so i just took the minutes for a meeting between my company and a foreign broadcaster. i bet i'm not allowed to share the details of it, so i won't. even though they were juicy. well, only if you're really interested in the goings on of the Beijing Olympics. but beyond that, hearing the developments in the meeting, it really is crazy how much the Olympics will mean for the press. Since forever, though particularly since 1949, China has always been extremely closed off, monitoring all media material to leave the country. And live international feeds? i dunno if they happened, but if they did, you can bet that they were restricted to whatever room the CCP was holding a press conference in. the olympics are really going to open the floodgates. there is no way Beijing is going to be able to control all the media activity that is going on, and i think it is going to be pretty hard to return things to the way they were before. so, sweet!
the other interesting thing i noticed at the meeting was that the amount of interaction between chinese businesses and foreigners not accustomed to doing business with the chinese is going to increase a lot, and that's going to mean huge amounts of misunderstanding. the chinese are really weird about business. okay, that sounds judgmental. i guess you could say, they follow really different rules. you have to do all this guanxi (relationship) stuff with chinese businesspeople, like spending a few days going out to meals and sightseeing with them, so they can decide if they trust you. foreigners trying to do business here have all had to learn, often the hard way, that they are going to have to do things according to chinese rules. but learning this takes time. and getting things done in china takes time. listening to the mounting frustration at the meeting, it was clear that there are going to be a lot of conflicts between chinese and foreigners trying to do business related to the olympics, and a lot of people are going to leave china thinking that the people are impossibly difficult. and i guess a lot of chinese over here are going to think that foreigners are impossibly rude. personally, i hope that the chinese learn a bit about how the rest of the world does business, because while i think a lot of their westernization is unnecessary, chinese business could really stand to take the stick out of its ass and work on equal footing with everyone else.
the other interesting thing i noticed at the meeting was that the amount of interaction between chinese businesses and foreigners not accustomed to doing business with the chinese is going to increase a lot, and that's going to mean huge amounts of misunderstanding. the chinese are really weird about business. okay, that sounds judgmental. i guess you could say, they follow really different rules. you have to do all this guanxi (relationship) stuff with chinese businesspeople, like spending a few days going out to meals and sightseeing with them, so they can decide if they trust you. foreigners trying to do business here have all had to learn, often the hard way, that they are going to have to do things according to chinese rules. but learning this takes time. and getting things done in china takes time. listening to the mounting frustration at the meeting, it was clear that there are going to be a lot of conflicts between chinese and foreigners trying to do business related to the olympics, and a lot of people are going to leave china thinking that the people are impossibly difficult. and i guess a lot of chinese over here are going to think that foreigners are impossibly rude. personally, i hope that the chinese learn a bit about how the rest of the world does business, because while i think a lot of their westernization is unnecessary, chinese business could really stand to take the stick out of its ass and work on equal footing with everyone else.
posted by Amanda at 4:25 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home