China Iceberg

Seeing China for what it really is...

I am sure you have been told many times that the Chinese will do whatever it takes to avoid confrontation in business negotiations, is incapable of saying no and will run circles around the simplest of question marks that could easily have been settled quickly with a simple NO.

Well, in my experience, the Chinese are more than capable at saying no, and the further north you find yourself in China the easier it gets…

But then of course, the Chinese do not say no to their boss directly to their face – and lets face it, many (if not most) foreign business people in China find themselves in situations where their only real contact with a Chinese person (except for the girlfriend of course) is as a boss towards a subordinate, or across a negotiation table. Well, even in Europe and the US an employee is quite wary about saying no to the boss in no uncertain terms (as long as the boss is at least fairly levelheaded), and I have never experienced someone saying no in a business negotiation outside of China either… It is always, “we will have to do some calculations and get back to you on that” or “with current raw material prices it is going to be difficult to reduce costs further”, “I see why you might have a problem here, why don’t we do this instead?”, etc.

So what does this have to do with face and why is it vs. harmony…

Well, I can tell you this… If face has been lost, harmony goes out the window – immediately… Any Chinese from anywhere (and I mean anywhere) forgets all about harmony if they feel you have made them lose face and will yell and scream until they feel face has been restored or you have removed yourself from the situation. Just the other day, an employee in the office next door to mine got fired, and she was screaming bloody murder for an hour before the boss finally had enough and she was escorted from the premises. My recommendation? Remove yourself from the situation ASAP or suffer the consequences…

This is not about being right or wrong, this is about the fact that nothing constructive is going to come out of a situation where face has been lost. So why waste your time on it? No doubt, if you are like me, you will in most cases have been right when “pushing someone over the edge” but why continue pushing after the guy’s face has been stripped to the bone?

Outside of a pure business setting, it is also easy to make an ass of someone (read: the idiot in the A8 that needs to honk his horn at the taxi you are in) in public… If it was intentional then it is well worth it, and you can walk away smiling and laugh about it over a beer in the pub afterward. If it was not intentional, apologize, and then watch the reaction… If there is no sign of harmony being restored and all that goes through the other person’s mind is the restoration of face, walk away, but keep it as a lesson for future interactions with people from that region in China in a similar setting…

Oh, one final note… In a business negotiation, do not try to be “Chinese”… Be yourself, and if saying no seems logical and makes sense to you then say no in your own way… At the end of the day, your “oponent” is going to respect you more for being who you are and not trying to play a role that few foreigners have ever mastered.