Never Let Disliking a Leader Sabotage Your Own Work: Piercing the Zero-Sum Myth in Global Business

Seeing photographs of the Chinese and American heads of state standing together recently—alongside my own experience posting a few photos with local mayors and vice mayors whom I crossed paths with at public and industry events—left me with a very concrete reflection.

In today’s hyper-sensitive climate, both kinds of photographs easily trigger instinctive associations. When people see national leaders of major powers, many immediately react with strong personal likes or dislikes; in multinational corporate circles, when someone shares a photo with a local mayor or vice mayor from an event, observers often instinctively wonder what political stance or hidden risk might lie behind it.

Watching these reactions kept bringing me back to a basic question: whether facing the head of state of any nation, or crossing paths with the mayor or vice mayor of a city at an event, standing in the shoes of an enterprise, we must never view national or local public leaders through a personal lens.

From an enterprise’s perspective, the officials holding those positions represent the people of their respective countries and cities. When a company and its professionals extend courtesy, respect, and warmth toward them, that posture should flow from genuine respect and affection for that country, that city, and the hundreds of millions of ordinary people standing behind them.

In reality, there will always be people who dislike one national leader and people who dislike another. As private individuals, everyone is entitled to personal opinions; yet from the standpoint of running an enterprise and doing professional work, what does that personal dislike actually represent? Can it represent the two countries themselves? Almost always, letting personal distaste for a leader dictate your professional posture accomplishes only one thing: it gets in the way of doing your own work.

Private Preferences vs. The Enterprise's Fiduciary Lens

Why must professionals inside an enterprise separate their personal feelings about political figures from their work? Because in law and governance, a natural person and an enterprise occupy two fundamentally different positions.

As a private individual at a gathering of friends or around the family dinner table, you are completely free to evaluate any political figure by personal temperament, value preferences, or speaking style. You can admire one person’s approach and strongly dislike another’s.

Once you act on behalf of an enterprise, however, you are no longer a private individual venting personal emotion. You carry a fiduciary duty to your shareholders, a responsibility for the livelihoods of thousands of employees, and a commitment to the millions of customers and users you serve in that market.

At the same time, the person you encounter at a public venue—whether a head of state, a cabinet minister, or a mayor or vice mayor you meet at an event—is not standing there as a private individual either. As I explored in The State as a Public Trust, public office in both Eastern and Western institutional traditions is fundamentally a public trust exercised on behalf of the citizenry.

Showing respect to that office is never personal flattery toward an individual official; it is respect for the civic order of that country or city, and an expression of sincerity toward the ordinary people who work and build their lives on that land every day.

The Deeper Trap: A Mirror Image of Wrong Risk Judgments Across the Pacific

If we look deeper, what obstructs normal communication today goes far beyond personal likes and dislikes. Across both sides of the Pacific, government engagement and international dialogue are caught in a mirror image of wrong risk judgments.

Look first at the American side: when headquarters at many US multinationals see Chinese employees communicating with Chinese government officials—or see a local executive post a photo with a mayor or vice mayor met at an event—their immediate reflex is often to see a "compliance risk," along with the risk of having to explain themselves before the US Congress.

Frankly speaking, that risk judgment is wrong.

As I have explored in earlier essays (Lunch with a Visiting General Counsel and What Government Relations in China Mean to American Headquarters), in China, the government is inherently part of commercial success. From industrial planning and urban infrastructure to the implementation of regulatory standards, the government in China’s economic system has never been merely a sideline referee; it is a vital participant in the market ecosystem. When a China team speaks candidly with mayors and vice mayors at public events, understands policy directions, and voices industry perspectives to regulators, that is not only legitimate professional work—it is a prerequisite for operating soundly and succeeding commercially in China. When headquarters treats every normal interaction with local officials as a compliance taint or a potential Congressional liability, it effectively forces its local team to run the race blindfolded.

Now look at the domestic side in China: in the eyes of some people in China, when they see Chinese professionals, scholars, or corporate employees communicating closely with foreign government officials and international friends, their first instinct is often to suspect a "threat to national security."

That judgment is equally wrong.

No modern economy, technological ecosystem, or world-class enterprise can grow behind closed doors. When Chinese professionals, legal counsel, entrepreneurs, and scholars communicate with foreign governments and engage candidly with international friends—explaining the real logic of the Chinese market and clearing up unnecessary misunderstandings—they are building the exact bridges needed for commercial cooperation, supply-chain stability, and technological exchange. Viewing normal cross-border communication and international friendships through the magnifying glass of "national security threats" does not bring real security; instead, it creates a chilling effect of self-isolation and narrows the space for Chinese enterprises and society to engage with the world.

Put these two scenes side by side, and the symmetry is striking: American headquarters mistakes normal business-government communication by Chinese employees in China for a compliance risk and political trouble, while some observers in China mistake normal communication with foreign governments and international friends for a national security hazard. Both sides are suffering from the exact same ailment—replacing factual professional judgment with generalized political fear, and punishing the very people on the ground who are building bridges and getting real work done.

The Deeper Illusion: Does Doing Business in the Other Market Mean Strengthening a Rival?

Beneath these two-way suspicions lies an even deeper question that few state openly, yet that quietly shapes countless decisions today: Should an American multinational still be doing business in China at all? And conversely, should a Chinese company still be doing business in the United States?

It is undeniable that across both sides of the Pacific today—including among many members of the US Congress as well as vocal commentators in public discourse—raising doubts about this question is often framed as an intense expression of patriotism. Through that lens, great-power competition is reduced to an absolute zero-sum game, as though every conversation with the other side and every cross-border commercial collaboration were automatically "helping the other country grow its national strength."

We can fully understand the strategic anxiety and desire to protect national interests behind that sentiment. Yet if we set emotion aside and return to the real laws of economic and national competitiveness, we have to pierce this illusion candidly and seriously: equating normal commercial and professional cooperation with "unilaterally feeding a rival's strength" is an extreme misunderstanding that ultimately undermines one's own country.

First, no multinational enterprise enters another market to perform charity. When an American company operates deeply in China, the commercial profits it earns directly fund R&D investment and shareholder returns back in the United States, while competing inside China’s vast supply chains and fast-moving application scenarios is precisely what keeps its global technology edge sharp; likewise, when a Chinese company provides products and services in the US market, it is honing its global capabilities in the world’s deepest consumer and capital market. Commercial cooperation by nature is mutually reinforcing—neither side is simply doing favors for the other.

Second, demanding an end to communication and market presence out of fear that "the other side might also benefit" effectively forces a nation’s finest enterprises to tie their own hands behind their backs. Imagine a world-class sports team that becomes so afraid that playing matches against its toughest rival will "help the rival practice and grow stronger" that, in the name of loving the team, it forbids its own star players from stepping onto the field. What happens three years later? The rival continues to evolve through real-world competition, while the team that locked itself inside a greenhouse out of self-protection loses its real competitive muscle.

Moreover, when "refusing to engage" is elevated into a litmus test of patriotism, the people who actually pay the price for this extreme view are never the speakers delivering tough lines from a podium—they are ordinary citizens and concrete enterprises in both countries: engineers and factory workers who lose overseas orders, ordinary families who face higher costs of living, and industries that could have solved technological and human challenges faster through cross-border collaboration.

True, confident patriotism has never meant treating every normal exchange as aiding an adversary, nor hoping that a rival will sink if we forbid our own companies from swimming in the ocean; it means believing in the vitality of our own enterprises and talent, and supporting them to walk squarely into every major market in the world to create value through real communication, competition, and cooperation.

Does Institutional Respect Mean Surrendering Bottom Lines?

At this point, someone might still ask: Even if both sides are overreacting, when policies genuinely create tariff shocks or regulatory friction for our business, doesn't "respecting public officials out of love for the country" blur a company’s compliance bottom lines and principles?

Thinking this question through requires recognizing three basic facts:

First, no individual leader’s personal style equals an entire country, and behind every public interaction stand ordinary people. Whatever personal view one may hold of a particular political figure, the United States still has 340 million hardworking, innovative people, and China still has 1.4 billion ordinary citizens working for a better life for their families. If personal distaste for someone in office—or the slogans of zero-sum rivalry—leads you to treat a country’s public institutions with coldness or hostility, the people you ultimately hurt are local users and your company’s own business.

Second, institutional respect is the prerequisite for holding your compliance bottom line, not its surrender. Extending courtesy and warmth to a national leader or a local mayor at a public event never means compromising half an inch on anti-corruption standards, data security, or legal red lines. On the contrary, it is only when you set aside condescending scrutiny, stop treating normal government communication like a compliance sin, and engage officials out of genuine care for the development of their city and country that your professional reasoning will be heard—giving you the standing at the table to state your company’s compliance bottom lines clearly and squarely.

Third, neither personal dislike nor extreme suspicion changes the macro chessboard—they only sabotage your own work.

However much an executive may dislike a foreign leader, however many voices in the US Congress may view business cooperation as strengthening a rival, and however much domestic bystanders may fret over external risks, those emotions will not solve a single concrete commercial problem. The only outcome they guarantee is hesitation, self-censorship, and internal friction—and while you are avoiding communication because you dislike a leader or fear being labeled, competitors with open minds who genuinely respect the local market and its public stewards are on the ground solving real problems and winning the market step by step.

Closing Note: Step Out of Mutual Suspicion and Get Back to Real Work

Looking back at those two kinds of photographs—heads of state shaking hands in the same frame at a summit, and casual photos taken with local mayors and vice mayors when crossing paths at events—they point to a remarkably simple truth.

Standing in the shoes of an enterprise, our perspective must be wider than personal likes and dislikes, and steadier than the political noise of the moment. Behind every head of state and every city mayor stand the people of that nation and that municipality. Our respect for public office flows from our respect and love for the land and the people we serve.

It is time to step out of the mirror-image risk misjudgments on both sides of the Pacific, and out of the extreme zero-sum illusion that treats every normal partnership as strengthening a rival: American headquarters and Washington should understand that maintaining transparent government communication and competing actively in China is an integral part of how American enterprises stay globally successful; and society in China should understand that candid communication with foreign governments and international friends—and supporting Chinese companies to engage globally—is the truest expression of national openness and confidence.

Political winds will always shift, and there will always be political figures whom people admire or dislike. Yet countries endure, ordinary people still need to build their lives, and enterprises still have concrete work to deliver. Never allow personal dislike of a leader—or extreme prejudice against normal communication and cooperation—to get in the way of doing your own work well.