First of all, we feel it is important to introduce ourselves, we are Darío Royo, Lola Pérez and Marc Ribera. We all three are students in the Master in Business Management (MBM) from ESIC Business & Marketing School. Nevertheless, we didn’t know each other since a few days ago when students coming from different campus all around Spain met in Amsterdam to learn about new economic models such as the one is stablished in China. We have been attending to classes at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and understanding how things work inside the Chinese borders and we conclude: “At first glance Chinese culture and economic model is completely different as the one in the EU, but to some extend there are specific topics that are not that far away from how things work in Spain”.
On the lectures given in the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences we learn different concepts regarding Chinese culture and society. One of the most important concepts introduced by the lecturers was the cult of “FACE” (面子). FACE in China refers to a cultural understanding of respect, social standing, and honour. Words or actions that are not respectful with your counterparts might cause somebody to “lose face”, the other way around respect-given actions, awards or gifts may “give face” to someone.
As Chinese culture is so complicated for western cultures people should be aware of the possibility of “saving face”. There are some occasions where behaving on the wrong way would lead to a losing-face situation “loose of face”:
- Openly criticizing, challenging, disagreeing with, or denying someone.
- Calling someone out on a lie.
- Not showing respect to elders or superiors.
- Turning down an invitation with an outright no (instead, they usually say “maybe”, “yes, maybe”, “we’ll do our best”,” let’s think/talk about it later,” or “I need to discuss it with so-and so first”)
- Being late on a flimsy excuse (demonstrates that you don’t respect or take them seriously).
- Interrupting someone while they are talking.
And all these differences between the two cultures are reflected in the infographic made by Yang Liu, a Chinese woman who lived in Germany for many years and wanted to reflect all the differences she perceived through very simple symbols. We would like to highlight the following:
– The boss: in China bosses should always be treated as superiors and never as a friend, as is often the case in the West.
– Noise level inside restaurants: unlike in Western countries, in China it is normal for the noise level inside a restaurant to be very high, and they are very comfortable like this.
– Ego size of the individual’s ego: in the West, people’s ego is always bigger than that of a Chinese person.
– How to stand in a line: Chinese people don’t stand in line to wait in a queue, they all go at the same time and look for a space, and nobody gets angry about it. This brings us to the next point.
– Anger: Chinese people never show their anger and they don’t like when someone else does it because for them it means that you don’t know how to control yourself.
– Connections and contacts: finally, in China it is very important to be friends with your friends and to create a community of contacts between everyone.
As it has been shown western culture is way different from the one China has, that is a relevant factor to consider when doing business in the country, on the following paragraphs we are going to show some useful examples regarding the differences.
Attention to the way of sitting: the tables are rounded and the host sits facing the entrance door, with the guest of honour from China to his right. Around him the other guests are seated from highest to lowest rank, so that the lowest rank is seated facing the host and with his back to the door. It is necessary to think about the placement of interpreters when the guests cannot communicate in the same language.
Do not argue when paying the bill, it is customary for the host to pay the bill.
Don’t talk business until your host does: during lunches or dinners you should talk business. There is no custom of after-dinner conversation. Once the last course (which is fruit) has been
Once the last course (which is fruit) has been eaten, the guests start to leave quickly, even without saying goodbye. Beforehand, the host makes a last toast to conclude the banquet.
Punctuality is a very important factor in a meal with Chinese customers. Normally they will arrive 15 minutes early. The timing of these meals is also a little different from the Spanish as lunch is usually served at 11.30 am and dinner from 6.00 pm onwards.
To sum up, we would like to remark that when doing business sometimes the business itself is not the most important thing to get a contract signed there are some other factors that are even more important.