Growing Pains: China's Cultural Adaptation

The fascinating thing about culture is how blissfully unaware we are of it most of the time—almost all of the time. For the most part, when we’re living in our native country, doing our usual routines, we’re more or less oblivious to how culture shapes our lives, and so very much of our lives. Culture tends to only come into focus when it exists in juxtaposition, as in something foreign enters in our realm, or, more powerfully, we venture out into foreign lands and we see, maybe for the first time, how different they are from us, or us from them.

Case in point, this recent article from the Washington Post describing the cultural troubles Chinese businesses are facing as they venture out into foreign markets and territories. After near twenty years of the world coming to China, now more than ever, Chinese companies have begun to venture out into the world. As the article states; “Faced with slower growth at home and rising labor costs, Chinese entrepreneurs are seeking foreign markets as never before.” And what many of these Chinese entrepreneurs are finding is a world that operates in a vastly different fashion than they are accustomed, and it’s giving them a serious case of culture shock. With complaints ranging from “black-hearted” trade unions to griping about “Workers who are not as hardworking as Chinese,” many Chinese are having a hard time making sense of how to do business in foreign lands. Welcome to the modern global economy!

         “By some measures, outward investment from China outpaced
          foreign investment into the country for the first time last year.
          But abroad, where the public often demands greater transparency
          and courts enforce stricter environmental and labor laws, it is
          a steep learning curve for many Chinese companies, experts
          say, that mirrors the challenges foreign companies faced when
          they first entered China more than two decades ago.”

The challenges Chinese entrepreneurs and business face as they expand beyond their borders might be a cause for schadenfreude from some in the international business community who struggled for years to penetrate and understand Chinese markets and culture, but for us at CultureWizard, we see it for what it is—a very normal case of cultural growing pains. And the only medicine that calms that ache is time and learning—namely developing a sense of cultural fluency and deeper understanding of how culture influences almost every action of our lives.

What do you think about the challenges facing Chinese entrepreneurs? What stories can you share of culture shock and adjustment? We’d love to know. Want to know how you can be successful with your fellow Chinese counterparts?  Click below and learn how to communicate better with them.