By Greg Bissky

This booklet is in no way a criticism of Chinese culture! It simply looks at the source of Chinese attitudes towards communication and how Chinese culture affects business communication.

The booklet won’t guarantee success in Chinese Asia, sorry, but will give you a necessary tool for success; ability to see things like Chinese do. You need Chinese glasses. It took me many mistakes to get mine, and I hope you can learn from my mistakes instead of from your own. It’s a lot cheaper way get your glasses!

After 20+ years in Asia I know that nothing comes easy. How you start determines where you end; your willingness to change and attitude towards living & working with the Chinese will decide your success … or failure. As Confucius put it, it is only the wisest and the most foolish who can not change. Be neither.

Good luck.
Greg Bissky

There is nothing  mysterious about communication. The same principles apply to everyone, everywhere, every time. Everything is a message. Facts, opinions, questions, requests or suggestions are different, but also the same. Different on the level of content or purpose, they are identical in how communication success is measured. Facts, opinions et al are “messages” (with different purposes) and we measure success for each in the same way—only when a speaker (or writer: ‘speaker’ herein means “person initiating the communication”) transfers what’s in his head 100% accurately into the audience’s head is the communication (of the message) considered “successful.”

There is nothing mysterious about communication. The same principles apply to everyone, everywhere, every time. Chinese and Western, adults and children, intellectuals and idiots all do the same things to try to achieve the same goals. All speakers follow the same sequence of steps: 1) decide what message (type and content) to transfer; 2) select a method of transferring it (maybe writing a letter, using a loud voice or relying on body language); and 3) use the method . . . and hope it works.

If the audience receives the exact content sent by the speaker, the message was successful. Please note a crucial distinction here though: communication success is not measured by whether the audience agrees or accepts the speaker’s message. That is another issue: communication effectiveness let’s call it, or perhaps rhetoric. For example, I may want my partner to do a specific task. Until I succeed in communicating the message, “this is what I want you to do” (i.e., until the audience knows exactly what the task is) he or she can not begin to decide whether to agree to do it. Understanding message content 100% clearly, accurately and completely—communication success—has to happen before the audience can decide whether or not to accept or agree with the message.

Understanding Misunderstanding
Before moving to communication in Chinese offices, a common misunderstanding about communication must be dealt with first. The problem? People misunderstand the difference between misunderstanding and confusion. There are only three things that can happen when an audience receives a message. One, the audience understands the message exactly as intended by the speaker (communication success). Two, the audience is unsure what the speaker’s message is (confusion). Three, the audience thinks they understand the message perfectly, but actually understand something different than what the speaker intended (misunderstanding). Of the three possible outcomes, the third is by far the most dangerous. Unaware that he has the wrong message, the audience makes a decision or chooses a response based on the wrong message; unaware that the audience has an incorrect understanding (because they act like they do understand) the speaker assumes he has been successful. Nothing causes more problems in relationships than misunderstandings. Confusion is far better: if the audience isn’t sure what the message really is they can ask the speaker to repeat it. Not so with misunderstanding: not confused at all—just mistaken—the audience not only won’t ask for clarification, they may do something totally opposite to what the speaker wished. The result is almost always bad: the wrong goods go into the wrong container delivered to the wrong port, staff spend time, money and resources doing the wrong job in the wrong order, the list is endless.

Misunderstanding is the largest hidden cost in international business. 

Does misunderstanding happen in your office? You probably will say, “Yes. Too often, too.” And that is Western-to-Western communication (i.e., between people from the same culture). How about Western-to-Chinese communication (i.e., between people from totally different cultures)? The effects are far more serious: misunderstandings are more frequent, harder to solve and far more damaging to relationship building.

Lots of things can hurt a business relationship. Not trusting another person’s word is perhaps the worst. If there is no trust there is no relationship (or at least no relationship anyone would want if there was a choice). The bad news is, misunderstandings between Chinese and, well, Westerners of all nations, are much more common than either communication success or, second best, confusion between speaker and audience. The good news is that the frequency of misunderstandings between you and Chinese can be dramatically reduced, and, even better news, you already know how. Your only real problem is you don’t know you know how.

My goal is simple. I hope to open your eyes to the fact that the concepts of communication and relationship-building you use every day are in fact the same ones you should use when dealing with the Chinese. Of course it is not quite that simple, but it is nowhere as difficult as you might (and probably do) think. My most important advice to people working with the Chinese is, if you know how to make a friend at home you know how to do business with the Chinese. There is no “mystery” to it. All you need is some background about how Chinese think, why they think that way, and how this must affect the way you think and act. As much as the products or services you sell for what price, you will succeed or fail based on the actions you take. Your choice of actions depends on your assumptions of which actions are appropriate, and which are not. In a very real sense, success with the Chinese depends upon what and how you think, not on how or when you act.