In a Personal Context
Guanxi is a connection between two individuals. This involves a dichotomy: kin and non-kin (Lin 2001a). Kin connections include ties of immediate family, extended family, close kin, and distant kin. Built upon blood and marriage lineages, kinship networks define structural boundaries for one's kin ties. Non-kin ties, on the other hand, are much broader than kin ties, and their structural boundaries are multidimensional. Any geographic place and social institution to which an individual has ever been attached during his or her lifetime establishes a structural boundary within which to develop non-kin ties. Hometown folks, classmates, comrades-in-arms, work colleagues, and neighbors are a few examples for illustration. But none of these can become or sustain guanxi ties if they fail to meet the following three qualifications: personal, close, resourceful.
Guanxi is a personalized tie. What makes a tie personal? A one-on-one conversation that shares secrets and gossips makes a tie personal. Expressing sympathy or offering care to a hospitalized friend makes a tie personal. Providing help as a favor to a neighbor who desperately needs it makes a tie personal. Saving a colleague from trouble even at one's own risk makes a tie personal. These kinds of scenarios do not occur randomly; only a proportion of kin and non-kin contacts are elevated to the level of personalized ties through events of personal significance. These events include, as we shall see throughout this book, life-cycle events of local significance (Yan 1996) and family emergencies (Chang 2010), events of cultural significance (Bian 2001), career promotion (Wang 2016), and business founding and development (Burt and Burzynska 2017).
Guanxi is a subjectively close tie. Personalized ties are personal, subject to the involved partiesā perceptions of sentimental attachment and obligation fulfillment to each other. Even among kin, biological or role relationships do not automatically generate guanxi between people unless such relationships result in active and intimate interactions in the personal worlds (Kipnis 1997: 7). In this sense, Sahlins's (1965/1972) notion of āsocial distanceā applies to both kin and non-kin ties in how they perceive each other. When these perceptions are mutually high, a guanxi tie is sustained; otherwise the accumulated problems may lead to the dissolution of a guanxi tie. The highest point of guanxi is when the two parties maintain mutual perceptions of familial sentiments and obligations to each other (Fei 1947/1992; Liang 1949/1986). That āmasterāapprentice relations are equivalence to fatherāson relationsā (åøå¾å¦ē¶å, shitu ru fuzi) is a well-known example of the point.
Finally, guanxi is a potentially resourceful tie. Personalized ties are expected by the parties involved to facilitate exchanges of favors for expressive and instrumental purposes. While expressive purposes are interactions intended for the emotional and psychological gains of the parties involved, instrumental purposes are the exchanges of tangible and intangible resources that benefit one or both parties in social interaction (Lin 2001b). In a guanxi tie, one is able to prevail upon another to perform a favor, and vice versa. The two parties need not be of equal social status (Yan 2006), but they must have access to non-redundant resources to satisfy the exchange of favors (Bian 2010). Failure to reciprocate a favor is a violation of mutual obligation and hurts sentimental feelings. Therefore, a close personal tie may quickly lose its instrumental value when the two parties are completely redundant to each other. This is especially so for career-driven people (Feng 2010). Among retirees and the elderly, close personal ties keep together resource-redundant people for expressive favor exchanges.
In a Business Context
Economic actors are socially embedded (Granovetter 1985). In Chinese guanxi culture, this has two important implications. First, it is the well connected who do business with each other and do it well. That is, entrepreneurs who have guanxi ties to resourceful others are likely to start a business and operate it to a respectable level (Bian and Zhang 2014). Second, poorly connected entrepreneurs who have bright business ideas must cultivate guanxi ties to resourceful others in order to convert and capitalize their ideas into profitable business operations (Zhang 2016).
Prior guanxi ties before business are of fundamental importance for new ventures to emerge. They are the support networks to obtain business opportunity, mobilize financial capital, and recruit core members of the business team (Bian 2008a). Lacking prior ties of this nature can be frustrating for foreign businesspeople i...