China

As we know China used to be a closed country in terms of businesses due to the ideological thinking imposed by Mao Zedong, but in 1978 Deng Xiaoping traced a strong cultural reform which leaded China to a huge economic growth that has lsted to actual days. After this changes, China has been gaining territory in the global space thanks to the incursion of more than one billion people to the game. These people had a very powerful tool and it was the low costs of labor they offered, opportunity widely used by multinational companies due to the fact that many of them transferred their manufacturing plants to China in order to reduce costs, better known as offshoring.

After the inclusion of China to the WTO in 2001, many companies moved their plants to china, letting chinesse people gain experience and learn from the methods foreingn companies had. With this the economy began to grow, employment statistics rised considerably, etc. This is the girst thing China is doing, learning from others in the short term for later on in the long term use all the knowledge adquiered to become a superpower. A quite ambitious strategy that if it gives a good result, the world should prepare to confront a economical monster. In the long term China will pass from being a manufacturer country to a one thata can create, develop and design its own stuff, adding to it value and high standards of quality at a very low price.

To make a better idea of how businesses are working now days watch this video:

The chinesse people always want to know what your company can do that they can't , are very proactive, have great energy for businesses, are always willing to learn from others, their intecultural adaptability is rapidly improving due to the increasing demands of the global marketplace and they have a medium tolerance for change and risk. Cultural advantages that will defenitely help this country tu success and why not, become the first world power.

In order to answer the question of this blog, we have to understand what the Guanxi term stands for. The term Guanxi is related to the friendship or exchange of favors between two or more persosns. There are two types of Guanxies, The vertical Guanxie and the horizontal. The vertical Guanxie stands for the relationship between the managers and the employees, the second one stands for the relationships that can be formed in order to harmonize with the society. The guanxi philosophy is beeing implemented in chinesse culture as a way to mantain more stable relationships in business, inside of China and abroad, serching to increase the confidence in the investor. It is very important because it allows the chinesse people to mantain good relastionships with the clients for long-term periods and it also improves their world wide image as good business people. With the guanxi philosophy the chinesse people are demonstrating thata are very conservative to other people and they rather preferr to know who the person is before they do business, something thata I consider as an obstacle for China's attempt to be the first world power, but at the same time secures them against uncertainty.

References:

Chun Lisa Chen and Mark Easterby-Smith, Is Guanxi still working, while Chinese MNCs go global? The case of Taiwanese MNCs in the UK, 2008
The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman chapter 3.

Images taken from:
http://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/rgbr/vol2iss1/images/2008_April_Guanxi.jpg http://columnacritica.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/china-flag.jpg

Video taken from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brs777fdA2A&feature=related