Understand Chinese Business Culture

• Business Structures in China
• Communication Styles in China 
• Team Working in China
• Women in Business in China

Chinese Business Structures 

Many foreign companies set up the joint venture companies with local Chinese companies, which can help the overseas entity to establish relations in China.
In china, the most important structure to which an individual was linked was his or her work group, called dan wei in Chinese. In the past, the dan wei guaranteed workers security throughout their lives. It can be extremely risky for a worker to leave the security of the dan wei. In order to maintain the security blanket afforded by the dan wei and at the same time take advantage of the new opportunities, many people take on two jobs.

Most overseas companies who set up operations in the PRC do so in the form of a joint-venture with a Chinese organisation and there certainly seem to be benefits to be accrued from doing so. Probably the biggest benefit from the joint-venture approach is that it helps the overseas entity to establish relations - via the Chinese part of the venture - into a complex network of Chinese relationships. Guanxi, or personal connections, are the all-important weapon in all business situations in China.

Chinese Communication Styles

Unless you speak Chinese, (Mandarin being the most common as well as the official dialect), it can be difficult to do business in many parts of China without the aid of a translator.

One of the reasons that communication can be such a problem in China is that along with many other Asians, the Chinese find it extremely difficult to say 'no'. Saying 'no' causes both embarrassment and loss of face and it is therefore better to agree with things in a less than direct manner. Thus anything other than an unequivocal 'yes' probably means 'no'.

The Chinese have a reputation for 'impassiveness' and this is largely based on Western misinterpretation of Chinese body language. As with the Japanese, the Chinese use a very limited amount of visual body language and Westerners interpret this rigidity as a lack of responsiveness and emotion. divide

Chinese Teams 

It would be unusual for an individual to act unilaterally without involving other members of the group
the Chinese remain consensus-oriented and it goes without saying that consensus players make good team members. The whole cultural emphasis is on group orientation with individual needs and desires being sublimated to the greater good of the whole. People belong to a number of groups but the ones with the strongest pull would be the family, the dan wei and the Party.

One of the downsides (from a Western perspective) of this strong group orientation is a perceived lack of individual initiative. It would be unusual for an individual to act unilaterally without involving other members of the group. Standing out from the crowd can be viewed as very negative and result in personal difficulties.

Women in Business in China

The liberalisation policies of the last decade might have reversed many of the advances made by women
Officially, women have the same rights as men in the workplace and the party has promoted this sense of equality over the past thirty years or so. However, traditional Confucian thinking does not sit easily with this notion of gender equality and it is somewhat ironic that the liberalisation policies of the last decade might have reversed many of the advances made by women in Chinese society under the previous hard-line regimes.

Foreign businesswomen will be treated with great respect and courtesy. They may find that, within a delegation, the Chinese defer to male colleagues regardless of the actual seniority of the western party - the Chinese assumption being that the male will naturally be the decision-maker.