Negotiation with Chinese 101: Your essential Business Skills

Strategic preparation and cultural awareness can sharpen the competitive edge for companies negotiating in China. For newcomers to the China market, as well as for those with established business relationships, China’s expanding economy and ballooning consumer demand can exert an irresistible pull. The Chinese word for negotiation—tan pan—combines the characters meaning “to discuss” and “to judge.” From a Chinese perspective, negotiation exists primarily as a mechanism for building trust so that two parties can work together for the benefit of both.

• Do you want to understand the broad context of Chinese culture and values and their impact on the Chinese negotiating style?

• Do you want to know how to negotiate with your Chinese partners and manage conflicts?

From an experienced Global Business Management instructor comes this valuable course on Chinese negotiation skills.

Negotiation with China

The way People negotiate, it’s almost in their DNA, It’s the way they raised, it’s their culture. And what we need to understand about any culture is what has programmed them, the economic philosophies of the country.

A Country like China, the old Confucius system, the political philosophies, the changes are occurring in China. Therefore we need to understand what are these influence factors at the table of negotiation.

China has been undergoing rapid political, economic, and social change since the late 20th century.  Its cultural heritage, “special national circumstances” and international exposure/exchange are three intertwined and interacting factors that have been the major determinants of Chinese business culture and negotiating style.

Lesson Learnt from 2021 Alaska Diplomatic Summit talks

The United States and China publicly rebuked each other during a high level meeting in Alaska. The first face-to-face meeting between high level officials from the Biden administration and representatives from China did not go according to plan.

China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, and Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, complained about the “tone” of the language being used by the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken and the US Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan.

Rather than backing down, the Americans responded with further allegations against China, accompanied by a robust defence of their own position.

This caused Yang Jiechi to snap. Instead of following his carefully-prepared, scripted remarks he launched instead into a fifteen minute lecture, listing China’s virtues and achievements and blasting America for its problems, including what he called systemic racism.

Do you want to know the strategy that the Chinese team took ?

MIANZI and GUANXI

You might think that doing business in China means getting used to the little things. For example, did you know that the Chinese give and receive things of value (which includes business cards) with both hands? While interesting, there are bigger principles which form the foundation of much of China’s cultural beliefs and attitudes. If you want to do business in China and succeed, you need to understand the linked principles of Mianzi and Guanxi – the keys to learning Chinese business etiquette.

Don’t be surprised, these are also extremely important in negotiation with them, you won’t know they suddenly stop the negotiation just because you make the team leader losing face.  On the other hand, you will luckily find a big barrier has been broken simply because you praised someone’s food and this “someone” is accidentally the ultimate decision maker.

Analysis of Chinese negotiation structure

We introduce the structure of the analysis for Chinese negotiation.

The model depicts three key elements of business negotiations; 1. The deeply ingrained Chinese culture can impact both the negotiation process as well as the tactics used during a negotiation. 2. The tactics used during the negotiation can influence the structure of the process. 3. The stages of the negotiation process can be affected by both culture and tactics.

36 Chinese traditional war stratagems applied in their negotiation

The 36 Chinese Strategies or Stratagems are a collection of tactics that can be applied to very different situations. In China, the tactics are somewhat like proverbs or folklore. They have been described as “gems that speak to the cores of Chinese society”.

People who ‘grew up Chinese’ (Doesn’t matter it’s in Mainland China, HK or Taiwan) know these stratagems. People who negotiate with Chinese should also know these stratagems.

Top 10 things that Real life Western companies value most when they negotiate with Chinese

We investigate Western companies about their experience when in negotiating with the Chinese, a Top 10 list has been generated about what they valued most.

Comparison between Westerners and Chinese in concept of Negotiation

The Chinese said “He who has a thorough knowledge of the enemy and himself is bound to win in all battles.”

Effective cross-cultural negotiations between firms in the Westerners and Chinese have become increasingly important as commerce between these two cultures continues its rapid expansion. Previous research has explored some of the cultural factors that shape Chinese negotiating styles, making comparisons with Western practices. However, scant attention has been paid to differences in perspectives that derive from fundamental logic paradigms, which tend to vary greatly between individuals from the East and West.  Recognizing that formal logic is more common in the Western world and that dialectic logic tends to dominate thought in China, we outline hypothesized influences of each logic paradigm on negotiating approaches in the two cultures.

Success Tips

We conclude some important tips how to succeed in negotiation with the Chinese.

Enroll now to make your next negotiation with Chinese more successful.