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Ken DeWoskin ’65: China Expert for U.S. Business

By Helaine Olen

Ken DeWoskin '65

Ken DeWoskin ’65’s knowledge of early Chinese literature and history made him valuable to China-bound businesses such as Ford Motor Co.

PHOTO: JUDITH DeWOSKIn

When Ken DeWoskin ’65, ’74 GSAS, entered Columbia, he thought he would major in engineering. But a Core course, “Oriental Humanities,” taught jointly by Wm. Theodore de Bary ’41, Ainslee Embrey and C.T. Hsia, changed his life direction. He became an expert on China, a man whose expertise straddles the worlds of academia and business.

DeWoskin chose to attend Columbia because he was in love with jazz, and he spent much time as a student trolling New York City’s then-numerous jazz clubs. But nothing compared to what he was learning at Columbia. “Columbia was a part of and yet apart from the rich and chaotic life of New York,” DeWoskin observes. “Inside the gates life was … contemplative, where everyone at least in theory pursued a sophisticated and serious engagement with the great issues of the past and present.”

But it was his studies of Asia that truly piqued his interest. Intrigued by the subject, DeWoskin accepted an offer from faculty members to spend a summer semester at Columbia learning Chinese. Under the influence of such famed East Asian Studies scholars as de Bary and Burton Watson ’50, DeWoskin found his academic and professional home. “I was struck by the passion of the faculty, who taught the materials as if they had found things of great interest and importance they were compelled to bring to Western students,” he recalls. He graduated from Columbia with a dual degree in English and Asian studies.

Hooked on East Asia — and academia — DeWoskin went on to study in Taiwan and Japan and get his Ph.D. from Columbia in early Chinese literature and cultural history. In 1973, he headed off to teach East Asian culture at the University of Michigan. He got tenure after seven years, enjoyed his work and no doubt would have remained in his classroom, immersed in books, but for a twist of historical fate.

DeWoskin was the scholar of a country he had never visited. Very few Americans had traveled to China post-1949, when Communist forces were victorious in the country’s long civil war. “I didn’t ever expect to go to China,” DeWoskin says now. But all that changed when the U.S. government and China’s regime began taking steps toward a rapprochement in the 1970s. DeWoskin’s area of expertise suddenly had very practical uses that led him to a second career in the world of business.

In 1984, DeWoskin took a trip to the mainland with then-Michigan governor James Blanchard. When they returned, the governor asked him to join a state commission dedicated to increasing trade and investment with China. That, in turn, led to corporate consulting gigs with companies such as Motorola, Alcoa and Hewlett Packard. Today, DeWoskin is a professor emeritus of Asian languages and cultures and business administration at Michigan and a consultant on Chinese business development for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

DeWoskin’s knowledge of early Chinese history and literature gave him valuable insights into contemporary China. For example, when DeWoskin worked on a training program for China-bound executives at the Ford Motor Co., he had them read the second-century B.C. classic The Debate on Salt and Iron, a report of formal debate in a Han dynasty emperor’s court between partisans of state-controlled and free market economies.

“I wanted them to understand that the organization of China, where the state played a significant role in the economy, was something with deep historical roots. It wasn’t something Chairman Mao had simply introduced,” DeWoskin explains.

Similarly, DeWoskin points out that many modern Chinese regulations, which often are written in a vague fashion that allows for multiple interpretations, can be traced to the country’s Confucianist heritage. Confucianists believe people are best governed by good men of absolute authority, and not by impartial law. DeWoskin believes the attitude persists in the Chinese culture to this day. “Laws continue to be published with inherent contradictions,” he observes. “Their clarification and implementation is left with great license to the ‘good people’ in the relevant positions of authority.

“Foreign investors are predictably frustrated by the persistence of this ambiguity,” he adds.

As the demand for his services grew, DeWoskin cut back on his university work; by the mid-1980s, he often was teaching one seminar a semester. Even so, combining a business career with academia was challenging. He remembers one year when he taught a Monday morning class in Ann Arbor, leaving for the airport as soon as it ended. He’d arrive in Beijing Tuesday afternoon and work there through Sunday morning, then catch a plane back to Detroit, only to repeat the process week after week. “Some people just thought I was crazy, and there was probably some truth to that,” DeWoskin says with a laugh.

His three children have inherited his love of Asia. His daughter, Rachel ’94, starred in a popular television soap opera in China and published a well-received memoir in 2005 — Foreign Babes in Beijing — about her years of living in China. “China was always a part of our house, conversation and imagination. He and my mom brought my brothers and me here every summer from the time we were tiny,” she says. “My parents loved the language, had tons of Chinese friends, gloried in boat rides down the Yangtze River and trains across the countryside.” DeWoskin has two other children, Jacob, 35, an engineer in Minneapolis, and Aaron, 30, who plans to move to Beijing by the end of this year.

DeWoskin maintains a home base in Ann Arbor with his wife of 42 years, Judith, a high school teacher. He spends about half his year in China, a country that still, after all these years, holds an unbreakable allure for him. “What began some 43 years ago as an uncharted summer of language flash cards and all-night study sessions has turned out to be a sustained and sustaining engagement with one of the most fascinating stories in our world today,” he says. “The things I have always loved about China are still there, and the pace and energy of today’s development are very compelling.”


Helaine Olen is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and Salon, among other publications. Her book, co-written with Stephanie Losee, Office Mate: The Employee Manual for — and Managing — Romance on the Job, was published this fall.

 

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