Chinese Cultural Values Essay

The key cultural values in China revolve around pride, hierarchy, and guanxi. Pride is one of the main cultural values as Chinese have always seen themselves as the center of the human civilization. They have always expected other to pay tribute to them because of their unique culture that has been influenced mostly by Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. China has also had a great history of development when it comes to agriculture, manufacturing, inventing and now business investments. Hierarchy in China is also a strong cultural value due to their belief that they can do anything they set their minds to. One example of this is that they want to be given a role and they will do that job, which is unlike western culture where we get empowered

This led to the difficulty of westerns doing business with China because it is believed that it was all about self-interest and that the westerns were pretending to have the Chinese interests at heart. The message of Xunzi was also the only one allowed by the communist party which led to guanxi and the hierarchical belief of using military strategies to build a very successful business. These values have been allowed and forced to endure over time by the communist party which has been ruling for so long that the people became very individualistic and had to rely on the guanxi strategy to endure the tough times. I believe that the changes that are taking place affecting these values are the increased business relations with the western world which views many of the Chinese values as corrupt or unethical. Guanxi is a great example for something westerns see as corruption due to it being originally established on the exchange of gifts and favors in order to succeed and create self-value in your area of business or success. Due to the western laws and global regulations this can be seen as bribery which has been banned by many organizations and commissions in order to create a fair business system. While guanxi can be seen as changing, the hierarchy and pride have not been pushed to change due to the impressive economic growth that has been taking place in China as well as their pride of their heritage and doing things the Chinese