The Role of Cultural Awareness in Doing Business in China

Filed in archive Entrepreneurship on January 23, 2008

It's easy to say or do something "wrong" when you're in an unfamiliar culture.

I remember one of my first meals in an Australian home. As a male raised in the southern US, I thought my remark after the meal was a compliment. I said the food was delicious, then patted my stomach and finished with, "I'm stuffed." When the family members stopped laughing, one of them explained to me that, in the local vernacular, "stuffed" meant something like "to be pregnant without the benefit of wedlock." I later learned that it gets used much the way Americans use the "F" word. But my Aussie friends were more amused than offended, and I gained a little education...

The China Law Blog has a post out just today on cultural sensitivity. Dan Harris at the CLB builds on a post earlier this month on that subject at China Hearsay.

When it comes to cultural sensitivity, Dan's point in a nutshell is summed up by this quote from his piece: "Knowledge of Chinese culture is secondary to knowledge of business when it comes to doing a China deal...."





He goes on to make it clear that this is true between business people, but not necessarily in marketing products to the Chinese public.

Feel free to pick a less colorful metaphor if you get the opportunity to pass this great but simple truth on to others, but the key to cultural sensitivity is usually just this: don't be an ass.

In people who get that label applied to them, there is usually a special combination of arrogance and stupidity that prevents others from telling them they've mess up in some way. It's easy in almost any culture to forgive a humble person. We tend to think that you somehow bear more liability for your mistakes if you are an ass, and we find such people much harder to forgive...