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Business Networks
in China: Guanxi and Guangxiwang
One can often hear the word guanxi in any Chinese community, whether
it is mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore or Taiwan, though there
may be some slight differences in pronunciation as a result of the
distinctive Chinese dialects.
In China, Guanxi has been regarded as a special relationship two
persons have with each other, as a special kind of personal relationship
in which long-term mutual benefit is more important than short-term
individual gain, and as having the status and intensity of an on-going
relationship between two parties.
While guanxi operates on a dyadic level, guanxiwang(Network) certainly
goes further than that. Guanxiwang refers to a network of exchanges
or transactions between two parties and beyond. Goods and services
such as physical products or favours exchanged can be anything of
value and mutual benefit to the parties concerned, for example,
raw materials, promotion, gifts, information, facilitation and so
on. Guanxiwang obtains when one set of separate, personal and total
relationships between two individuats, A and B, and another set
of such relationships between B and C are interlinked through the
common agent, B, acting as a witness and facilitator. As a result,
the originally total and personal relationship transforms into a
complex network of social exchanges with such interlinkage extended
into other sets through numerous common agents like A, B and C.
Therefore, it can be concluded that guanxi is not simply, as many
believe, one of the key features of Chinese culture or one of the
key 'themes' which depict cote aspects of Chinese values, it is
the mother of all relationships.
There is a bias in the study of Chinese business networks. Although
there exists much corruption among overseas Chinese. However, when
it concerns mainland China, guanxiwang is immediately branded as
corruption. Many people often treat Guanxi and guanxiwang as derogatory
terms. Guanxiwang is regarded as an unhealthy social tendency. The
truth is guanxiwang per se is purely a form of organisational governance.
Nothing more, nothing less. It has nothing to do with corruption
when a transaction is legal and does not infringe any public interests,
but simply takes place between members within a business network.
Guanxiwang only becomes corrupt when exchange or transaction taking
place within a guanxiwang involves corrupt activities such as bribery.
Because of the special characteristics of guanxiwang such as trust
and bonding, corrupt deals are more likely to rake place between
members of a guanxiwang particularly when an adequate and effective
legal and disciplinary system is lacking.
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