How do social relations, or guanxi, matter in China today and how can this distinctive form of personal connection be better understood? In Guanxi: How China Works, Yanjie Bian analyzes the forms, dynamics, and impacts of guanxi relations in reform-era China, and shows them to be a crucial part of the puzzle of how Chinese society operates. Rich in original studies and insightful analyses, this concise book offers a critical synthesis of guanxi research, including its empirical controversies and theoretical debates. Bian skillfully illustrates the growing importance of guanxi in diverse areas such as personal network building, employment and labor markets, informal business relationships, and the broader political sphere, highlighting guanxi’s central value in China's contemporary social structure. A definitive statement on the topic from a top authority on the sociology of guanxi, this book is an excellent classroom introduction for courses on China, a useful reference for guanxi researchers, and ideal reading for anyone interested in Chinese culture and society.
This insightful book provides a much-needed explanation of Guanxi - a system of Chinese business relationships often described but rarely understood - integrating various disciplines into a coherent and concise explanation.
Develop a network of successful business relationships in China!This systematic study of the Chinese concept of guanxi--broadly translated, ”personal relationship” or ”connections”--offers a comprehensive social and professional model for doing business in China. In addition to a clear analysis of the origins and meanings of this vital concept, Guanxi: Relationship Marketing in a Chinese Context empowers you with practical tools for establishing guanxi in order to facilitate successful business relationships. Guanxi is based on an original research study as well as the authors’twenty years of experience of doing business in China. Their understanding of the implications of face, favor, reciprocity, honor, and interconnectedness--all vital parts of guanxi--will enable you to understand the unstated assumptions of Chinese business culture. Moreover, the book discusses the legal implications of guanxi as well as cultural expectations.This valuable handbook offers a wealth of information on guanxi: case studies of guanxi in action managerial implications of saving face and reciprocity measuring guanxi quality and performance indicators step-by-step instructions for building guanxi detailed strategies for penetrating the Chinese market Guanxi is an indispensable tool for anyone wanting to do business in China, for students of international business or Chinese culture, and for scholars interested in international business culture.
Throughout China the formation of guanxi, or social connections, involves friends, families, colleagues, and acquaintances in complex networks of social support and sentimental attachment. Focusing on this process in one rural north China village, Fengjia, Andrew Kipnis shows what guanxi production reveals about the evolution of village political economy, kinship and gender, and local patterns of subjectivity in Dengist China. His work offers a detailed description of the communicative actions--such as gift giving, being a host or guest, participating in weddings or funerals--that produce, manage, and deny guanxi in a specific time and place. Kipnis also offers a rare comparative analysis of how these practices relate to the varied and variable phenomenon of guanxi throughout China and as it has changed over time. Producing Guanxi combines the theory of Pierre Bourdieu and the insights of symbolic anthropology to contest past portrayals of guanxi as either a function of Chinese political economics or an unchanging Confucian social structure. In this analysis guanxi emerges as a purposeful human effort that makes use of past cultural logics while generating new ones. By exploring the role of sentiment in the creation of self, Kipnis critiques recent theories of subjectivity for their narrow focus on language and discourse, and contributes to the anthropological discussion of comparative selfhood. Navigating a path between mainstream social science and abstract social theory, Kipnis presents a more nuanced examination of guanxi than has previously been available and contributes generally to our understanding of relationships and human action.
Interpersonal relationship (guanxi) is one of the major dynamics of Chinese society. Guanxi has been a pervasive part of the Chinese business world for the last few centuries. It binds literally millions of Chinese firms into a social and business web. In China's new, fast-paced business environment, guanxi has become more entrenched than ever, heavily influencing Chinese political landscapes, social behavior, and business practice.This book delineates social and cultural principles and philosophies underlying guanxi dynamics, along with guanxi's social norms that have been long embedded in the Chinese society. Although guanxi is embedded in almost every part of social life in China, companies demonstrate different needs and capacity toward guanxi cultivation. Chinese firms develop guanxi as a strategic mechanism to overcome competitive and resource disadvantages by cooperating and exchanging favors with government authorities and other stakeholders. This book presents an integrative framework about guanxi development according to institutional, strategic, and organizational factors. It further articulates how foreign firms adaptively develop their own legitimate and effective guanxi in China's highly dynamic and complex environment.Guanxi is really dynamic that its practices have been constantly changing and its normative and cognitive legitimacy is shifting as the social and economic structures in the society are drastically transforming. For this reason, this third edition of the book has added numerous new and emergent issues such as moral degradation and guanxi, qualitative and quantitative review of guanxi studies, and guanxi ties between organizations.
This book examines a topic of paramount importance to those doing business with China: the impact of personal relationships (guanxi) on business affairs. It shows that the commercial utilization of guanxi with suppliers, customers, competitors and authorities yields significant sustainable competitive advantages. Coverage also assesses guanxi-based business strategies in terms of compliance with legal and ethical standards.
Half a world away from the calm beauty of Puget Sound, there's a lab where Bill Gates's software dreams come trueaSo begins Guanxi, the compelling behind-the-scenes tale of the allure of China today - and a unique partnership between the world's most famous capitalist and the world's largest communist nation that showcases what it takes to compete in the age of global innovation. Guanxi (gwan-shee),the Chinese term for mutually beneficial relationships essential to success in the Middle Kingdom, tells the story of the juggernaut research lab that underpins Microsoft's relationship building in China. Unfurled through a gripping narrative that moves between Beijing and Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA, it follows the lab's emergence as a Mecca for Chinese computer-science talent - a place where 10,000 resumes arrive in a month, written exams are farmed out to 11 cities to screen applicants, and interns sleep on cots next to their cubicles. So far, the company has invested well over $100 million and hired more than 400 of China's best and brightest to turn the outpost into an important window on the future of computing and a training ground to uplift the state of Chinese computer science - creating dramatic payoffs for both Microsoft and its host country that are helping the company overcome many of the challenges of China. Guanxi traces the arc of the lab's stunning success from a memo by erstwhile Microsoft visionary Nathan Myhrvold to its early days under maverick speech recognition guru Kai-Fu Lee (since plucked away by Google for some $10 million) to its more recent tutelage under former child prodigies Ya-Qin Zhang and Harry Shum. The two China-born stars, who both attended college in their native country at the age of 12, have orchestrated the Beijing lab's recent emergence as an epicenter of Microsoft's intensifying battles against Google in the search wars, Nokia in the wireless arena, and Sony in graphics and entertainment. As pundits rail about the 'China threat' to US competitiveness and offer often-hackneyed arguments against outsourcing, Guanxi explores the true ramifications of China's high-tech buildup-and how it can be turned to competitive advantage, in part by 'insourcing' the untapped talent in the country's top universities. Sprinkled with telling observations, compelling characters, and lively anecdotes about the brilliant successes and sometimes painful stumbles of the world's most powerful software company, Guanxi is essential reading for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and technologists around the globe.
Guanxi Winn, Jane Kaufman "Relational Practices and the Marginalization of Law: Informal Financial Practices of Small Businesses in Taiwan" "Law and Society Review 28"(1994) Contract Chang, Phyllis L. "Deciding Disputes: Factors that Guide Chinese Courts in the Adjudicaiton of Rural Responsibility contract Disputes" "Law and Contemporary Problems 52" (1989) * Cheng, Lucie and Arthur Rosett "Contract with a Chinese Face" "Journal of Chinese Law 5" (1991) * Lee, Tahirih V. "Risky Business: Courts, Culture, and the Marketplace" "University of Miami" "Law Review 47" (1993) * Scogin, Hugh "Between Heaven and Earth: Han Contracts" "University of Southern California Law Review 63" (1990) Dispute Resolution Clarke, Don. "Dispute Resolution in China" "Journal of Chinese Law 5" (1991) * Finder, Susan "The Supreme People's Court of the PRC" "Journal of Chinese Law 7" (1993) * Jianxin, Ren. "Mediation, Conciliation, Arbitration and Litigation inthe PRC" "International Business Lawyer" (October, 1987) * Josephs, Hilary "Defamation, Invasion of Privacy, and the Press in the People's Republic of China""Pacific Basin Law Journal 11" (1993) * Woo, Margaret Y.D. "Abjudication Supervision and Judicial Independence in the PRC" "American Journal of Comparative Law 39 "(1991)
Half a world away from the calm beauty of Puget Sound, there's a lab where Bill Gates's software dreams come true. . . . So begins Guanxi, the compelling on-the-scenes tale of the allure of China today -- and of a unique partnership between the world's most famous capitalist and the world's largest communist nation that showcases what it takes to compete in the age of global innovation. Guanxi (gwan-shee), the Chinese term for mutually beneficial relationships essential to success in the Middle Kingdom, tells the story of the juggernaut research lab that underpins Microsoft's relationship building in China. Unfurled through a gripping narrative that moves between Beijing and Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, it follows the lab's emergence as a mecca for Chinese computer-science talent -- a place where 10,000 résumés arrive in a month, written exams are farmed out to eleven cities to screen applicants, and interns sleep on cots next to their cubicles. So far, the company has invested well over $100 million and hired more than 400 of China's best and brightest to turn the outpost into an important window on the future of computing and a training ground to uplift the state of Chinese computer science -- creating dramatic payoffs for both Microsoft and its host country that are helping the company overcome many of the challenges of China. Guanxi traces the arc of the lab's stunning success from a memo by erstwhile Microsoft visionary Nathan Myhrvold to its early days under maverick speech recognition guru Kai-Fu Lee (since plucked away by Google for some $10 million), and to its more recent tutelage under former child prodigies Ya-Qin Zhang and Harry Shum. The two China-born stars, who both attended college in their native country by the age of thirteen, have orchestrated the Beijing lab's recent emergence as an epicenter of Microsoft's intensifying battles against Google in the search wars, Nokia in the wireless arena, and Sony in graphics and entertainment. As pundits rail about the "China threat" to U.S. competitiveness and offer often-hackneyed arguments against outsourcing, Guanxi explores the true ramifications of China's high-tech buildup -- and the means by which it can be turned to competitive advantage, in part by "insourcing" the untapped talent in the country's top universities. Sprinkled with telling observations, compelling characters, and lively anecdotes about the brilliant successes and sometimes painful stumbles of the world's most powerful software company, Guanxi is essential reading for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and technologists around the globe.
