I hear a lot of people speaking about the "Chinese way to do business" or "How-To-Do business in China" headlines, experts on doing business the Chinese way, and so on. And it's coming not only in clickbait trying to sell you something. I hear clients asking what is the way to do this or that in China. And I believe that this concept stuck in the minds is wrong at its core.
Let me tell you a little story. Here is me in the picture around 12 years ago. I just started exploring the country, got my first job, cracked the language at some level, and enjoyed the new and exciting world around me in Guangdong province. I started by helping companies export goods from China. I worked directly with local manufacturers, ensured the quality was at the desired level, negotiated deals, arranged logistics, and so on. At that time I had a huge foreign company ordering footwear for kids. The factory was not the best and located in a small village but the price was too attractive for the client and the quality of the goods was good enough. So the order was made, the production started and all was going as planned. The final payment was made upon declared order completion and it was time for me to visit that small village to check if all was correct. A few hours from Guangzhou on a bus I had to take quite often back then and I arrived in the village greeted by the factory owner on his brand new Mercedes with lots of oranges thrown all over the car cabin, this is the way of celebration of a big purchase for the good prosperous future and the Chinese New Year was only 2 weeks away. He took me to have some dinner then some tea and when he started insisting on a foot massage next I realized that something was off. And boy it was off. Turned out they finished only 80% of the production and were able to make only about 5% more until the new year holidays when the workers were traveling to their own villages to meet with their families. This is the most important holiday and for some the only time a year they have a chance to meet their loved ones. I asked him to find a solution, to pay extra to the workers for some holiday hours, to find another shift, we both knew that we had to finish the order before the new year or it would be delayed by months which would totally mess with the client's business and we both would lose the client for good. The next day he pushed the workers hard enough, they started working extra hours but it didn't help much. We would still miss 10% of the order even if they worked 14 hours a day. It became obvious that we could make it only if they would work the first week of the holidays as well. So he just told them they would have to shorten their holiday plans. And it worked just the opposite, we got a complete strike and full stop on the production line. Later during the day he told me, he was going to just finish the order after the New Year. He already got the money and the only thing he could lose was future orders but he could find other ones. He didn't care much about his clients and he didn't care about losing his workers as well. I turned out to be alone in this, and I couldn't afford to lose any clients. I asked him if I could talk to the workers to convince them to work on the holidays. Even though I knew this was not a promising idea but that was all I got. He laughed at me but thought it might be entertaining. And here I am a 20-year-old foreign boy standing in front of angry, pissed off to their guts workers who were about to listen to me. I still don't know why they even agreed to listen, probably also thought that it could be funny and it was fun to see a foreign boy trying to speak Mandarin. I didn't prepare any speech. I just started with common sense. I explained why we needed this order to be done as scheduled, how it would help them get more orders, get more money in the next months, that I would find cash on my own if needed to pay them extra hours so they could buy more presents to their loved ones. And I was surprised the most when it worked! The production resumed, the order completed on time.
It was one of my first years in China, I knew absolutely nothing about "ways of doing business" anywhere, no Chinese "secrets", I spoke pretty basic Mandarin but I was honest, I delivered some common sense and treated them as equal partners and it worked. They were used to being just pushed and underpaid, this basic talk was enough to change their minds as it would anywhere else in the world. My point is that there are lots of peculiarities of working in China, you better know its history, customs, language, culture, and so on. There are specific workarounds, methods and some are absolutely necessary to implement but there is no "secret key", there are no how-to guides. You are doing business with people with their own histories, with their own emotions, with the same flesh and blood. Don't search for the cheat code and forget about clickbaits. Explore the business circles, learn along the way, use all the tools and methods, and just do honest work.
Let me tell you a little story. Here is me in the picture around 12 years ago. I just started exploring the country, got my first job, cracked the language at some level, and enjoyed the new and exciting world around me in Guangdong province. I started by helping companies export goods from China. I worked directly with local manufacturers, ensured the quality was at the desired level, negotiated deals, arranged logistics, and so on. At that time I had a huge foreign company ordering footwear for kids. The factory was not the best and located in a small village but the price was too attractive for the client and the quality of the goods was good enough. So the order was made, the production started and all was going as planned. The final payment was made upon declared order completion and it was time for me to visit that small village to check if all was correct. A few hours from Guangzhou on a bus I had to take quite often back then and I arrived in the village greeted by the factory owner on his brand new Mercedes with lots of oranges thrown all over the car cabin, this is the way of celebration of a big purchase for the good prosperous future and the Chinese New Year was only 2 weeks away. He took me to have some dinner then some tea and when he started insisting on a foot massage next I realized that something was off. And boy it was off. Turned out they finished only 80% of the production and were able to make only about 5% more until the new year holidays when the workers were traveling to their own villages to meet with their families. This is the most important holiday and for some the only time a year they have a chance to meet their loved ones. I asked him to find a solution, to pay extra to the workers for some holiday hours, to find another shift, we both knew that we had to finish the order before the new year or it would be delayed by months which would totally mess with the client's business and we both would lose the client for good. The next day he pushed the workers hard enough, they started working extra hours but it didn't help much. We would still miss 10% of the order even if they worked 14 hours a day. It became obvious that we could make it only if they would work the first week of the holidays as well. So he just told them they would have to shorten their holiday plans. And it worked just the opposite, we got a complete strike and full stop on the production line. Later during the day he told me, he was going to just finish the order after the New Year. He already got the money and the only thing he could lose was future orders but he could find other ones. He didn't care much about his clients and he didn't care about losing his workers as well. I turned out to be alone in this, and I couldn't afford to lose any clients. I asked him if I could talk to the workers to convince them to work on the holidays. Even though I knew this was not a promising idea but that was all I got. He laughed at me but thought it might be entertaining. And here I am a 20-year-old foreign boy standing in front of angry, pissed off to their guts workers who were about to listen to me. I still don't know why they even agreed to listen, probably also thought that it could be funny and it was fun to see a foreign boy trying to speak Mandarin. I didn't prepare any speech. I just started with common sense. I explained why we needed this order to be done as scheduled, how it would help them get more orders, get more money in the next months, that I would find cash on my own if needed to pay them extra hours so they could buy more presents to their loved ones. And I was surprised the most when it worked! The production resumed, the order completed on time.
It was one of my first years in China, I knew absolutely nothing about "ways of doing business" anywhere, no Chinese "secrets", I spoke pretty basic Mandarin but I was honest, I delivered some common sense and treated them as equal partners and it worked. They were used to being just pushed and underpaid, this basic talk was enough to change their minds as it would anywhere else in the world. My point is that there are lots of peculiarities of working in China, you better know its history, customs, language, culture, and so on. There are specific workarounds, methods and some are absolutely necessary to implement but there is no "secret key", there are no how-to guides. You are doing business with people with their own histories, with their own emotions, with the same flesh and blood. Don't search for the cheat code and forget about clickbaits. Explore the business circles, learn along the way, use all the tools and methods, and just do honest work.
