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China is often a byword for mystery and deviousness in the West. This can make the prospect of working in China daunting for many would-be expats. While there is no doubt that China can be a hard place for foreigners, a lot of preconceptions about working here are skewed, if not flat out wrong. Here I bring you five myths about working in China. Let’s take a moment to weigh some of the different ideas floating around and separate fact from fiction.
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Photo: William Iven
Anyone who’s been in China for longer than five minutes has met that 10-year veteran expat who sails through life effortlessly without speaking a word of Chinese. Many people question how these monolingual foreigners survive, but it’s actually surprisingly easy to work in China without speaking a word of Mandarin, especially if you live in a big cosmopolitan city.
First off, most foreigners are hired specifically for their ability to speak English. When you first start at a new company, there’s also almost always someone on the staff who already speaks some English. That person will probably be assigned to you specifically to help you navigate your first few months in China and acclimatize to the work environment.
Outside of work, subways and trains in China all have English translations, many restaurants have picture menus, and there’s almost always someone around somewhere who speaks a little English if you get stuck. In today’s world, any situation that might require you to understand Chinese — websites, apps, and even talking to locals — can be handled fairly well with with translation apps. Obviously your time in China will be easier and arguably more fulfilling if you at least learn few simple phrases, but ultimately, how much Chinese you want to learn is up to you.
A business visa is officially for foreigners from multinational companies or partner organizations to come to China for three months to work on a temporary basis doing training, reorganizations, and consultations. Getting a valid work visa (Z visa) for long-term employment (typically one year) requires an awful lot of time and hoop jumping, so some Chinese companies get creative when hiring foreigners. They may suggest you work on a business visa (M visa), which can be valid for years (depending on your country) as long as you only to stay in China for up to three months at a time. As a result, many foreigners work in China for years on business visas by leaving and re-entering the country every three months.
While this is technically legal in a general sense, business visas are absolutely not supposed to be used by those engaged in long-term employment in China. While it may go unnoticed if you’re lucky, it’s inadvisable to use this workaround for several reasons. First, you can be denied entry at any step of the process for pretty much any reason, meaning you could nip to Hong Kong for a visa run and find yourself unable to reenter China, where your work, home, friends and family are. Secondly, different provinces define and punish visa abuse differently, meaning that while some authorities may turn a blind eye, others might investigate you intensively.
If you’re found to be abusing China’s visa system, you could find yourself detained and/or deported, which would in turn see you banned outright from several other countries and drastically complicate international travel for you in the future. Given the geo-political tensions between China and several foreign countries right now and tit-for-tat visa reprisals, having the right paperwork is more important than ever.
China’s historical and current rocky relationship with the West has given rise to the idea that you’re going to face unwelcoming coworkers in China at worst, and the distinct feeling of being an outsider at best. While you will definitely meet jerks and you’ll always be the token foreigner if you’re in an otherwise Chinese workplace, you’ll probably find that the vast majority of your coworkers are friendly and very curious about you. Those that speak English will want to talk to you in English, while those that don’t will give you the opportunity to practice Chinese, and will no doubt be very impressed (if not slightly amused) when you do.
The most important idea that will drive a comfortable working environment is the emphasis on teamwork and the all-important concept of guanxi. Chinese culture places huge importance on both formal and informal connections in the workplace. Creating and maintaining those relationships is a given in a Chinese company, meaning that people will generally be friendly and helpful in order to get and stay on your good side. In fact, most foreigners receive the bulk of their support, especially when they first arrive, from their Chinese coworkers on an informal basis rather than from any official program run by the company itself. Read this for more tips on making nice with your Chinese co-workers.
How do most foreigners picture a Chinese workplace? Most of them think of workplace power structures in China as a pyramid, with a boss at the top and everyone else doing exactly what he or she says. These days, most people also know about the Asian concept of “face”, which dictates that you should never openly criticize someone else, especially if they’re your superior.
You may therefore assume that when working in China, initiative is discouraged, all decisions must be approved by someone else, and disagreeing with your boss will get you fired. So, do Chinese workplaces really operate under such pyramid-shaped hierarchies? Typically, yes, but the social and cultural rules are not nearly as strict as they might first appear.
The key thing to remember is that a supervisor of a department is generally held strictly accountable by their higher-ups for any and all failures. Everything you do reflects on them to a much higher degree than in the West, which makes many bosses risk averse. However, constructive criticism is often welcomed if you do it discretely and have solid logic for your misgivings, and a good idea is still a good idea. Most supervisors will be open to trying something new, incorporating suggestions, or allowing you some flexibility in executing a corporate policy so long as you can demonstrate why something will or won’t work, take the initiative and do most of the work yourself.
Many Chinese bosses follow a policy of 天高皇帝远 (tiān gāo huángdì yuǎn), which literally means “the Emperor is far away in heaven". Many workers, therefore, including your section boss, will simply “forget” to enforce policies from remote bosses or branches of the company that they or you find disagreeable. As a result, there’s surprising amount of informal flexibility in the Chinese workplace.
A quick Google about working in China as a foreigner will bring up all sorts of horror stories about expat workers being taken advantage of by their employers or downright scammed. While this does of course happens from time to time in a country of 1.4 billion people trying to make a buck, generally speaking, labour laws in China are pretty strict and employees are well protected.
While some of the rules, such as those surrounding overtime, are frequently bent by employers, you can in fact make a stand against any unlawful practices and your employer will have little choice but to give in. Once an employee has successfully cleared their probation period (which is a maximum of two months for contracts of 1-3 years), they’re actually very hard to fire without evidence of law breaking or serious professional misconduct.
The best advice to insulate yourself against abuse is to pay very close attention to the Chinese version of your contract (the only legally binding version) before you sign. However, remember that the contract does not supersede Chinese law. If your employer is breaking the law and you decide to take them to court, you’d very likely win. While most foreigners would not have the stomach or the patience to go down the legal route, any threat of such action is usually enough to ensure your legal rights are met. You may not be very popular and you almost certainly won’t get a hefty annual bonus if you don’t work unpaid overtime like the rest of your colleagues, but it’s really your decision.
China is a country of contradictions, idiosyncrasies and anomalies, but some of the things you’ve heard are probably not entirely true. Any more myths about working in China that you’ve since found to be exactly that? Tell us about them in the comments section before.
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Keywords: Working in China
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Very insightful. Especially agree with the point about business visas—many people underestimate the risks. It’s important to stay informed and follow the proper legal procedures from the start.
Jul 09, 2025 00:29 Report Abuse
The main target of these observations is small to medium business operators and entrepreneurs new to China. The Big Market international players (IBM, Dell, Toshiba, Microsoft, Google,…) are in an entirely different situation that most of these opinions will not serve. If you’re working for a company that is coming into China for the first time, thinking of starting any type of business here, or just coming over to work in a local firm the following may be of some use. Bear in mind that with a population of several billion, huge disparities in provincial law enforcement, separate and distinct interpretations of national regulations at the city level, and more than 50 minorities, China is more diverse than any other country and no personal view can apply to the country as a whole. Intro Secret to Corporate Success #87: Never staple papers. Paper clips project an air of flexibility; staples are for control freaks. Over the course of the 20th century the western world underwent an extreme social metamorphosis coupled with enormous advances in technology. As society grew and explored new concepts of action and interaction technology was aligned with, and then began setting, the pace of social order. In 1900 radio was state-of-the-art media and the only widespread form of mass communication; if you didn’t have a radio your information came from the press or the post office. Jobseekers knocked on doors or dropped in on old friends who could possibly give them a leg up in getting on in the mailroom while in the vast majority of homes Dad went off to work every morning, Mom stayed in to run the house, and children went to school. At regular intervals Dad got promoted, Mom got a new refrigerator, and the kids moved on to the next grade. The halcyon days gave way to jazz, reefer madness, bathtub gin, flappers, a depression, economic rebound (courtesy of the war machine), atomic power, the concept of upward mobility, the seeds of teenage angst courtesy of rock ‘n roll, and two police actions. The final decades of the century were the perfect launch ramp for a technology snowball that shows no signs of losing momentum. Short of breakthroughs in telepathy and personal teleportation, a computer based society remains the foundation of our work/living existence. When viewed on the whole, the 20th century seems to be a steady natural progression of changing social mores channeled by incidents of history interspersed with numerous exceptional individual actions. Now take a country that is, in the historical time frame, only slightly behind the same level of development in 1900 as the rest of the world. Lock that country at this stage of development for the next 70 or 80 years; then, keeping in mind that this country was not given 70+ years of gradual development to become acclimatized; open it to the countries which we consider to have ‘advanced’ at a steady rate by openly sharing the complex social mores and technologies that are the very fabric of the modern world. This is what happened to China. We opened a 21st century coffee shop in an early 20th century nation without bothering to explain the concept of caffeine. China has been forcibly leap-frogged over the indoctrination phase of convenience into the complaisant phase of conspicuous consumerism by the carrot of upward social mobility and the stick of global economics. The two factions most affected by this upheaval were the Chinese businessmen (small to mid-size businesses in general) and the generations which came of age after 1990. The main effect on these groups has been a frustrating, convoluted, and often contradictory mish-mash of family and national traditions, social expectations of the community, global market principle, and the need to adapt to foreign management organization styles with almost no segue period. Add to this mix the fact that 99% of the people in these groups are the product of an incongruent education system that teaches uniformity and formula based problem-solving then expects them to function in an amorphous alien business environment that is constantly altering expectations. Mid-level managers and lower-level workers bore the brunt of China’s forced entry into the mysteries of 21st century global business. Hopefully, knowing more about how domestic personnel view themselves in regard to national identity will help foreign management assimilate. I. The Old Guard Discrimination in Hiring the New Generation Secret to Corporate Success #20: The idea is not to make yourself irreplaceable, but to make your boss think he's irreplaceable. (And then convince the next boss in the hierarchy that your immediate boss actually is replaceable.) Most young men in China learned about working life from their fathers and mentors who relied on guanxi (gwan-she). The closest definition I can give of guanxi is that it’s similar to the western ‘good ol’ boy’ system. Although, because guanxi is an ingrained aspect of Chinese culture and society, that’s like comparing checkers to 3-dimensional chess. Guanxi is much more than who you may know, it’s a major aspect of your business and social identity which makes it more difficult to supplant with new-fangled HR practices. Sales, and to a lesser extent HR, in China run on guanxi. Foreigners will never be able to fully understand the intricacies and nuances of guanxi and its effect on business but you need to know at least the basics. It’s much more than favors and back-scratching. Guanxi is a complex mix of personal, business, community, government, and family relationships that were once the basis of the entire Chinese social structure and economy. Each person fits into the pattern in a particular way and is deferred to depending on their position only within a specific group in a specific situation. Your guanxi may be strong when dealing with Group A on Monday but totally insignificant when dealing with Group B on Tuesday. If your guanxi is not germane to the situation nad participants at hand you are less of a factor in that group (at that time)whether it be family or business associates. Guanxi can change depending on the combined influences of incidents, favors given or received, blessed events, an office faux pas, damaging personal or business decisions, and a host of ingrained cultural issues beyond your control. Your career, rather than being partitioned or at least semi-separate from home life as in the west, is not an extension as much as it is an integral part of your family. A low-level manager marrying into a family would probably be considered slightly above insignificant – “This is the husband of my uncle’s second daughter”. Whereas if you land that high paying government position you would then be introduced as “My dearest relative, the government official.” The measure of your success and status in the family is judged not only by the size of your paycheck/house/car, but by how much guanxi your job instills. For business owners a common way to cultivate guanxi is a steady diet of working lunches and dinners as part of negotiation and contract discussion. While you may not be able to ensure a consistent quality product, you can easily parley with a distributor to find a buyer not overly concerned with consequences of consumer advocacy. This is made much easier if your distributor or buyer happens to be a cousin, no matter how many times removed. In a situation like this the end user is not really a consideration by virtue of being alien to the core group, for all intents and purposes the end user does not exist beyond the moment of sale. 2. You Scratch My Back, I’ll Hire Your Cousin Staffing An Office Secret to Corporate Success #1: It's Easier To Tame A Wild Horse Than Train A Rabid Dog The concept of the iron rice bowl may not exist today, but certain facets of older social models still color business. No matter how integrated into the local economy a foreign company may consider itself, a foreigner will never fully comprehend how strongly guanxi is affecting their operations. A good percentage of people hired for sub-management positions are classmates, extended family, friends, or those to whom a favor is owed. This in no way implies that any of these people are not qualified for a certain position, it is a system that simplifies the hiring process by expediting a search for talent. After a few months you may find that the assistant accountant is a cousin of the office manager. To a westerner this may appear to be odd and maybe even slightly unethical, but to the local office manager it just means they didn’t have to waste time interviewing 50 candidates. You needed an accountant; her cousin is an accountant; how can that be a problem? If the accountant fails to perform it is not that difficult to get rid of an employee who cannot fulfill the requirements of their job (although the process for this in China is different from the West). This HR style is on the decline but it will not be disappearing anytime soon and a most interesting aspect of western HR invading China is the way young men and women are adjusting. More than a generation after it started in the west, Chinese females woke up to women’s lib and the realization that they could accomplish anything given the chance. They’re not so much bucking the system as they are using it in ways that were intended but never acted upon. The majority of men who start off in small businesses are assembly line cookie cutouts. They went to university, studied what their parents told them to study, and applied to companies in relevant industries. When interviewing with domestic firms they invariably get hired and join the teeming masses of salary-men (to borrow from the Japanese) and queue up for 40 years of Ward Cleaver existence. They need a set amount of money now to buy a house, get married, and produce the next generation. Women, on the other hand, came charging in and made it clear that they want challenging positions in which they can advance rapidly, that trains them starting now, and are on a clearly defined career track to upper management.1 1Personal experience: Two western businessmen considering a startup consulted our company on hiring practices for office staff. They were considering two candidates for office manager (a male and a female) and asked me which I would hire. The candidates had similar backgrounds and education, both were relatively new to the workforce but had shown the ability to manage small groups, and their salary requests were almost identical. Without hesitating I told them to hire the woman. When pressed I explained that the man looked like he would be a solid stable employee who would do the job required, no more and certainly no less. He would probably make a good mid-level manager one day unless he had the opportunity to change companies for a higher salary or better benefits package. The woman, however, would constantly be pushing herself. Her focus would be on participating in building a successful business to further her career rather than getting to the end of the year in order to get the annual bonus and put a down payment on a house. The man may hope to be a director in 15 years, the woman would expect it within 8. Maybe unrealistic, but certainly a more attractive trait in an employee. The modern Chinese businesswoman is not handicapped by the traditional business and cultural indoctrination that restrain the majority of men in China. Our customers said they weren’t surprised as they had heard the same advice from several other foreigners in China. If I were speaking to those men today I wouldn’t make this point as forcefully, but I would still make it. The major enduring factor throughout the development of China has been the fact that men still base their careers on The Path. School Job MoneyHouseMarriageKids. Men are much more likely to change jobs if it means an extra 100 RMB a month or additional benefits. Like the libbers of the 60s and 70s, women in China are never indoctrinated into that system so they are thinking EducationJobBetter JobIndependence. Marriage and kids should happen but it’s not the end of the world if it’s put off for a while (social blasphemy 20 years ago). In the time I’ve worked in China, I’ve seen the number of females in management and ownership jump at least tenfold. I think a major reason for this is the realization that women are 1) more open to acceptance of alternative (foreign) management systems; and 2) aware of how flawed the male-dominated guanxi system is when working with the west. In today’s China men are still in first place but women are overtaking fast. All businesspeople recognize that networking and maintaining relationships is necessary so developing guanxi and connections will always be an important part of doing business; but the days of business being dominated by guanxi are limited, if not already endangered. Salesmen, marketers, and HR people for western firms are still going to use it but guanxi will soon be an extremely minor factor in hiring and operations. -3. You Lead A Horse To Water And Then He’ll Make You Drink Business Socializing Eastern Style Secret to Corporate Success #6: Always drink at least one 12 oz. beer for breakfast. Coworkers tend to leave you alone and you will accomplish a great deal more during the day without their interference. In the event you are asked to work with someone from the older generation you will no doubt be required to attend a few meetings where your willingness to sample pickled shark lips or blanched donkey is an indication of how you will be treated by associates. Hesitation or even declining local fare is perfectly acceptable as long as you make up for it by enjoying at least one dish (be it the rice or the side order of peanuts) and matching the host glass for glass. To last century’s pioneers of Chinese business, restaurants are boardrooms. WARNING: Do not under any circumstances drink the local liquor called baijiu (roughly bye-joe). It is not equivalent to any western liquor and the aftertaste of a single large sip will stay with you for hours. I am not joking when I say drinking lighter fluid is preferable, I can remember the taste and my last sip was over 10 years ago. Requesting beer or a soft drink is fine. It is also politic to invite a drinking proxy. In the western mind discussion at these ‘meetings’ would be considered pre-negotiation jockeying and looking at potential, but for Chinese it is more akin to sealing the deal and agreeing that we will have a business relationship. A successful business dinner guarantees that we will be working together and everything that follows is just ironing out details. Westerners may see it as the cart before the horse but to Chinese the order of the horse and cart don’t matter as much as who is going to feed the horse and who gets to ride in the cart. Once that is settled the mundane problems of production, marketing, and logistics can be left to the underlings. Relationships and a cooperative spirit greatly affect, and can sometimes trump, business interests. 4. Red Seals in the Sunset Stamp It or Lose It Secret to Corporate Success/Subsection A: Accoutrements Always use free-flow or felt tipped pens. When trapped listening to a boring presentation, intentionally place an open pen into your pocket. This will disconcert the speaker and speed them to conclude or at least allow you an excuse to leave. As an added bonus, throughout the remainder of the day you will be noticed more often as ink-stains are a sign of those "delightfully scatter-brained intellectual types". A major point regarding contracts and almost all paperwork in China is the red stamp which is required on all documents to be considered Official. There are several stamps that companies or individuals will use. There’s the Company Stamp, The Bank Stamp, The Personal Stamp, and a few others for special purposes. For the most part, contracts and bank transactions are not considered to be legitimate unless they have the required stamp so the importance of safeguarding these stamps cannot be overstated. With the right stamp I can easily empty your bank account or literally take over your business. Having your stamp in my possession makes any other form of ID unnecessary. Banks and government offices typically accept the fact that if Person A has this stamp then Person A has the authority to represent this company. For this reason Company, Bank, and Personal stamps are normally locked in a safe and carefully tracked when leaving the office. No one carries around a company stamp unless they are on a specific errand requiring its use. In our office the company and bank stamps are in a double safe which only the GM and I can access. 5. The Dotted Line Contracts Contracts are an entirely different animal in China. Although western firms function very well using their common contract forms for many HR situations they still must abide by Chinese law. An understanding of the Chinese concept of contracts will smooth the integration of western and Chinese staff. A note on the Chinese system of regulations. There are laws and there are “Laws”. Most of the regulations you will be told about are actually guidelines, not Laws. Labor Laws can be adjudicated in court but there are some ‘rules’ that are in place simply due to your location, the size of your business, and the make-up of the workforce. As an example, where I live there is a ‘rule’ that employers must pay employees an annual heating fee to cover the cost of their household heat which is provided by the property developer or the state. This rule came into effect when several workgroups demonstrated for more benefits and municipalities across China urged companies to pay employees a set amount based on the employee’s house size. This quickly became a standard benefit for anyone living in the north so if you ask anyone today they will tell you that it’s ‘the law’ in China whereas it’s actually a strong suggestion from the local government. Then again, if a company doesn’t offer this particular benefit you can bet they won’t be able to hire or retain many employees. If you don’t pay an employee overtime for working on a holiday then he could take you to court; if you decide to remove the heating fee from the benefits package then there’s nothing employees can do (if you have any employees left). There are many benefits and accounting/HR rules that apply to negotiation and hiring or firing of employees. It is well worth it to know which are mandatory while bearing in mind that even if a rule is not Law, it is almost always a good idea. To a westerner, an ideal contract would lay out all possible scenarios and cover every contingency no matter how unlikely. The high fees lawyers command are based on their ability to anticipate problems and, in the event of premature termination or breach of a contract by either side, ensure their client emerges unscathed, if not better situated. This means that a typical employment contract in the west runs to many pages of terms and conditions. The employment contract for an entry-level position will reflect the same issues as that of a CEO. Although it may not be as complex as the CEO’s, it will contain the same basic terms. You do this, I will do that, I will pay you this amount, and if you cannot do your job we will do this,…ad nauseum. The Chinese POV is to look at contracts as outlines of the ‘best way for us to work together to bring harmony and success to our company and country’. One thing you will need to become familiar with is China’s Labor Law. To western eyes it seems very general and abbreviated. However, once you have gone over the articles you’ll find that because of its very generalized form it covers almost anything that can happen in the workplace. When I first started working in a Chinese company my contract was 5 terms, less than one page. Boiled down to basics it said, 1.The company is hiring you to work in our office. 2.The company will give you a visa as long as you work here. 3.The company will pay you (this amount) every month. 4.The company will follow Chinese Labor Law. 5.You will work with everyone in the company and do your best. Chinese Labor Law covers details such as number of hours you can work, vacation time, bonuses, overtime, and holidays so there is no need to clutter up a relationship with details. The Chinese attitude toward contracts was summed up well by a Chinese colleague who said, “I saw an American employment contract and it looked like two antagonists setting ground rules. Ours (contracts) are like two friends making a pact.” Where a western contract would say, “Party B will generate a monthly report detailing all departmental transactions, incidents of staff rule infractions, and any situations requiring the intervention of upper management.”, a Chinese contract might say, “Party B will maintain open communication.” We all know what open communication is so why clutter it up with specifics? When starting and running a business in China there are daily business transactions which do not involve formal contracts. Many of these are part of the standard infrastructure; things like decoration, relocation, delivery, logistics, repairs, and other common services. One thing to be aware of is that the cost of most of these is negotiable to an extreme degree. The more informal an agreement the more care must be taken to be sure you understand what is being provided. Example: A former employer was moving office and hired a truck to transport our office to the new location. After a bit of discussion, a price of X amount per trip was agreed. Once the move was complete the truck driver presented a bill which was twice the expected cost. He insisted that a ‘trip’ was in one direction only, the return for the next load of material was a second ‘trip’ whereas my employer considered a round trip one ‘trip’. This was not a communication problem, it was the driver taking advantage of what he knew would be a common interpretation of ‘trip’. What’s important to note is that in his mind he was following standard rules of haggling. He would have said the same whether the customer was western or Chinese, although being familiar with this system of dickering a Chinese customer probably would have made the terms more clear. The less formal and short-lived the agreement, the more you’ll need to pay attention to details. Translations – Melina shares/percent 6. The Customer Is Always Right In the Thick of Things Taking Care of Business Secret to Corporate Success #63: Cultivate the ability to unconsciously squint when your mind is idle. While daydreaming at your desk a squint will communicate deep thinking or constipation; either of which will discourage intrusions from annoying supervisors. Customer Service is an area which is probably the most surprising and confusing to westerners new to China. My experience has been that it is almost a perfect reversal of western practices. In the west, the larger the company, the more hit and miss the customer service. Mom and Pop grocery stores on the corner will often bend over backwards to be friendly and maintain good customer relations while the larger companies are more likely to treat you like a number and disregard personalization. China, and much of Asia, is the polar opposite. The prestige of working for an above average sized company is new to much of the workforce and consequently imparts a greater feeling of responsibility to prove that this system of business is superior to ‘traditional’ practices. The larger the company the more dignity attached to the position and the greater the need to prove this superiority. Small and mid-level businesses seem to be stuck in the groove that pervaded China for most of its history. “There are billions of customers, why should I cater to you? If you don’t buy my widgets there are 200,000 more customers just in this neighborhood.” At the same time, larger companies provide the opportunity to combine the eastern work ethic with the pride of working for a foreign company. “I may just be a service tech but I work for 3M so my standing in society is higher and I prove it by showing you how much better I am at customer care.” This attitude is less about personal pride than it is about the respect accrued by being associated with a major corporation. Managers should be aware of the emphasis employees place on how their position in a business affects their standing on many levels; from their actual job to their family and personal relationships. (see guanxi) Example: There are dozens of family-owned grocery stores and snack kiosks in every Chinese neighborhood; the service at most is brusque and to the western mind almost surly. With the exception of one chain store with corporate trained staff, I normally avoid small local shops as the level of affability rises as the size of the store increases. On the other hand, there have been several occasions where I’ve had to deal with large national companies on a personal level. Appliance repairs, phone/internet connection problems, and building maintenance. In every instance the service personnel were responsive and unfailingly professional. If a service tech was scheduled to arrive at 3 o’clock, he knocked on my door between 2:55 and 3:05. If there was going to be a delay I got a phone call at least an hour in advance to give me a chance to reschedule. I’ve never had a service tech from a major company leave with a problem unsolved. Local repairmen for smaller problems (plumbers, carpenters, electricians, painters,…) are an entirely different matter. I’ve never met one who took pride in their work or bore in mind the quality of their handiwork; once they got paid their job was done. If something they built broke later it was treated as a separate call which incurred an unrelated fee. This carries over into small to mid-size companies such as suppliers, printers, renovators, and other office-related service providers. This almost perfect reversal of customer service operations often puzzles westerners who have to deal with domestic businesses on a day to day basis. The standard seems to be the smaller the company, the less interested they are in maintaining good customer relations. This way of thinking seems to be falling by the wayside although it will be a long time (if ever) before it becomes the norm. The current attitude will probably never completely change, although there is another facet to this system in regard to everyday life. Patronizing the same local retailers will cultivate a different type of customer relationship. After going to the same vendor for a few weeks you will notice that your arrival will be a signal for a more select choice of products to appear and very often the price will be adjusted in your favor. This relationship development can also manifest in local small businesses but, as in the west, is not as common with larger companies. This is a direct effect of the eastern concept of group dynamics. A mainstay of eastern society is “there are two types of people; those who are members of my group and those who are not”. To a westerner, the difficulty comes in recognizing these groups and how not only the members of the group but the groups themselves relate and interact. A very loose hierarchy of the most common groups might be: Family, Friends, Friends of friends, Work associates A request from a family member will almost always be granted (based on one’s standing in the family) while one from a work associate will entail a much more involved process of scrutiny. The ins and outs of these groups within groups are intricately tied in with guanxi (q.v.) and inherently understood in a way that westerners will never fathom. 7. This Newfangled Interweb Thingy IT Pros (and Cons) Secret to Corporate Success #84: Never be the first in line for the copier. 1. You'll be blamed if it's not working. 2. You miss out on the best gossip. 3. If it gets jammed coworkers will see your party flyers. Primary Point: The Great Firewall of China is a relatively minor problem compared to navigating the rules and regulations that apply to ISPs, servers, and hosting companies in China. A great deal of time should be spent researching where and how you are going to access the internet and how your office will operate. Organizing internet access must be one of the first concerns of anyone looking at conducting business in China. The quality of ISPs ranges from excellent to useless and even running your own server comes with its own set of problems. The introduction of computers and the internet to Asia was abrupt and jarring to the man on the street. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of IT and tech service. While most westerners were eased into working with personal computers via DOS, Windows 3.1, and introductory Mac products, the majority of Asians had highly developed operating systems and hardware thrust upon them. This makes for very diverse levels of service and retail operations. There are huge computer markets in all but the smallest Chinese villages. In these markets you’ll find a large number of entrepreneurs who have marketing brochures down pat but little working knowledge to back it up. Salespeople quote the relative merits of their product but are thrown off track when asked about details not covered in the literature. Granted this is sometimes also the case in western markets, it is endemic in the Asian markets to a greater degree. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of tech service and repair. Computer techs in China have developed varied cadres of specialists, each covering their own niche. Repairing a computer may entail visits by 2 or more techs; one who is well-versed in specific software and another who will have to re-integrate peripherals or dependent programs. On top of this, the level of expertise can be hit or miss. Although I am not in any way an expert, I have twice had to warn computer techs about loss of data when partitioning disk space. You will need to ask around and work with several techs until you find one who can handle all your service needs or be confident enough to call in reputable assistance when he’s out of his depth. Finding a reliable ISP is not that difficult but be aware that the regulations regarding the use of domestic and overseas registration and hosting that can affect access so do your research. 8. Celling Yourself Short Just the Fax, Ma’am Secret to Corporate Success #23: Reprogramming office phones to scramble extension numbers will give you the edge when being the first to communicate with the boss is a priority. I’m the first to admit I’m an old fogey and addiction to cell phones drives me crazy. However; there are a few differences in phone etiquette that constitute a huge gap between the east and west. Just as in the west, almost everyone seems to be glued to their phones whether they’re walking, riding a bike, in the office, or in a meeting. Unlike the west there are no rules about driving while using a phone. Even if there were, it’s doubtful that any enforcement would be likely. This brings to mind the role of the constabulary in China, but that’s a subject that would require another whole book to explain. In a private meeting with a small group a Chinese businessman MAY let it be known that he is expecting calls and might have to excuse himself. The larger the group, the less likely this is to happen. During presentations or large meetings it is not unusual for a cell phone to ring and an attendee will unceremoniously take the call or even leave the room without acknowledging his need to absent himself. Deal with it. Unless it’s the head honcho there’s no need to stop or let on that you are aware that it happened. In public be prepared to be bumped into or blocked by phone users to a degree unseen in the west. It’s how they roll. As a side note, it’s funny to me that many offices in China still use a fax machine. It’s still a very common method of advertising although it is being superseded by phone IMs you will receive throughout the day. 9. Powerpointless Getting Your Idea Across Secret to Corporate Success #8: Change the program icon for Solitaire so it looks like the icon for Word, Excel, or another office program. Then when a supervisor wanders by and you minimize your Solitaire game it appears on your status bar as a work related program. The aim of westerners giving presentations is to impart information while engaging their audience, making the lecture dynamic, and trying to encourage critical thinking. The aim of Chinese giving presentations is to impart information. Full stop. Of the dozen or so presentations given by Chinese I have slept throu attended, 90% were Powerpoint slides with the presenter simply reading what was on the screen. Where a westerner might show a sales chart and talk about which factors influenced various rises and falls, a local would recite the numbers shown on the screen. Presentations are for conveying information, not initiating discussion or dialogue. 10. Separation Anxiety You're Not Part Of The System, You're A Necessary Thorn In My Side Secret to Corporate Success #71: Scuttling a Rival 2 - If you work in a climate controlled/closed environment an unwashed gym sock dropped in an inaccessible nook or cranny can alienate the most ardent rival supporters. (Voids of a cubicle wall are ideal.) In many situations a foreigner will find himself out of the loop in regard to issues that most of us would consider an integral part of his responsibilities. However, many Chinese have what they consider to be rational reasons - business or personal - for not imparting information. Very often these have to do with the fact that you are not a full member of the "establishment" and your input or influence would be a hindrance or have a negative effect on the issue at hand. In most cases there is the feeling that even though you could contribute to a discussion, final decisions will be made by someone else so why involve you unnecessarily? There are very many other cultural and social reasons why you may not be informed or involved but it basically boils down to the fact that no matter how high your language skills or how long you have worked here you are not a member of the 5,000 year old group. 11. Chinese As She Is Spoke I Never Said She was Crazy,........ Secret to Corporate Success #93: Scuttling a Rival 4 - If you and your coworkers share office supplies, whenever possible drop the best stapler/scissors/ruler/ruler/bulldog clips on the target's desk and put lower quality office tools on desk of most popular office person. One perpetual irritant when talking to locals is no matter what your language skills, they will praise your ability to the skies. Learn to say 'Ni hao' and people will often respond with 'Your Chinese is AMAZING!'. This leads to one of the most important rules for working in China. During any official dialogue, unless you are 100% confident in your ability to communicate at the highest level of Business Chinese, keep your mouth shut! At dinners, parties, and informal gatherings your attempts at Chinese will be appreciated but any time you are in a business or government office it is in your best interests to remain silent.
Oct 18, 2024 12:26 Report Abuse
Cool although i wish to come to CHINA but not at the moment but when i have the opportunity and come i will make sure to observe because china as been like a dreamland to me
Dec 11, 2020 06:58 Report Abuse
actually they generally talk to people who have lived and worked in China, and then make an assessment based on this.
Nov 21, 2020 19:42 Report Abuse
just curious - you have many 1/2 sentence posts - a trait/style that is common with many Asian people i know and have worked with. Also a lot of copy/paste links with no discussion, evaluation of what you post.
Nov 22, 2020 14:58 Report Abuse
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