Inside Chinese Business

Ming-Jer Chen, Inside Chinese Business

Summary of the Chapters 1-3

Chapter 1

The scope of the first chapter is to give the reader an overview of the questions: “Who are the Chinese?”, “what are their philosophical values?” and “which different groups of people shape the PRC as a whole?”.

Generally spoken, western businesspeople should first try to understand the Chinese culture and values before acting and making judgments, because from a non-Chinese perspective it can be sometimes difficult to understand. One should know that even in present China, traditional thinkers like Confucius are still widely discussed and their theses applied. In the eyes of many Chinese even in a world which is getting more and more technical-thriven, the basic human relationships, and values do not change, thus there is no reason for abandoning these “old values”.

China is a rather diverse country and can be distinguished in eight groups of people with different dialects:

• Cantonese, Fuzhou, Hainanese, Hakka, Henghua, Hokchia, Hokkien and Teochiu

However there is a common written language and over 90% of its population trace back to one ethnical group called the Han.

Because of political events like the civil war in 1949, many Chinese also moved to other countries and even became citizens overseas. However one must keep in mind that this group of people never forgets its origin and people still consider themselves to be Chinese. When doing business with an expat-Chinese it is important to know that the family home province and dialect still are counting influential factors. While being separated from their home country, many Chinese expatriates set up booming businesses and hold companies with staggering turnovers. This success in their business live comes from a very strong networking ability among these expats as well as core values that they try to execute in their live and in their business strategies [See appendix 1 for these values]. Their loyalty to the home country can even be seen in many of the investments into charity and social projects like building schools and universities in their former home provinces.

The emerging Chinese economy and their expanding networks even in western business spheres makes it inevitable to realize that there has been a shift of the global axis of influence from West to East.

Yet it is not easy for western business people to dig into the Chinese business with ease and it is stated that cultural misunderstandings are one of the main factors for missed opportunities and deals. Another factor which is often misunderstood by Westerners is the Chinese art of networking called “Gunaxi” which will be elaborated in chapter three. However understanding these philosophical