China in the world economy and doing business with it

Résumé ou Introduction

If there is one truism about China, then it has to be its unique business environment. Politically China remains a communist country, but one with a dynamic economy. This combination was never achieved by another country (KPMG, 2004). China’s economy is huge and expanding rapidly, with an average growth rate of 8 % in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per annum for the last 30 years. The Chinese growth is almost miraculous and in 2007 China’s GDP reached 3.42 trillion US dollars, while most analysts expect China to become the largest economy in the world in this century (Economy watch, 2009).
China’s admission to the World trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001 signalled the growing maturity of this market and is expected to further increase the investment opportunities (KPMG, 2004). However, the global financial crisis has hit China hard with the growth rate for 2009, while still positive, expected to slow. About 26 million Chinese lost their jobs within the last 2 months which led to social unrest throughout the country. The government therefore started evaluating a second stimulus package in order to keep the economy going.
Lieberthal and Lieberthal (2003) give insights why China has an impact on all multinational corporations worldwide. They discuss that China is not only attractive for manufacturing, but furthermore worth for foreign companies to sell their products to the ‘1 billion consumer’-market.
However, for most Westerners the Chinese culture is difficult to understand, which can be explained by the very different and in some instances opposing styles of negotiation. The ‘eight elements’ of Chinese negotiation by Graham and Lam (2003) were summarised in order to explain the high failure rate of multinational companies in the Chinese market.