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Ethical Business in the Protestant Tradition

Christmas has come and gone again. It wasn’t straightforward, but we managed to achieve what we had hoped for. Fifty of our workers crowded into our apartment, we sang a few Christmas songs, told them about Jesus’ birth and then gave them all gifts. I had even managed to persuade my colleagues that the gifts should come out of company profits. However, my wife and I did pay for the food out of our own pockets, and we were happy to do so. The workers struggle hard for us, and I believe it is worth repaying their sacrifices with some of our own.

Ten years ago, I never would have thought it possible. But I remember it well, in the summer of 2012, while I was still an undergraduate at Beijing People’s University taking my degree in International Relations, I whimsically signed up for a summer course entitled ‘Western Businessmen Speak Out’. When I heard that the team was from the UK, what with the Olympics taking place there the next week, I was keen to see what they had to say.

It was the lecture on Ethical Business in the Protestant Tradition that really opened my eyes. The lecturer spoke about how his Christian values didn’t interfere with his business skills, but actually since he had started applying what he believed to the way he worked, his company actually turned a healthier profit.

After the lecture, we broke into small groups, and I was fortunate enough to be in the group led by the lecturer himself. He explained how his love for his workers raised their self-esteem and then their productivity. He even said he prayed for his workers. I couldn’t believe it. My dad had treated his workers as material more than humans. While he had made money, he had been constantly stressed from the threat of strike and no-shows.

I was keen to learn more. I signed up for extra lectures during the next academic year from another British lecturer I knew to be a Christian. To cut a long story short…

Anyway, here I am ten years later, with a happy, thriving factory of my own, a leadership position in church, and the ear of the city leadership. I’m in a meeting next week to acquire another factory which has serious staff retention issues. Then I will be running a training course to colleagues. I have called the course ‘Ethical Business. Happy Factory. Tidy Profits’. It has been oversubscribed.

This story is fictional – this is clear, it is written from the future. Could you make it fact? Do you have business skills, or knowledge that could be passed on through Higher Education in China? Contact us.