First, foreign companies should know some customs of China – as many as possible to make the relationship between foreign management and staff better. For example, the leader of the company could give some celebrations to staff during the traditional Chinese festival. This will foster a sense of unity among the Chinese staff because Chinese usually pay more attention to emotion than reward. State-owned enterprises of China often do this. Second, foreign company could learn some traditional philosophy such as the Analects of Confucius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi. This could be more helpful for foreign company leader to understand Chinese thinking and behavior. As far as I know, many business colleges have opened Chinese traditional philosophy courses all over the world.

Third, we might know some global companies like employing overseas Chinese, such as Singaporean, Malaysian, to manage local Chinese, because overseas Chinese know local Chinese better than Western people, but no need to pay the same high salary. Moreover, overseas Chinese could speak fluent English, so there is no obstacle of communication for them. However, the method exist a disadvantage for foreign company, it is helpless to really know Chinese, since many overseas Chinese don’t follow Chinese change and developing – their awareness to China still stay in 1980s and 1990s. I had met an overseas Chinese in Malaysia in year 2008, and she even didn’t know Hong Kong had come back to China.

To sum up, understanding Chinese staff is not very difficult thing, as long as you often communicate with Chinese, regardless of students, teachers or entrepreneur; by carefully observing China’s change and development, you will find more and more Chinese actively start to know western people. Based on both sides’ effort, I believe the communication between Chinese and foreigner will become easier and simpler.

About the author:
Brian LIU Bao Ren is an international MBA student in Lingnan (University) College at Sun Yat-sen University. Before enrolling in the program, he worked for a global company in the energy industry as a customer service supervisor in charge of customer complaints, product recalls, and technical support.