The Assignment

For the group project, I was tasked to write on the cultural aspects of doing business in China. I was overwhelmed, to say the least. Firstly, I didn’t know anything about China. Secondly, the country was huge, so surely there must be various sub-cultures in different parts of the country. And thirdly, it seemed like I was always the one who asked stupid questions in class, so how would I tackle the subject matter without allowing my stupidity to seep through to the project paper?

I re-read the instruction for the hundredth time (or so it seemed) and yet the inspiration did not come. “Research on the general cultural and specific business culture issues of the country.” What does it mean, really? Is there anything between the lines that I'm missing out? Is it as straight forward as it sound or is there a hidden meaning somewhere? I referred to the text book and only three miserable pages talked about it. There was the Hofstede’s framework and then the GLOBE framework for assessing cultures. How was I supposed to write on the topic in 5 pages? I thought half a page would have sufficed.

I shut the book (and my mind off the matter) and decided to focus on the more urgent issues at hand. Afterall, there were the exams to worry about. So happily, I chucked the matter in the farthest corner of my mind.

One month later and barely 5 days before the submission and presentation date, I could not ignore it any further. I read the instruction and miraculously, it did not seem such an arduous task anymore. I suppose it helped that by then I had sat for the exams, so there was not much else to distract me (apart from the other 2 group projects). And the deadline definitely forced me to focus on the project. I decided to just find out as much as I could on Chinese culture and try to relate it back to the subject matter of the project, that is, about a Malaysian food processing company searching for business opportunities in the country.

And thank God for Google, it really helped me with my research. I found numerous literature on the subject, and to my surprise, the assignment was actually very interesting. The more I read, the more I wanted to know about Chinese culture. I found that theirs is a very rich culture, dating back to thousands of years. Chinese are extremely proud of their culture, and so should they, as their culture is built upon ancient civilizations and it has been preserved and passed down from one generation to another spanning centuries.

Armed with the materials, I started writing on the topic. The first draft was about 11 pages long, so the arduous task of compressing, shortening sentences, eliminating non-critical points, etc began. Finally, I managed to trim it down to about 6 pages, maintaining only key points.

I wrote about Confucianism, which is one of the pillars of Chinese culture. From Confucius, the Chinese inherited a sense of duty, loyalty, filial piety and respect for age and seniority, among others. The hierarchical model permeates through society, be it in family structure, business organizations or government bureaucracy.

The there’s the collectivism culture, rooted in their agrarian background. This is reflected in team loyalty, clannishness, and tendency to divide people into insiders and outsiders. To get around the insider/outsider problem, they develop a network of contacts known as guanxi, which is based on trust, cooperation, mutual respect and reciprocity.

Another facet of the culture is mianxi (‘face’), which is closely related to the western concept of dignity and prestige. I guess this concept is something that we Malaysians can relate to, for we too can ‘save face’, ‘lose face’ or ‘maintain face’.

Besides, there’s the yin and yang, which are two opposite forces that complement each other. Interestingly, it manifests in the desire to find a middle ground in negotiations as the two opposite parties are seen to be complementary of each other. Nevertheless negotiations are often long-drawn, due to their habit of haggling, which is rooted in the country’s long history of economic and political instability, as well their ability to think long term.

The pictorial language results in the tendency towards holistic processing of information and emphasis on big picture over details. So when Chinese negotiate, they negotiate on the whole package instead of on individual parts. And then there are the homonyms, which are words that have different meanings when pronounced slightly differently. It can have a significant impact on decisions on product or brand names.

Apart from the above, there are many other aspects about Chinese culture such as feng shui, the little emperors as well as regional differences. I will not bore any reader that I may have with more details though :)

Suffice to say that in the process of writing the paper, I gained insight into a very rich culture. Although I’m not a part of that culture, I can only feel awe and respect for their forefathers who have built strong foundations for this culture. But with the onslaught of globalization, this culture too is slowly giving way to modern way of life and thinking. Lastly, learning about this culture helped me to understand (a little bit) a certain personality that I used to work with. Now that’s priceless.