Useful Things Help To Understand How Chinese Thinking（1）

Rank is beautiful

Chinese society is strongly hierarchical and a person’s rank counts for much. Every individual is slotted into a complex system of superior and subordinate beings. The person’s place is not fixed and he or she can rise or fall within the ranks, but the ranks themselves continue unchanged. For a foreign business person, this means that someone who provided valuable help a few years ago may by now be of little use -- or might possibly even more valuable! If they have gone up, it also means that you should treat them with more respect, as befits their new position.

The movement of others up and down the hierarchy can easily cause resentment and hurt feelings, so that office politics loom large in China. Most enterprises contain a variety of fluid factions. Because everyone lives within a rigid hierarchy and harmony must prevail in society, specific rules of conduct are laid down and strictly taught to all children. In contrast with a person’s position is society, within the family a person’s place is immutably fixed, so that the elder brother is always the elder brother, and treated accordingly.

Bureaucracy is an ancient Chinese art-form and the bureaucracy, like Chinese society, is strictly hierarchical in rank. The privileges of every level, and person, are clearly defined or recognised. The Chinese approach foreign visitors and residents in the same vein. Your particular status will be determined after careful scrutiny of your company and its national or international standing, and your position within the company. That is worked out by your ranking on any lists you may have sent them, your job title, and any letters appearing after your name on your business card. In China, like meets with like, consequently the higher your status, the higher the officials you can meet. In your company’s first approach, it should send someone with the greatest credentials, in order to gain entry as high as possible, and thereby meet more important people. They can ensure that more will be done for you by those lower down.

Despite being a communist country with an ideology that supposedly should emphasise egalitarianism and the workers, the demands of Confucian hierarchy easily dominate. Members of a foreign aristocracy are revered and this was true even in the extreme days of the Maoist left-wing period. Ex-heads of state are particularly well respected and treated because of their old position, irrespective of their current status, past behaviour, or even criminal record. Ex-President Nixon was always treated royally on his visits to China.

Learn your lessons well -- Confucius

"Memorise lessons" was an important value in traditional education and this still prevails in China as well as in the diaspora of Overseas Chinese families. A common criticism of the students produced by the education system in China, as well as in Taiwan, Japan and Korea, is that they merely learn by heart to the detriment of understanding and being able to apply the lesson to a practical problem.

Practise makes perfect -- Confucius

"Practise skills" was another old rule which is still current -- indeed some believe that it is even more strictly observed these days than it was in older times.