This week's point of entry
Chinese-Point covers the China that Alibaba, Bloomberg, and Western business schools do not. Each vertical goes deeper than any other English-language resource on its subject.
Chinese business concepts that have no English equivalent, decoded through scenario-based professional examples.
Explore DecodeHBR-quality case studies on China's most dramatic business pivots, told with the access of local journalism.
Coming soonWeekly intelligence identifying Chinese consumer trends 6–12 months before they reach Western awareness.
Coming soonTechnical intelligence reports on Tier 3 industrial cities — the factory clusters that dominate global production in silence.
Coming soonCurated, audited profiles of China's "Little Giant" manufacturers — the specialized SMEs that Alibaba cannot surface.
Coming soonEvery Western professional doing business in China has heard the word 关系 (guānxi). Almost every explanation they've been given is wrong. It is not networking, it is not connections, and it is not simply "who you know." It is a system of reciprocal obligations with memory — and the Chinese professional you are meeting has been operating inside it their entire life.
Read the full decodeChinese business concepts decoded through scenario-based professional examples. Not a language course — a professional cognition toolkit for anyone doing business with, in, or around China.
Often called: Networking. Actually: a reciprocal obligation system with memory.
Often called: Face. Actually: social credit that determines whose requests get prioritized.
Often called: Close enough. Actually: a tolerance philosophy that varies radically by context.
Six things it could mean — and the context signals that distinguish them.
Often called: Favors. Actually: a debt that must be repaid, but never in equivalent currency.
What a pause signals — and why the Western instinct to fill it is almost always wrong.
The Chinese professional ghosting protocol — and whether silence means no, wait, or something else entirely.
Ritualized humility with a hidden mechanism: refusals that expect insistence, generosity that creates obligation.
Is this a negotiating move, a genuine constraint, or an indirect signal that the deal is already off the table?
When a Chinese professional calls you 自己人, a boundary has just shifted. What's now expected of you — and what you now have access to.
The meal IS the business. Understanding why relationship sequencing happens before content — and how to read the table.
In Chinese professional culture, trust is not given or withheld. It is built incrementally, tested deliberately, and can be lost in a single public moment.
"The China that matters most to your business is the China that is hardest to find in English."
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