Different races have their own methods and ways in handling businesses and the Chinese, too, has their own unique business practices. The list of what Chinese business practices are is inexhaustive; for the purpose of the discussion here, I shall only touch upon three practices.
Firstly, one of the most prevailing business practices of the Chinese is Paternalism. "Paternalism is a common social force that serves to maintain sensitivity to hierarchy and the maintenance of social order via micro units of society such as families, rather than via institutions such as universal law." This meant that in Chinese businesses, a typical firm would always have a single dominant leader with it's power highly centralized and revered. The maintenance of the power need not be held in place by the law for there is a natural reverence, respect and loyalty for the employer on the employee's part. .
How did such a practice come about? Paternalism is actually the "central pillar of the Confucian design for social order." Confucian philosophy is distinctively Chinese, a culture of the Chinese that had been practiced since ages ago. In fact, "Confucius's teachings on personal ethics have been established among Chinese as a set of pragmatic rules for daily life." "In Confucian philosophy, the stability of the state depends on the maintenance of order within the millions of separate families of which it is constituted. The power of the father figure, and the legitimacy of his authority, come to be enhanced in such a system." Thus we can see, this practice of high reverence and respect for the employer is, in reality, an extension of the Chinese culture. The values and ideas were long imbued in the Chinese society. .
The second distinct Chinese business practice is that of Personalism. "Personalism refers to the mechanism used by a society to establish connections for the conduct of everyday affairs.
