How Chinese stereotypes could influence your business

“Shanghainese only care about money.” “Beijingers are really pretentious.” “People from Shanxi are really cheap.” These are a few of the numerous stereotypes I have heard Chinese people say about other Chinese people while living in China. I even often hear Chinese people use these stereotypes to explain their own views: “Of course that’s how I see it; I’m from Beijing.”

I used to just get frustrated and think of how detrimental stereotypes can be since, as an American, I have been trained to find them abhorrent in any form.[1] However, I have recently been considering how these stereotypes could affect businesses operating in China, whether foreign or domestic. Even if the stereotypes don’t apply to every individual, when people from a given area believe a stereotype is a cultural trait then it may just turn into a self-fulfilling reality as they play the cultural role expressed in the stereotype. This is something businesses need to be acutely aware of as they formulate their strategies in China.

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1.3 billion people drawing you in

I frequently ask business people why they are interested in doing business in China. The most common response I hear involves the promise of 1.3 billion Chinese consumers with rapidly rising disposable incomes. While this may be factually accurate, in my experience I’ve found that it’s safer for businesses to think of China as having many demographic subsets, rather than thinking of it as one country with a homogenous population.
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