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Values and Cultural Assumptions in China

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Values and Cultural Assumption in China
The people in China are rich in culture just like other Asian countries. Therefore, to be involve with Chinese people in China for business, undertsanding their values and culture are very important. The first important thing to understand about Chinese is their devotion to collectivism. Chinese is trained from very early to consider himself as a dependent segment of a group, which is also called totalitarianism. It is helpful to think of the notion of family in China as a template applied to many networks of relationships that hold the society together. In the Chinese business context, the notion of family is about more than the emotional support and ties of a nuclear family. Family members, for example, rely on each other for very instrumental needs such as loans or help in finding jobs. As such, family relationships intermingle trust from the head and trust from the heart. Given that the concept of family is a template for a broader range of Chinese social relationships, it reveals how Chinese business culture can comfortably combine these two types of trust. In fact, the Chinese word for trust, xin-ren, refers to both trust from the heart (xin) and an assessment of the other’s reliability and capability (ren). But the underlying concept also helps zero in on the essence of building successful business relationships in China: knowing how and when to build both types of trust.
Because the Chinese emphasize on “the common good” for a group, the second issue for OldTown employee to work in China is going to be their cooperation which means joint operation or action. In China, finding an intern or a nice job mostly depends on who recommends. It’s easier to get a higher position when you have some special background which is called “China Guanxi”. Another example is about the earthquake in China in May of 2008. Within 24 hours

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