How Do Different Perceptions Towards Relationship Building from The East & West Affect Negotiation Behavior
Negotiation with Strangers – the East vs the West
Westerners do not mind interacting with strangers. In fact, a lot of Westerners actually love to mingle with strangers, or even if they don’t, they aren’t afraid of talking with strangers. Easterners are not the same to say the least when it comes to interactions with strangers. In fact, most of them by default, are mistrustful of strangers, let alone saying “hi” or making a conversation with strangers. This implies that Easterners take longer amounts of time to develop relationships with strangers, whilst Westerners may require less.
In China, strangers are nearly always mistrusted, unless there is some sort of common ground between the strangers’ past. To clarify, “strangers” in a Chinese context include everybody that the Chinese don’t know, and I mean everybody. For starters, one is often categorized as distrustful if one is not from China. Even if one is from China, it depends if he/she is from the same province, or even the same city. The bottom line is that if one does not come from a similar ethnicity or culture from a Chinese individual, it is likely that the Chinese individual will by default, distrust that “stranger” until he/she can prove him/herself trustworthy. This does not bode well in business negotiations between a Chinese party and a Western party.
As a Hong Kong-er, I can say with confidence that if you are not from China, there is not a lot you can do to gain the trust of your Chinese counterpart in business negotiations, since the Chinese distrust everybody by default and worst still, they tend to hide their distrust so that both parties do not lose face (i.e. a Chinese person would never come up to you and say I don’t trust you. Instead, they act in ways that show they don’t trust you if you aren’t “one of them”). This causes great amounts of time to be consumed when building a relationship with a Chinese negotiator, since the Chinese negotiator would often judge your intentions behind every word and action you display privately. Therefore, the Chinese puts trust as the number one requirement before they are even willing to participate in negotiations. In other words, no trust, no negotiations.
In order to build of trust, it is often recommended for a Westerner to find an intermediary whom the Chinese counterpart trusts to carry out the negotiations. In this scenario, the Westerner would have already built a bond between the Chinese counterpart through the intermediary, which counts a lot (words cannot describe how significant this is) towards whether a favorable deal will be carved out eventually.
Through my years of conducting international business, it is notable how the Chinese, Hong Kong-ers and even people from other Eastern countries can warm up to you once you gain their trust. As many of my western counterparts noted, when somebody from China trusts them, they often refer large blocks of people, which includes their friends and family, to them. It is always hard to get your first Chinese customer but once you win over his/her heart, you may be looking at 10 or more referrals every time, so the reward can be huge. However, the difficulty of winning the trust of one’s first Chinese customer can often be underestimated and if you are not prepared to spend long periods of time to network with the Chinese, it is often advisable for you to either switch your attention to other markets, or find somebody whom the Chinese can trust easily.
The Chinese roots of distrust against strangers are very deep, and one of must look into Chinese history to get the answer. In Ancient China, emperors do not typically hold onto power for long periods of time, and indeed, dynasties often come and go. A reason this happens is because of the large amounts of power struggles that often happen behind the scenes. As you probably can guess, due to the strong emphasis that the Chinese place on “face” and “harmony”, disagreements amongst powerful elites, including heated debates never happen on the table. Chinese dynasties can almost always be categorized by the power struggles that happen behind the scene, and powerful elites that govern the country are often split into several parties internally to fight for ultimate power amongst themselves. Therefore, you can imagine how you must never show your true intentions and speak openly about your own thoughts when you are involved in Chinese power struggles. This culture of distrust has thus been sowed into Chinese culture over thousands of years of political history and events, rendering trust as a scarcity.
Therefore, do not expect to gain the trust of your Chinese negotiation counterpart after a few rounds of negotiations. Instead, spend significant amounts of time and energy to foster a relationship with your Chinese counterpart, which includes getting to know their families better over meals before proceeding to formal negotiations. Do pay attention not to ask questions that your Chinese counterpart may view as a threat to their personal well-being.
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