Қытайдағы қарым-қатынастар жүйесі: Гуаньси

Chinese term

Guanxi is a term used in Chinese culture to describe an individual's social network of mutually beneficial personal and business relationships. The character guan, 关, means “closed” and "caring" while the character xi 系 means “system” and together the term refers to a closed caring system of relationships that is somewhat analogous to the term old boy's network in the West. In Western media, the pinyin romanization guanxi is more widely used than common translations such as "connections" or "relationships" because those terms do not capture the significance of a person's guanxi to most personal and business dealings in China. Unlike in the West, guanxi relationships are almost never established purely through formal meetings but must also include spending time to get to know each other during tea sessions, dinner banquets, or other personal meetings. Essentially, guanxi requires a personal bond before any business relationship can develop. As a result, guanxi relationships are often more tightly bound than relationships in Western personal social networks. Guanxi has a major influence on the management of businesses based in mainland China, Hong Kong, and those owned by Overseas Chinese people in Southeast Asia (the bamboo network). Guanxi and guanxi networks are grounded in Confucian doctrine about the proper structure of family, hierarchical, and friendly relationships in a community, including the need for implicit mutual commitments, reciprocity, and trust. Guanxi has 3 sub dimensions sometimes abbreviated as GRX which stands for ganqing, a measure of the emotional attachment in a relationship, renqing ([[wikt:人情 rénqíng/jen ch'ing), the moral obligation to maintain a relationship with reciprocal exchange of favors, and xinren, or the amount of interpersonal trust. Guanxi is also related to the idea of "face" (面子, miànzi/mien tzu), which refers to social status, propriety, prestige, or a combination of all three. Other related concepts include wulun (t=五倫), the five cardinal types of relationships, which supports the idea of a long term, developing relationship between a business and its client, and yi ren and ren, which respectively support reciprocity and empathy.

The guanxi system developed in imperial, dynastic China. The term is not generally used to describe interpersonal relationships within a family, although guanxi obligations can sometimes be described in terms of an extended family. Essentially, familial relations are the core of one's interpersonal relations, while the various non familial interpersonal relations are modifications or extensions of the familial relations. An individual may view and interact with other individuals in a way that is similar to their viewing of and interactions with family members; through guanxi, a relationship between two friends can be likened by each friend to being a pseudo elder sibling–younger sibling relationship, with each friend acting accordingly based on that relationship (the friend who sees himself as the "younger sibling" will show more deference to the friend who is the "older sibling"). Guanxi is also based in concepts like loyalty, dedication, reciprocity, and trust, which help to develop non familial interpersonal relations, while mirroring the concept of filial piety, which is used to ground familial relations. Ultimately, the relationships formed by guanxi are personal and not transferable.

In China, a country where business relations are highly socially embedded, guanxi plays a central role in the shaping and development of day to day business transactions by allowing inter business relationships and relationships between businesses and the government to grow as individuals representing these organizations work with one another. Specifically, in a business context, guanxi occurs through individual interactions first before being applied on a corporate level (e. g., one member of a business may perform a favor for a member of another business because they have interpersonal ties, which helps to facilitate the relationship between the two businesses involved in this interaction). Guanxi also acts as an essential informal governance mechanism, helping leverage Chinese organizations on social and economic platforms. In places in China where institutions, like the structuring of local governments and government policies, may make business interactions less efficient to facilitate, guanxi can serve as a way for businesses to circumvent such institutions by having their members cultivate their interpersonal ties. The nature of guanxi, however, can also form the basis of patron–client relations. As a result, it creates challenges for businesses whose members are obligated to repay favors to members of other businesses when they cannot sufficiently do so. In following these obligations, businesses may also be forced to act in ways detrimental to their future, and start to over rely on each other. Members within a business may also start to more frequently discuss information that all members knew prior, rather than try and discuss information only known by select members. If the ties fail between two businesses within an overall network built through guanxi, the other ties comprising the overall network have a chance of failing as well. Note that the aforementioned organizational flaws guanxi creates can be diminished by having more efficient institutions (like open market systems that are regulated by formal organizational procedures while promoting competition and innovation) in place to help facilitate business interactions more effectually. However, guanxi only becomes nepotism when individuals start to value their interpersonal relationships as ways to accomplish their goals over the relationships themselves. When interpersonal relationships are seen in this light, then, it is usually the case that individuals are not viewing their cultivation of prospective business relationships without bias. In addition, guanxi and nepotism are distinct in that the former is inherently a social transaction (considering the emphasis on the actual act of building relationships) and not purely based in financial transactions, while the latter is explicitly based in financial transactions and has a higher chance of resulting in legal consequences. However, the issue of guanxi as a form of government corruption has been raised into question over the recent years. This is often the case when businesspeople interpret guanxi's reciprocal obligations as unethical gift giving in exchange for government approval. The line drawn between ethical and unethical reciprocal obligation is unclear, but China is currently looking into understanding the structural problems inherent in the guanxi system.

Guanxi can be used as a school of thought that influences how ethnic Chinese think of and view society. The Chinese in the diaspora are more likely to adhere and connect to the group of people with shared ancestry/ background/ heritage. Moreover, diasporic communities might possess ties with individuals in their home country. Guanxi allows the diaspora to maintain their networks and foster close relations with people in their home country and form a subethnic enclave within society. Guanxi could also influence how the diaspora assimilates into the host country, and how the diaspora deals with racism in society. Groups that could be studied are Chinese Americans, Chinese Indonesians who have faced prejudice in their host countries. Marred by the LA massacre in 1871, Saigu in 1992, the Japanese American internment during World War II, and the idea of the "Hindu Invasion", the Asian Americans already in the United States faced discrimination from the wider American society. They had to find solutions based on trial and error, looking for legal, political, and social ways to find their place in society.

In recent years, the ethical consequences of guanxi have been brought into question. While guanxi can bring benefits to people directly within the guanxi network, it also has the potential to bring harm to individuals, societies and nations when misused or abused. For example, mutual reciprocal obligation is a major component of guanxi. However, the specific date, time and method are often unspecified. Thus, guanxi can be ethically questionable when one party takes advantage of others' personal favors, without seeking to reciprocate. A common example of unethical reciprocal obligation involves the abuse of business government relations. In 2013, an official of the CCP criticized government officials for using public funds of over 10,000 yuan for banquets. This totals to approximately 48 billion dollars worth of banquets per year. Guanxi is a neutral word, but the use or practice of guanxi can range from 'benign, neutral, to questionable and corrupt'. In mainland China, terms like guanxi practice or la guanxi are used to refer to bribery and corruption. Guanxi practice is commonly employed by favour seekers to seek corrupt benefits from power holders. Guanxi offers an efficient information transmission channel to help guanxi members to identify potential and trustworthy partners; it also offers safe and secret platform for illegal transactions. Guanxi norms help buyers and sellers of corrupt benefits justify and rationalize their acts. Li's Performing Bribery in China (2011) supply essential analyses on how guanxi practice works in corrupt exchanges. This question is especially critical in cross cultural business partnerships, when Western firms and auditors are operating within Confucian cultures. Western based managers must exercise caution in determining whether or not their Chinese colleagues and business partners are in fact practicing guanxi. Caution and extra guidance should be taken to ensure that conflict does not occur as a result of misunderstood cultural agreements. The term guanxixue (关系学, the 'art' or 'knowledge' of guanxi) is also used to specifically refer to the manipulation and corruption brought about by a selfish and sometimes illegal utilization of guanxi. In turn, guanxixue distinguishes unethical usage of guanxi from the term guanxi itself. Although many Chinese lament the strong importance of guanxi in their culture because of the unethical use that arises through it, they still consider guanxi as a Chinese element that should not be denied.

The four dimensions for a successful business networking comprise: trust, bonding, mutual relationship, and empathy. Nevertheless, the points of view in which these dimensions are understood and consolidated into business tasks are extensively disparate in the East vs the West. From the Western point of view, trust is treated as shared unwavering quality, constancy, and correspondence. Instead, from the Eastern point of view, trust is additionally synonymous with obligation, where guanxi is required to be kept up through persistent long haul affiliation and connection. The Chinese system of wulun (the basic norms of guanxi) supports the Eastern attitude, emphasizing that one's fulfillment of one's responsibilities in a given role ensures the smooth functioning of Chinese society. Correspondence is likewise a measurement which is substantially more stressed in the East than in the West. As per Confucianism, every individual is urged to wind up a yi ren (exemplary individual) and compensate some help with altogether more than one has gotten. In conclusion, compassion is a measurement that is exceedingly implanted in Eastern business bonds, the significance for dealers and clients to see each other's needs is extremely important. The Confucian understanding of ren, which also equates to "Do not do to others as one does not want others to do to him", stresses the importance for sellers and customers to understand each other's needs. For example, reciprocal obligation plays an intricate role in maintaining harmonious business relations. It is expected that both sides not only stay friendly with each other, but also reciprocate a favor given by the other party. Western relationship marketing, on the other hand, is much more formally constructed, in which no social obligation and further exchanges of favors are expected. Thus, long term personal relations are more emphasized in Chinese guanxi practice than in Western relationship marketing.