This correspondent’s dear spouse has a favourite expression; (我给你讲过了一百八十遍你知道), meaning, “I’ve told you, like, a hundred times already, you know” (in the Chinese version, the number is actually “180”, presumably because we have to get the number “8” in there somewhere). Naturally, she’s exaggerating; the truth is more like twice.
But this tale underscores how fond the Chinese are of incorporating numerals into their every day parlance. And then creating expressions out of them.
Early into his presidency, this fine country’s paramount leader kicked of his anti-extravagance, anti-waste, anti-corruption effort by coining the phrase, “Three dishes and one soup”.
It was a metaphor for frugality; the kind of proportionate lunch that Xi himself ordered that day, in a display that officials nationwide were supposed to follow. It meant no unnecessary expenses for lunch (definitely no alcohol, those days were now gone), no more accepting of bribes in the form of lavish weekend breaks and no going overboard with public spending.
But it was also indicative of the Middle Kingdom’s fondness for the usage of remedial math to get across governmental and societal objectives.
However, let us not forget that the Chinese are hardly alone in this regard. The English language is full of so-called-wise expressions, many of which involving birds for some reason, such as, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, “Killing two birds with one stone”, or “Two wrongs don’t make a right”.
Away from birds and lunches, alert readers will have noticed that China is proud of its long history of intellect, providing us with many of the inventions which still power much of our world today. Such an emphasising of intelligence is also therefore to be found in the country’s numerical metaphor. Here enter the “Thousand Talents Plan”, an HR initiative to supposedly award top achievers in their field with the kind of commendation actually intended for the industrial centres in which they are based. Essentially a chest-beating exercise therefore, the same goes for the “10 Thousand Talents Plan”.
Then there is another, more recent fondness, for a real strangeness, that of “2+1+X”. The formula, largely intended to imply a kind of infinite wisdom by its creator, has been trotted out a few times in recent years as a means to supposedly simplify new government policy and conveniently package bureaucracy.
While the real simplicity of “three dishes and one soup” is undoubtedly a more sellable concept and one which certainly gets people interested around lunchtime, there exists another numeral that packs enough punch to excite every last soul in the Middle Kingdom at any time of day.
And that magic number is “亿” (100 million).
Back to this correspondent’s dear spouse, whose favourite number is, you guessed it, folks, 100 million. She’s no fan of small-time 3 or 7; anyone who knows her will realise that’s her business acumen kicking in. She’s also far from alone.
For 100 million, or multiples thereof preferably, is the number that local governments in China want to hear when under pressure from Beijing to deliver on investment commitments.
It also ignites the dreams of any would be entrepreneur. Little can deliver more face for a Chinese person than telling others they have secured “十个亿元” (¥1 billion) of investment for a project.
Yet, this is also a cautionary tale, as we return to the phenomenon of exaggeration. This publication has direct experience of local authorities vastly inflating numbers provided to them by The Nanjinger, numbers which accurately reflected the qualitative findings of research undertaken thereby.
That ¥1 billion? It might only be half that. It may even not actually exist. For this is how the Chinese play the numbers game. And more and more it looks like a game of Chinese whispers.
