Chinese Business ― Rethinking Guanxi and Trust in Chinese Business Networks

The nature, institutional foundations, and issues surrounding the apparent success of Chinese business networks is examined in this book. Major concepts such as guanxi, xinyong and gangqing, exploring the nature of trust, relationships and sentiments in Chinese business networks, are re-examined. A significant amount of literature has been devoted to the study of Chinese business, and they largely fall into two broad schools, the culturalist approach, arguing for an essentialist formulation to explain success and the market approach, suggesting that there is nothing inherently unique about Chinese business. This book critiques both these approaches and argues, based on primary data collected in various countries, and with case studies of a large number of Chinese businesses, that another approach, the institutional embedded approach, provides a better explanation for the success, and failure of Chinese business and Chinese business networks.

Tong Chee Kiong is Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. He is also Special Academic Advisor and Chair Professor at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) as well as the Director of the Institute of Asian Studies, UBD. Chee Kiong’s research interests focus on the Chinese in Southeast Asia, religion and religious change and Asian Business Networks. His recent publications include Chinese Death Rituals (2004), Rationalizing Religion: Religious Conversion, Revivalism, and Competition in Singapore (2007), and Identity and Ethnic Relations in Southeast Asia: Racializing Chineseness (2010). Chee Kiong has also published papers in the British Journal of Sociology, International Migration Review, Diaspora, Child Abuse and Neglect, International Sociology, and Journal of Asian Business.