The cultural and social environment in China is as hard to generalize as that is in the United States. For the most part, many people portray the image of China as a centralized socialist country, ruled by the Communist party, and is heavily influenced by the deeply rooted Confucianism culture. However, many scholars such as Karl Gerth have also noticed that, with thirty years of foreign engagement, “although China remains a nominally socialist country, consumerism is now deeply entrenched in all areas of Chinese life.” China’s economics environment goes nearly hand in hand with its culture and political policies. There’s no question that Chinese culture shapes and explains many of the impacts of the rapidly expanding Chinese consumerism. Today’s China is much more globalized than it was ever before. One example is today, when travelers from all over the world visit China, they find very little barriers in their visiting, and feel so at home in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. This is because, in an essential sense, the global standards are already merged into Chinese economy, and implemented well in the most economically developed countries.
One of the key cultural traits of China, which ties closely with the economic practices, is the prevalence of guanxi, or “social ties” – an informal Chinese practice of handling conflict and interaction with the state. This cultural characteristic came from the tradition of Chinese avoiding formal legal procedures in courts to settle conflict, by leaning towards informal mechanisms of dispute resolution such as personal relations, mediation through third parties, or ideally, avoidance of conflict by following local norms of behavior and managing personal relations (guanxi). Also, because Chinese culture has not esteemed formal legal practices, guanxi has greatly affected the behavior of foreign investors and undermines