Chinese Business

The nature, institutional foundations, and issues surrounding the apparent success of Chinese business networks is examined in this book. Major concepts such as guanxi, xinyong and gangqing, exploring the nature of trust, relationships and sentiments in Chinese business networks, are re-examined. A significant amount of literature has been devoted to the study of Chinese business, and it largely falls into two broad schools: the culturalist approach, arguing for an essentialist formulation to explain success and the market approach, suggesting that there is nothing inherently unique about Chinese business. This book critiques both these approaches and argues, based on primary data collected in various countries, and with case studies of a large number of Chinese businesses, that another approach, the institutional embedded approach, provides a better explanation for the success, and failure of Chinese business and Chinese business networks.

Chapter 1: Rethinking Chinese Business: Problematics, Issues and Questions.- Chapter 2: Centripetal Authority, Differential Networks: The Social Organization of Chinese Firms in Singapore.- Chapter 3: Guanxi, Xinyong and Chinese Business Networks.- Chapter 4: Personalism and Paternalism in Chinese Business Firms.- Chapter 5: Singaporean Chinese Doing Business in China.- Chapter 6: Feuds and Legacies: Conflict and Inheritance in Chinese Businesses.- Chapter 7: Trust and Distrust in Chinese Business.- Chapter 8: The Rise of China and its Impact on Chinese Business Networks.