Chen (2004)

Management > Asian Management > Lectures > Independent Research > Guanxi > Face > Renqing > Confucian relationships > Family > Guanxi building > Guanxi evasion

Guanxi evasion

While building relationships is good, there is also pressure to limit one's guanxi at both individual and business levels, for guanxi brings obligations as well as favours.

"The more one gets from one's guanxiwang, the more obligations one incurs in one's renqingwang"

Once you initiate a guanxiwang, you are then locked into an interdependent relationship with others, where you have to respond to requests, losing your autonomy and freedom. This means that the Chinese try to keep from building intimate relations with those on whom they do not want to be dependent.

To cope with this, a compartmentalisation strategy has been developed. This is where different types of exchanges are separated, such as social and business. For example, neighbours will walk miles into town to sell items to each other, as a bad deal could stain their friendship and harm one of the five cardinal relationships.

In deals, when faced with a social exchange, the rules of interaction are clear (needs of relatives), as are those for economic exchange (objective and fairness), but for a mixed relationship, it is difficult which rules are suitable and so a decision is often put off.