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Review focus: "It isn't what you know, it's who you know", is probably more applicable in China than anywhere else in the world.
Boye Lafayette de Mente is one of our regular monthly columnists at the Asia Pacific Management Forum. A noted author with over 30 years of experience in China, Japan, Korea and other Asian countries, Boye's tips on doing business in the region are both pragmatic and enlightening. Some material is taken from Boye's many books exploring Asian cultural and business Code Words, business etiquette, customs, and language.
Asian Business Code Words Index
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The old saw, "It isn't what you know, it's who you know," is probably more applicable in China than anywhere else in the world. Given the nature of Chinese society and law over the dynastic ages, the foundation for virtually all behavior was personal relations, which in turn were based on familial relationship, sex, age, social class, and rank. In a very real sense, society was not made up of millions of individuals. It was made up of specific, identifiable groups, from families up to villages, towns, and districts. The lines dividing these different groups were clear and comprehensive, and any crossing of the lines was controlled by rigid customs and rules. There was no public law to enforce social justice (from the viewpoint of individual or human rights) on behalf of the people. Justice, to a considerable extent, was whatever the person in power decided to do in his own best interest. The only protection that most people had was based on personal connections they had or could develop with individuals who had the power to help them. It therefore became vitally important to have a network of contacts and to continuously nurture them, through various favors, gifts, bribes, or whatever, not only for security but simply to get things done. Personal connections, guanxi in Chinese, are just as important in China today, if not more so, particularly in the business world, where it is necessary to deal with large numbers of bureaucrats and others who can delay, destroy, or otherwise affect a project to suit their purposes. It is therefore important that the foreign business person dealing with or in China deliberately establish a network of personal connections, on as many official and private levels as possible, and thereafter carefully cultivate them. This means regular contact, meetings, meals, gifts, and special favors. Japanese residents of China often refer to the famed Katsura Palace in Kyoto when describing living and working in China, saying that all of Chine is like the palace. "You cannot get into the palace without special connections. In China you cannot get in to see the right officials without connections," explained one Japanese businessman. In keeping with their Confucian filial piety background, in which the world revolves around family, relatives, and carefully tended contacts, Chinese business people attach great importance to classmates and people from the same village or town, giving them precedence in hiring, networking, and doing business in general. This approach stems from a family-oriented society in which individualism and independence, both of which are essential in dealing with outsiders, were totally suppressed for generations. With little or no experience in dealing on an equal basis with anyone, the Chinese traditionally kept their outside involvement as limited as possible.
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| This month's column is excerpted from Chinese Etiquette & Ethics in Business, by Boye Lafayette De Mente available from NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company |
© Boye Lafayette De Mente & the Asia Pacific Management Forum 2002
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