In Chinese business culture, the concept of ‘face’ (’Mianzi’ in Chinese) is something that is very important for a foreigner to understand fully in order to make a good impression and avoid offending anyone.
In fact, a thorough understanding of ‘face’ can help you understand the cultural reasons for many Chinese business practices and how you can adjust your own way of doing business to work effectively with your Chinese partners.
‘Face’ is a combination of dignity, pride and public reputation. It can be hard to understand as an abstract concept so let’s look at three key situations involving ‘face’ in order to put it into context.
Give face (Gei mianzi) - This means to show respect for a person’s feelings and seniority. Simple ways of ‘giving face’ could be sitting in the correct place at a meeting or dinner, or offering an appropriate gift to a person. Remember, if you’re buying gifts, always give better gifts to senior people than you do to their juniors.
Giving praise and compliments also falls in to this category. When you are giving praise, don’t overdo it! Excessive or unnecessary praise can have the opposite effect.
Lose face (Shi mianzi) – You might ‘lose face’ through your own bad actions or by doing anything that would damage your public reputation. If you lose a lit of face, people won’t want to do business with you anymore.
It’s also important not to cause others to ‘lose face’. This means you shouldn’t criticise them in front of others or humiliate them in any way.
Fight for / maintain face (Zheng mianzi) – This is a matter of keeping up appearances. Making sure you are up-to-date and constantly striving to be better than your competitors is the key in this area. Sometimes, this also involves being nice to people in social situations even if you don’t really like them.
Give someone the chance to win back face (Liu mianzi) – This is a complex one. Giving the someone the chance to win back face after he has lost it can be very important in building long-term business relationships and friendships. Everyone appreciates a second chance and most people are wise enough to make the most of it!
The Chinese word ‘mianzi’ (’face’) on its own is a kind running total of how much ‘face’ you have at any given point in time.
‘Mianzi’ has a profound effect on the vast majority of social interaction in China and is an important concept to grasp. We’ll be seeing the effect it has on more specific situations in later instalments of our Chinese business culture series.
Do you have any concepts similar to ‘mianzi’ in your country?
Today’s image is by Tom Low.
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[...] far in our Chinese business culture series, we’ve learnt about mianzi and guanxi. Now, let’s have a look at some more general tips for doing business in [...]
Chinese business culture is the most important thing for any foreign businessmen. And to get the best result, you should begin from to learn and apply all requirements step by step (beginning from introduction and right place during dinner). Gifts and compliments also very important to show your respect to Chinese traditions and people. And while doing that – to you also will be given respect from them. If you done it right – you may become very close friends and it’s also very important.
Yes, I agree with you, Vitalka. Developing a close relationship is very important and a good way to build guanxi.