Introduction
Systematic, Historic, and Cultural Dimensions of Guanxi
This book is about 关系 guanxi, social connections prevalent in China and Chinese cultural areas. Guanxi is not simply a connection between two individuals, however. The connection in question is highly personalized so that those who participate in guanxi will experience both attractions between the persons involved and also emotional feelings about the relationship. As well as being a personalized connection guanxi is an instrumental relationship. Its instrumentality is not primarily utilitarian, though, because what guanxi provides access to is in the first instance important social goods, including a heightening of social esteem or status, summarily understood as face, in Chinese, 面子 mianzi, as a result of achieving a successful guanxi, and additionally access to the associates of a guanxi partner. The connection between the two people who share guanxi therefore lends itself to a fanning out of connections, or, to put it differently, to a network of interconnections. A person who has good guanxi will be particularly attractive to others as a prospective guanxi partner. This is because the social goods provided by guanxi can be mobilized to secure material goods in the form of a job, say, a business contract, or a loan, as well as opportunities to acquire other material goods through privileged access to facilitating others. It goes without saying that the favours provided by a guanxi partner go in both directions, so that guanxi involves reciprocity, indeed requires it, not immediately but at some future time when there is a need. In this sense, then, guanxi secures obligations from those who participate in it, as well as expectations concerning the behaviour of others, so that guanxi can be seen in terms of certain types of normative regulation, known in Chinese as 人情 renqing, to which it is subject. Given the lattice of bonding attachments through guanxi, the benefits it offers, and also the elements of compulsion that ensure its operation, guanxi relationships are typically enduring or long-term.
After this description of guanxi, with regard to its structure and the way in which it is conducted, it might be wondered if any more needs to be said about it. Indeed, a large number of studies of guanxi effectively spell out what has just been indicated when providing detailed accounts of specific cases of
Theory
guanxi in a range of different settings. Such research may take the form of a descriptive ethnography, a statistical analysis, a policy study focused on business ethics, corruption, or organizational development and growth, or some other mode of exploration of the details of what is often referred to as ‘instrumental particularism’. Whereas the generalized statement, as in the previous paragraph, may be brought to an enquiry, the factual details revealed by careful examination of actual experiences of guanxi clarify the causal connections between its elements, how established arrangements change as the context in which they operate is modified, and how different applications of guanxi may generate novel outcomes for participants and non-participants alike. The types of studies mentioned here are drawn on extensively in the chapters to follow.
As a social phenomenon guanxi raises questions in addition to those which may be answered by a detailed study of its application in social, political, or economic relations. In much of the discussion of guanxi in academic publications assumptions are made concerning its cultural background and endowments. For instance, there is a large constituency which supports, indeed advocates, the idea that guanxi has a foundation in Confucian social and ethical thinking and practice. In addition to this type of consideration, the general characterization of guanxi and its component dispositions and engagements requires relating this term to others, including, say, ‘trust’, ‘network tie’, and similar concepts drawn from social science discourse, in order to explain the operation of guanxi. While this may appear to be a straightforward matter, of incorporating into an explanation of guanxi terms drawn from the vocabulary of academic sociology, say, it raises questions about the suitability of applying concepts drawn from research primarily concerned with north American and west European experiences to accounts of Chinese practices which draw on social protocols and meanings dissimilar to those that inform the technical sociological terms in question. The point being made here is that any serious consideration of guanxi raises questions that go beyond the immediate relation itself, and invite investigation of how guanxi may be conceptualized, analysed, and explained in general terms.
Informed by these considerations, the purpose of the discussion in the six chapters to follow is to clearly identify what is meant by guanxi, to answer questions relating to the cultural and historical background of both the broad concept—which has had the label guanxi attached to it only relatively recently—as well as recounting the recent history of the term, and also to show how guanxi can be apprehended and also explained sociologically. Indeed, this book is the first to provide a sociological treatment of guanxi in terms of its broad context, historical, cultural and social; and, in doing so,
provide a large number of novel assessments and findings, to be indicated below, which not only clearly illuminate the nature of guanxi but also indicate a great deal about the society in which it has currency, further explaining the character of instrumental particularism in China. The discussion to follow also indicates ways in which research on guanxi may most fruitfully proceed. It is for these reasons that the title of the book is The Theory of Guanxi and Chinese Society, because in its exploration of guanxi and the way in which it is theorized there is at the same time a significant discussion of Chinese culture and society, not only in the present day but from the late imperial period.
While this is the first book to comprehensively and critically examine the nature and background of guanxi it is only one of a large number of publications which address this particularly Chinese social relation. Since the 1980s when the Chinese economy drew the interest of foreign investors, guanxi has been of concern to the global business community. Indeed, a number of academic journals devoted to business studies, including the Asia Pacific Business Review, Journal of Asian Business Studies, and Management and Organization Review, are effectively dedicated to primarily reporting research on guanxi. It is not surprising, therefore, that the majority of single-authored or coauthored books about guanxi are located in this disciplinary area, including works by Ying Lun So and Anthony Walker (2006), Eike Langenberg (2007), Yadong Luo (2007), Chee-Kiong Tong (2014), and Barbara Wang (2019). While writers drawn from the disciplines of anthropology and sociology have collectively produced fewer books than management authors, the ‘classics’ of guanxi studies include the enduring monograph by Mayfair Yang (1994), Gifts, Favors and Banquets, and the collection, Social Connections in China, edited by Thomas Gold, Doug Guthrie, and David Wank (2002). More recently, Yanjie Bian (2019) has published a broad survey of the field, Guanxi: How China Works, that not only summarizes his own extensive contribution to the sociological study of guanxi but additionally overviews some key discussions. The present book augments this literature in its treatment of guanxi from the point of view of a critical sociological analysis. It may be redundant to say ‘critical’ sociological analysis because it can be noted that sociology is inherently critical, in the sense that it is necessarily interpretive and evaluative. An earlier generation of sociologists emphasized the way in which a ‘sociological imagination’, to use C. Wright Mills’s (1970) term, requires not only ‘empirical studies of contemporary facts’ but additionally held that these must be supported by ‘historical’ and ‘systematic’ investigation, in consideration of both the legacies of the past and the broad regularities of current social life (Mills 1970: 30–1). In this way, the practitioner of sociology must inevitably confront established ‘truths’ that
The Theory of Guanxi and Chinese Society
defend given interests or persistent orthodoxies (Mills 1970: 206–14). This practice is described by Peter Berger (1966: 51–6) in terms of the ‘debunking tendency in sociological thought’. In understanding guanxi it is necessary not only to examine its practice, including how guanxi is initiated and what it provides to those who participate in it, but also its historical background and cultural setting. The operative term here is ‘examine’ because representations are frequently made in the literature concerning the meaning and significance of renqing, for instance, that connect guanxi with Confucian principles. Claims regarding these matters are frequently repeated in studies of guanxi but almost never substantiated or seriously considered. Treatment of such questions requires going beyond guanxi to an investigation that is both historical and systematic, concerning cultural and linguistic aspects of Chinese practices, as undertaken throughout the present book.
The treatment of guanxi in Chapter 1 is introductory, in the sense that the practices associated with the formation of a guanxi between two people are set out and examined. After showing why guanxi can in general terms be described as a form of instrumental particularism, the chapter goes on to indicate on what basis two people may together participate as guanxi partners. It is not enough that they have a common purpose. It is shown in the chapter that in the first instance two people wishing to establish guanxi must recognize in each other a common identity, often described as a ‘guanxi base’, the mutual acknowledgement of which permits the making of a connection between them. It is helpful to understand that a recognition of their common ground arises when two people realize the practical usefulness of their working together, so that the ‘instrumentalism’ of guanxi and its ‘particularism’ are seen as mutually supportive. This is important because in discussion of guanxi its expressive or particularistic element is sometimes seen as an alternative to its instrumental element. In this way some scholars separate ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ guanxi (Kipnis 1997: 147–8; Yan 1996: 226–9), even though the most instrumental business guanxi requires renqing decorum and village guanxi is in the service of beneficial social support. The chapter goes on to show how the guanxi connection is able to endure through elaboration of its particularistic elements, including the emotional involvement of the participants.
Two distinct types of emotion complex underlying guanxi, which consolidate the connection between participants, are identified in the chapter. These are 感情 ganqing and renqing; they are each described as an ‘emotion complex’ because they are not single emotions, such as hope or fear, but multifaceted feelings that express a person’s affective disposition and at the same time convey a moral sensibility to which that person adheres.
Ganqing is usually translated simply as ‘sentiment’ or ‘affect’, and in the context of guanxi relates not only to the attraction between persons but more importantly to their mutual affective attachment to the relationship to which they are each committed. This aspect of ganqing in guanxi is not always properly understood, as addressed in this chapter. Renqing is more complex than ganqing, being a compound or composite disposition, usually translated into English as ‘human feelings’ or ‘favour’. It is shown in the chapter that in Chinese culture what it means to be human is to engage in appropriate conduct, which varies with context and the status of the person one is relating to. Regarding its contribution to guanxi, renqing is the emotion of commitment to reciprocal obligation in exchange of favours.
The discussion in Chapter 1 goes on to consider how guanxi endures over time, in which a number of factors are identified. It is explained that selfdisclosure, consideration of the other, and a sense of security and dependability, all work together through the ganqing and renqing shared by guanxi participants, and in turn reinforce them. But perhaps the most significant factor in the maintenance of an enduring guanxi is the way in which guanxi participants finesse the indebtedness between them. This is an aspect of guanxi that is a seldom discussed in the literature. Favour recipients in guanxi relations delay repayment of a debt, in order to avoid termination of guanxi; indeed, they tend not to acknowledge that a favour provided to a guanxi partner is discharging a prior debt to a person. Rather, such favours operate through a sense that they are to fulfil an obligation within a relationship, and it is the relationship rather than the persons participating in it that is the object of concern and to which a person’s favour and commitment are directed. It is this orientation within guanxi that ensures that it is not exhausted or concluded by repayments of debt.
Consideration of guanxi debt, incurred by accepting a favour from another, raises the question, in a different register, of the costs and benefits of guanxi. When costs and benefits are thought of together, then the notion of ‘efficiency’ comes to mind, referring to a situation in which the lower the costs of an activity or relationship, relative to the benefits the activity or relationship provides, the higher the efficiency. The notion of ‘efficiency’ is invoked in Chapter 1 because less-efficient practices tend to be displaced by more-efficient, and this consideration relates to the persistence of guanxi and its changing form in a way that goes beyond the usual way of conceiving the prospects of guanxi in a changing China. The debate between Doug Guthrie (1998) and Mayfair Yang (2002), a hallmark exchange in the discussion of guanxi, is focused on only two alternatives, a decline in the incidence of guanxi or its persistence. The final section of Chapter 1, on the other hand,
The Theory of Guanxi and Chinese
shows that it is more useful to conceive of the prospects of guanxi in terms of its efficiency in different areas of economy and society, so that while guanxi may decline in some domains it can become significant in others, and fail to appear at all in yet others. This novel approach is supported by a discussion of the incidence of guanxi in a number of sectors of Chinese society, including retail markets, the diamond trade, and scientific research. The chapter finishes by considering the way in which guanxi is associated with corruption. Because guanxi involves an informal if not irregular provision of a favour that is given with the expectation of a benefit in return, it may appear to be indistinguishable from a bribe, as discussed in the chapter.
After considering the nature of guanxi in Chapter 1, how guanxi might be theorized is addressed in the following chapter. Chapter 2 undertakes an investigation of an approach that has become an overarching influence on the conceptualization of guanxi and its broader meaning and significance. From the Soil, a book by a leading Chinese sociologist, Fei Xiaotong (1910–2005), was first published in Chinese in 1947 with an English translation appearing in 1992. Widely regarded as providing an architectonic model of guanxi, From the Soil is referred to in practically every published discussion of guanxi, no matter what the disciplinary background of its author. Fei (1992) raises a number of crucial questions core to an understanding of guanxi, including its cultural background, its structure as based on the strong ties of familial bonds, and its modus operandi in gift exchange. These are all brought together in a concept proposed by Fei (1992: 60–70), which explicates the flexibility, endurance, and differentiation of guanxi in a single term, 差序格局 chaxugeju, translated as ‘differential mode of association’. Given the pivotal significance of From the Soil for an understanding of guanxi and the way in which it is portrayed in the broader scholarly discussion of it, the second chapter of this book considers Fei’s account of the ‘differential mode of association’ and its context in the analysis of Chinese society and its contribution to the study of guanxi.
The purpose of Chapter 2, then, is to provide a distinctive appraisal of the notion of the differential mode of association as Fei (1992) develops it in From the Soil, whilst also paying attention to the broader claims regarding the nature of China’s rural society and its cultural background, especially as it informs an understanding of guanxi. By drawing on Fei’s other publications of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as contemporary research by Chinese and non-Chinese social analysts, it is shown that Fei (1992) develops a model of lineage reflecting the intergenerational and multifunctional form of the Chinese family that in fact represents an idealized vision in conformity with Confucian ideology. Indeed, it is shown that Fei’s reliance on Confucian
rather than sociological sources in From the Soil means that many of his perceptions and judgements depart from those presented in his village studies of the time (Fei 1939; Fei and Chang 1948). It is revealed in the chapter that not only does Fei (1992) primarily rely on traditional tropes but also that his concept of chaxugeju is original in name only, as it restates ideas drawn from the Confucian Book of Rites. It is also shown that by focusing on the family and lineage, on the one hand, and their village context, on the other, Fei’s (1992) representation of Chinese rural society ignores the importance to villagers of social relations conducted within inter-village marketing areas, into which those relations extend and which significantly include non-kin ties. The chapter is unique in the discussion of Chinese sociology in demonstrating that the concept of chaxugeju is unhelpful for an analysis of guanxi in that it provides no purchase on the notion of instrumental engagement. The latter is shown to be readily explained with regard to guanxi through the notion of mianzi, face, a notion about which Fei (1992) surprisingly has nothing to say. It is also shown in the chapter that, in his discussion of chaxugeju as a category of sociological analysis, Fei (1992) conflates two distinctly different forms of obligation, relating to familial roles on the one hand, and favour exchange on the other. This is a matter that is taken up again in Chapter 6.
Questions regarding the theorization of guanxi and its cultural background continue to be discussed in Chapter 3, which addresses the notion of reciprocity in guanxi. The idea that key aspects of China’s cultural heritage inform guanxi is supported not only by the idea that its structure is parallel with that of the Chinese family form, but also that guanxi expresses the traditional notion of 报 bao, reciprocity, as a number of leading scholars have claimed. The argument concerning the historical sources of bao is examined in the chapter. It is found that, while classical sources do indeed provide examples of a large number of forms of interaction that may be associated with the notion of reciprocity, many of them, however, are not identified with the term bao. Indeed, the idea that there is a unified notion of reciprocal relations in classical sources, implicit in guanxi, is at best an exaggeration. Some scholars have identified another term, 恕 shu, as also representing reciprocity and thereby similarly contributing to a legacy inherited by guanxi. For a number of reasons, this is an intriguing proposition.
It is shown in Chapter 3 that while shu is important in Confucian thought, a nineteenth-century missionary scholar, James Legge, mistranslated shu as ‘reciprocity’ in conveying Confucius’s 论语 Lunyu, Analects, into English, an error repeated in frequently cited publications by the eminent Hong Kong Chinese sociologist Ambrose King. Rather than ‘reciprocity’, shu may be summarily understood as ‘empathy’, but more completely—as shown in the
chapter—it refers to what is known sociologically as ‘role taking’. It is of interest that this correct understanding of shu is not incorporated into the discussion of guanxi by any of the standard sources, and yet it relates to an important aspect of it. Guanxi, as a relationship cultivated by its participants, requires all of the attributes of role taking through which a person comes to know their own capacities and is orientated to the accessibility and capabilities of a potential or current guanxi partner. This neglected aspect of guanxi is indicated through the serendipitous correction in Chapter 3 of misunderstandings in key sections of the literature regarding shu
The final part of Chapter 3 considers another aspect of the Confucian tradition that many associate with guanxi, namely the notion of renqing as its underlying ethical dimension. The argument proposing a classical source of renqing is typically based on its supposed link with Confucian 仁 ren, which is examined in the chapter. It is shown that, while ren is related to selfcultivation, among other things, renqing is connected with practices of favour exchange. It is shown how these are quite different enactments which practically and philosophically point in dissimilar directions. This part of the discussion concludes the examination of classical Chinese traditions as possible sources of guanxi principles and practices. The sceptical appraisals of Chapters 2 and 3 are not designed to imply that guanxi, as located in twentieth- and twenty-first-century China, is without historical sources. Instrumental particularistic behaviour and its associated utilization of giftgiving customs do indeed have a long history in China and its key elements are presented in Chapter 4.
In the discussion of guanxi, renqing is widely seen as an underlying element of it that provides an ethical orientation to its practitioners, crystallized in the obligation to return a favour. During the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, the period covering the late imperial and the Republican eras in Chinese history, renqing was a term used to refer to instrumental particularism, as guanxi became the summary term from the 1980s. Chapter 4 opens with a discussion of renqing in two previously unexplored sources written in the late 1940s which reflect how the term was understood at the time. Having established the currency of renqing discourse and the nature of its practices in Republican China, the discussion turns to an account of the renqing practices of an imperial official of the mid-nineteenth century, Li Hongzhang. Two things emerge that contradict a good deal of what is currently assumed about renqing. First, money is today thought to be a difficult medium for renqing practice, but it was pivotal to Li’s. The circumstances in which money can effectively serve renqing is outlined in the chapter. Second, it is shown that renqing gift-giving
need not be part of gift exchange, that the provision of a gift may be a consummatory act rather than an element of reciprocal exchange. In this case renqing secures protection. It is shown in the chapter that in rural China, up until the establishment of the People’s Republic, gift-giving was largely used as a means to offset envy and suspicion, a practice that continues today among rural Chinese. It was only since the collectivization of agriculture, from the 1950s, that villagers began to practise renqing not to buy protection but as part of an investment in reciprocal social support. The conditions under which these changes occur, in both the structure of rural China and in renqing practices, are identified and discussed in the chapter.
In considering the changes brought to renqing practices through the creation of the Communist state in 1949, Chapter 4 goes on to show that the enormous growth in the number of administrators, 干部 ganbu, cadres, meant that opportunities for favour seeking rose enormously in both rural as well as urban areas, and at all levels of society. Indeed, the largest change in the practice of instrumental particularism at this time was descent down the social scale in the practice of favour exchange, through which a significant lateral spread of the incidence of renqing also occurred. The chapter chronicles the changing vocabulary for instrumental particularism over a relatively short period of time, from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, from 拉弦 la xian, string pulling, and 走后门 zou houmen, going through the back door, to finally settle on guanxi. The final section of Chapter 4 is focused on a particular case of cultural meaning, in understanding guanxi. The discussion of guanxi in English-language sources provides a number of instances of incidental reference to ‘friendship’ in consideration of guanxi. It is shown, though, that the use of this term in the literature relates a culturally insular meaning of friendship which juxtaposes private and affective relations on the one hand with instrumental ones on the other. While this captures American and European mores, it fails to indicate the characteristics of Chinese friendship which is at the same time private and public, expressive and instrumental. It is the characteristically Chinese meaning of friendship that informs the practices of both renqing and guanxi, and which are discussed in the chapter.
While ‘friendship’ is occasionally brought to deliberation on guanxi, ‘trust’ is almost a constant. What these terms have in common, among other things, is the way in which their meaning is subject to significant cultural influence, and therefore variation. What ‘friendship’ or ‘trust’ mean in the United States, for instance, is markedly different from what these terms mean in China. The meaning of trust in guanxi is examined in Chapter 5. The chapter begins with a discussion of research which claims to demonstrate the
centrality of trust to guanxi. Ambiguity in the English-language term ‘trust’, especially concerning the distinction between giving trust, on the one hand, and being trustworthy, on the other, is reduced somewhat in Chinese through the use of two distinct terms, 信任 xinren, meaning trustful, and 信用 xinyong, meaning to have credibility or trustworthiness. Whereas the default meaning of ‘trust’ in English is ‘trustful’, in Chinese it is ‘trustworthiness’.
After discussing the place of trust in networks in general, in order to situate it in guanxi in particular, the chapter moves on to consider the cultural protocols of trust, and particularly xinyong, in Chinese society. Because of the mutual scrutiny, close familiarity, and propensity to demonstrate dependability in the maintenance of face for guanxi relations, it is shown in the chapter that the reputational component of trustworthiness in this context suggests the analytic value of the notion of assurance rather than trust in understanding the underlying mechanism of personal evaluation in guanxi. The incentive structure of trust is internal to the relation between two individuals, whereas that of assurance is external to the two-way connection because it is subject to the social appraisal of others. This is an important consideration not found in previous accounts of guanxi. The final section of the chapter returns to the network aspect of guanxi in considering the nature of influence in the practice of guanxi. Strong network ties are typically understood to imply high levels of trust between participants. In guanxi networks, on the other hand, the ties in question are not latent in pre-given structures but dependent on the instrumental value of the relationship, that is, they are cultivated. The consequences of this for understanding influence and also trust in guanxi networks are demonstrated in the chapter.
The final chapter provides a detailed sociological overview of guanxi by examining a number of conventions that arguably limit the development of a coherent theory of guanxi. Some issues mentioned in previous chapters are returned to in Chapter 6, in order to present a unified rationale for a model of guanxi that is both cognizant of its cultural setting in Chinese society and history, and also sufficiently rigorous to encourage future research. Three particular empirical issues are dealt with. First, the distinction between family and guanxi is clearly specified. It is shown that close family connections, between parents and offspring and between siblings, are based on principles of interaction that are fundamentally unlike those of guanxi Family connections are closed to outsiders and provide support on the basis of need without any requirement of returned favour, whereas guanxi relations are open and based on obligations of exchange. Second, the idea that close friendship may transmute to a fictive kin relationship, bridging kin and
non-kin ties and thereby strengthening guanxi, is shown to be based on a number of exaggerations and misunderstandings. Finally, the characterization of a distinction between friendship guanxi and acquaintance guanxi, variously described in the literature as ‘savings’ guanxi and ‘investment’ guanxi, or guanxi based on ganqing as opposed to guanxi based on 交情 jiaoqing, is shown to reify what are in fact not distinct types but different possible phases in the development of guanxi.
As important as identifying empirical suppositions that are in need of correction is the explanation of how such errors may occur. In Chapter 6 three sources are identified of what are described as category ambiguities concerning guanxi, especially related to the three issues of empirical analysis mentioned above. The first of these is the uncritical way in which everyday language terms are employed in treatments of guanxi. It is a feature of social analysis of all types that terms used by social participants themselves in describing or referring to their experiences are drawn on in explanatory accounts. It is for this reason that sociological analysis requires not only empirical investigation but also conceptual clarification and refinement. A failure to engage in the latter risks the possibility of simply repeating folk wisdoms rather than generating viable sociological accounts of what is studied. The claim here is that folk wisdom unfortunately populates a good deal of the accounts of guanxi published in academic journals. The fact that cultural and historical stereotypes are left unexamined in discussion of guanxi practices is a second source of category ambiguity in treatment of guanxi. The unexamined idea that China is a ‘Confucian society’ permits, indeed encourages, a number of assumptions concerning guanxi that cannot be sustained when subjected to serious investigation, as discussed in this chapter. Finally, methodological questions are raised concerning the tendency of social network analysis to privilege tie strength, when guanxi ties are strategically both strengthened and weakened out of strategic considerations of participants rather than being latent in the structure of their relations.
It can be seen that the six chapters to follow can be grouped according to the broad questions they consider. The first chapter provides a comprehensive introduction to guanxi as a social practice of instrumental particularism. The Chinese cultural context, frequently attributed to generating the character and development of these practices, is thoroughly examined in the second and third chapters. These chapter are designed to investigate and correct some conventional misunderstandings about the basis of guanxi, and in doing so have much to say about the society and culture of China as well as elements of its history. The fourth chapter continues both the systematic and
cultural examination of instrumental particularism in China by considering the structure of guanxi-like practices in their institutional and historical setting from the late Qing period up to the reconstitution of social and political life in China from the perspective of the emergence of guanxi in the 1980s. The last two chapters consider how guanxi might be appropriately understood from the perspective of sociologically informed conceptual refinement, bringing systematic analysis to an operational understanding of guanxi.
In an account of guanxi that is not only empirically rigorous and historically informed, but also culturally sensitive, it is necessary in discussion throughout to refer to Chinese-language terms. In each chapter, as in this Introduction, the first mention of a Chinese word will include both 简化字 jianhuazi, simplified characters, as well as 拼音 pinyin, romanized transliterations. In subsequent statements within the chapter, though, only the pinyin will be indicated.
1 Making Guanxi
Anyone with even the vaguest awareness of Chinese business practices will know the term 关系 guanxi. From the time that China joined the globalized world in the early 1980s, when Western companies began doing business in China, the idea that special relationships are essential in order to deal with Chinese firms has been part of the sensibility of engagement in the international economy (Luo 2007; So and Walker 2006; Wang and Hsung 2016). Guanxi is generally understood to mean ‘connection’ or ‘relationship’ but it refers to a particular form of those things, a form in which the links between participants are enduring, involve informal exchanges of various sorts, operate in a framework of mutual obligation, and are voluntarily entered into in order to achieve benefits that arise from the relationship itself. The fact that the term is left untranslated indicates that guanxi is in some special sense ‘Chinese’, that it relates to a cultural heritage, and also that its complexity cannot be adequately captured by an Englishlanguage term, that indeed there is no equivalent term in English that could do justice either to the traditional background of guanxi or the intricacy of the relations indicated by the notion. While relevant in understanding Chinese business practices it is important to appreciate that guanxi is by no means confined to business but operates in all areas of social and political life in China and Chinese cultural areas. Guanxi is drawn on to ensure the adequate provision of health or medical care (Chan and Yao 2018), advantageous school placement (Ruan 2017), securing employment (Bian 2018), achieving military promotion (Wang 2016), reaching favourable legal decisions (Li 2018; Zhao 2019), and so on.
A person will go to the effort of establishing guanxi with another because it is beneficial for them to do so. The way in which guanxi is helpful is multifaceted; the fact that one can establish a guanxi indicates that the persons involved are regarded as resourceful and also reliable. To have such acknowledged qualities is registered in the relevant person’s social standing or esteem, through which that person acquires 面子 mianzi, face. Not only is guanxi an expressive social resource in this sense, it has cumulative effect in so far as guanxi involves exchanges of favour and also gifts between The
Theory of Guanxi and Chinese Society. Jack Barbalet, Oxford University Press (2021). © Jack Barbalet.
The Theory
Guanxi and
participants which are generative of obligations to return the favour, and in that sense has instrumental value. Having guanxi, then, makes a person attractive—guanxi attractive—because a person who has guanxi with others is a person worth knowing. This tells us something else about guanxi. While guanxi is always dyadic in its basic form, that is it is always between two persons, any given individual may have guanxi with a number of different people and one of the benefits of a guanxi link is that it potentially gives a person access to the other guanxi partners of any single person with whom they themselves form a guanxi. So, while guanxi is dyadic these dyads may connect together into a lattice or web and thus form 关系网 guanxiwang, a guanxi network.
It has been mentioned that a characteristic feature of guanxi is that it is useful to the parties involved, something about which more will be said later. Of course, all relationships have some use to those who participate in them, at least potentially. The special quality of a guanxi is that it consists of two elements more or less fused together. The first of these is the ‘particularistic’ nature of guanxi, in the sense that it is not merely restricted to another person but in so being is affectively focused on the relationship between the persons involved. A guanxi relation, then, has an emotional dimension that is not incidental but is in many ways defining of the relation between participants. The other necessary element of guanxi is that it is ‘instrumental’. It has already been noted that guanxi is useful or beneficial to the participants. Again, this is not an incidental aspect of guanxi but a core element in so far as guanxi only exists to advance the interests of participants. The combination of these two components of guanxi is captured in the idea that the favours exchanged between guanxi participants are ‘social investments’ as they are given with the expectation of ‘something in return’; but unlike market exchanges these investments are not ‘cold’ but intertwined with 人情 renqing, human feelings or empathy as well as 感情 ganqing, emotional feelings or sentiment (Gold 1985: 660; see also Jacobs 1979: 263; Lin 2001: 156). It is these feeling states that elevate guanxi as significant for participants not simply in the rewards it provides but in the specially charged attachment to the relationship it evokes. Guanxi participants share a sense that their relationship possesses rightness, an ethical quality, that underlies feelings of responsibility to guanxi partners and to their relationship. These and related issues will be examined in this chapter, which will outline the way in which guanxi is formed. We shall see that persons can share a guanxi only if they share a common identity, although the identity in question is not necessarily manifest prior to a connection being made between the persons involved. The identity underlying guanxi may not be
noticeable until its usefulness is recognized, it may be latent or even constructed, as we shall see, but it is nevertheless essential in the formation of the connection. That a person recognizes a common identity with another is necessary for their guanxi, but it is not sufficient; if the significance of such common identity is to be realized and the relationship is to endure then some form of commitment between the persons and especially to their connection is required; this commitment is achieved through the emotional involvement of the participants, to be examined in the second section of the chapter. The third section considers how guanxi endures over time, in which a number of factors are identified including the special nature of debt between a favour giver and recipient, and the persistence of debt, so that guanxi exchanges are not exhausted or concluded. Finally, acknowledging the costs as well as the benefits of guanxi brings us to consideration of its ‘efficiency’. The notion of efficiency is invoked because less-efficient practices tend to be displaced by more-efficient, and this consideration relates to the persistence of guanxi and its changing form, a theme that leads finally to the way in which guanxi is often associated with corruption, an association derived from the fact that an informal if not irregular provision of a favour given with the expectation of a returned benefit may appear to be indistinguishable from a bribe.
Making a Connection
While the process of making and conducting guanxi is necessarily complex, as we shall see, its beginning point is quite simple; those who share a guanxi connection must have a common ‘identity’, that is, a basis, premise or ground that they share; they must in some way belong together, each person recognizing and acknowledging that they are alike in some meaningful way, that they share 同 tong, a sameness. In his pioneering study of guanxi anthropologist Bruce Jacobs (1979) described this factor as a guanxi ‘base’. There are many ways to achieve this property, of sharing a common identifying factor. The single most significant base for the guanxi of the small-town Taiwanese politicians Jacobs studied was locality of origin, the sharing of a ‘native place’ (Jacobs 1979: 244–5). The next most significant, he found, was kinship. Kinship is a term that covers a number of possibilities; Jacobs distinguishes between agnatic kin and affinal, referring respectively to kinship between male relatives on the father’s side, on the one hand, and to individuals related by marriage, on the other. The most reliable of these kinship bases, Jacobs found, were agnatic kin, but as he notes regarding the
