via: danwei
the final note is interesting but leaves a lot of open space for various interpretations. here is mine.
several years ago i was in charge of developing a sales team for a company since the original sales team was badly trained, rewarded and very corrupted. one guy suggested to hire new people and totally wipe out the original sales team, it was just too hard for those old sales persons to adjust themslves to the new sales system. the proposal resonated among many others.
however, it required a lot of money to disperse the old sales team and both money and time to build up a new one, what's more, such radical reform would without doubt create chaos and "instability" in the company.
china faces similar challenges in the past twenty years of reform and opening-up, during which old powers were gradually REPLACED by newly emerging powers, instead of being WIPED OUT by government before the new powers were developed. especially in southern china, governments let the market mechanisms work and, by encoruaging new powers flourishing and competing with old powers, they did a great job in eradicating old powers without causing too much social unrest and pains.
enlightened by the Taoism philosophy of governing in southern china, i took a different approach and first developed a small and highly efficient new sales team, with better traidning and sales policies, they could sell much more than the old sale persons did and got much better rewards. those from the old sales team were kept with the original sales incentive policies but were quickly attracted to the new sales team. i set a few criteria for those who want to join the new sales team and as soon as they met the criteria they could join the new team. after a few month, most old sales persons were converted to the new sales team.
in some circumstances, i see a direct confrontation a better approach to solve problems, but to fight the internet censorship in china, the "Dao" approach has many merits.