of family commitment to China that is reinforced by family ritual such as the passing of power from tai-pan to tai-pan.
Cavell dramatizes American directness, informality, and business-first mentality grating on both Chinese and British formality and propriety, and his British finding common cause with Chinese associates against the Americans.
In Noble House, the Chinese women of twentieth-century Hong Kong are still trapped in nineteenth-century patterns. The birth control pill has given British women greater freedom and wider choices, but, in general, they, like their Chinese counterparts, accept Hong Kong as a man's world in which women are limited to traditional roles.
The cultural contrasts between East and West have become less striking as the melding of cultures creates Chinese with Western values and ambitions, and Westerners with a Chinese sense of time and strategy.
The Hong Kong setting is equally important, since the city is an experiment in free-wheeling capitalism on the doorstep of two gigantic experiments with Communism : Red China, and, by extension, the Soviet Union. The battle of competing economic systems infuses the book with a spirit of ideological urgency, since the struggles taking place here are more than just personal and financial. Cavell interlocks political and business struggles. Hong Kong is the showplace of capitalism, with the competing socialist model never far away. Cavell argues that, though still an alien culture, with a focus on communal rather than individual values, China cannot close its doors to the West. It has become dependent on Hong Kong as a population outlet in times of trouble and as a source of income and goods ; illegal and legal traffic flows in and out of Hong Kong and back and forth between Kong Kong and the mainland.
Cavell postulates that trade with China over a long period will transform Chinese thinking, and that the Chinese cannot stop those changes ; however, it will also affect Western thinking, and Westerners cannot stop thos changes either. But whichever way the influences flow, it is capitalism that will promote social and personal advances.