Guanxi

Conceptual Overview

The use of networks and favoritism based upon particularistic considerations is scarcely unique to China. However, both the Chinese themselves and numerous outside observers regard extensive reliance upon particularistic ties as a major feature of Chinese societies. When contrasted with Western networking, Michailova and Worm remark that guanxi is viewed as being more pervasive, involving the rendering of more personal favors, and encompassing relationships that are more person specific and enduring.

In China, various historical factors encouraged the development of trust based upon particularistic relationships. For instance, the legal system provided little support to merchants or individuals and imperial officials exercised arbitrary rent-seeking powers. When the Communist Party took power in 1949, it sought to promote universalistic values such as comradeship that would supplant particularistic moral values such as nepotism, which were denounced as “feudal.” However, recourse to guanxi continued in response to scarcity of goods in a system with bureaucratic allocation of resources.

During the post-Mao reform era, and especially since the early 1990s, China's economy has diversified and remonetized, engendering both the need and opportunity for a more diverse array of interpersonal connections. Meanwhile, despite improvements, key institutional features that support civil society and business in Western societies remain poorly developed in China. In an environment that lacks institutional safeguards and where societal support mechanisms are being dismantled and bases of trust between strangers are limited, whether people are seeking new opportunities, to minimize risk in some endeavor, or to tackle difficulties encountered, they routinely turn to their guanxi.

Guanxi is built upon various achieved and ascribed bases with the family as the inner core. Radiating outward in circles from this core are relatives and various relationships involving tong, meaning “sameness” or co-identification, such as classmates (tongxue); those from the same native place (tongxiang); and work colleagues (tongshi). Friendship, typically based upon some shared experience, plays a vital role in most people's lives and is an important form of guanxi.

In Chinese society, from the national to the familial level, distinctions are routinely drawn between inand out-groups. Beyond the circles outlined are various categories of outsider such as foreigners and other strangers. To be “one of us” is to be bound by reciprocal rights and duties of mutual aid and support. Reciprocity is central both to Chinese family values and all forms of guanxi. In business circles, for instance, banqueting and inviting people to eat is a form of ritualized activity and gift giving that is crucial to what Yang calls the “art of guanxi.”

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