Let's start by mentioning that there is no tipping in China except within the carefully sealed confined of organised tours where Chinese companies have worked out that gullible foreigners are willing to be massively overcharged in this way, and in some expat ghettos where foreign ignorance has introduced it. But even in the best hotels in China, tipping is anappropriate, and you'll likely find something in the information in your room reminding you all this (at all Shangri-La hotels, to take one example). Bell boys etc., discovered asking for tips are fired.

But this isn't really relevant is it? Because what we're talking about is not tipping, but bribery: corrupting someone with cash to act against the best interests of his or her employer. Could this ever be appropriate?

The odds are if you tip you'll create problems for foreigners (Chinese will never tip) who follow you, and for the hotel itself, whose employees may fail to do their jobs in future as well as they did in the past unless they are bribed--directly in contradiction of the terms under which they are being employed.

This is setting up what some guides in China openly call a 'stupid foreigner tax' (ben laowai fei), creating a situation in which foreigners pay more to get the same service as Chinese.

Especially at better, foreign-run hotels you'll get service near to international standards simply because that's what the staff have been trained for and are being paid to do; and they are keen to keep their jobs (so they can move on to something better as soon as possible, mind you.) In Chinese-run hotels that rarely see foreigners any tip may be greeted with bewilderment. This simply isn't appropriate.

I wonder what the foreign managers would say if they knew people thought they were such simpletons. Or are we only assuming that Chinese managers are so easily corrupted? Regardless of that, at that level they can eat front of house at will anyway, and indeed have entertainment budgets allowing them to have others as guests when appropriate.

And what about the thought that instead of spending money on dinner, and time dining with a stranger for the sole purpose of corrupting him or her, you might simply spend the money on the upgrade?

There's more than enough of all this in China already without foreigners coming along and actively encouraging it. No one endorsing this kind of behaviour has a leg to stand on when cheated by taxi drivers, guides, or 'art students', or taken for large sums at 'tea ceremonies'. It's all the same thing.

Peter N-H