The committee is agreeing but not following through. The problem is commitment, accountability, or execution discipline on the Chinese side.
The Western diagnosis is procedural: the committee is producing decisions that are not being implemented, therefore the problem is an implementation failure. The solution is tighter accountability mechanisms — clearer action item ownership, firmer deadlines, escalation protocols, more frequent check-ins between meetings.
This diagnosis is coherent in a Western governance framework. It is almost always wrong in a Sino-foreign JV context. More accountability mechanisms applied to a committee that is not the real decision-making venue will produce more elaborate compliance with the committee’s procedures and no additional movement. The Chinese side will attend more diligently, produce more detailed responses to follow-ups, and still not implement. The problem has not been addressed because it has not been correctly identified.
The committee is a face-preserving venue for agreement. The real decisions are being made through a parallel informal process that the formal structure cannot see or reach.
For the Chinese side of a JV, the formal steering committee is one venue in a governance ecosystem that also includes internal consensus processes (jítǐ juécè), the laoban’s personal assessment of each agenda item, and the informal bilateral channels through which real positions are tested, modified, and eventually committed to. The committee itself is not where decisions happen — it is where decisions that have already been made through the informal process are formally recorded.
When the committee produces agreement that does not lead to action, it usually means one of three things: the informal process has not yet reached a conclusion on the item, a conclusion has been reached but it differs from what was agreed in the committee (and the committee agreement was face-preserving rather than genuine), or the item requires a decision from someone who was not in the room and whose informal endorsement has not yet been obtained. In none of these cases does tightening the committee’s procedures produce movement.
How Chinese organisational decision-making works inside a formal governance structure
Chinese organisations make significant decisions through a process of informal circulation and consensus-building that precedes any formal meeting or record. An agenda item at a steering committee does not arrive for decision — it arrives for formal endorsement of a position that the relevant people have already aligned on privately. If the relevant people have not yet aligned, the item receives a face-preserving response that sounds like agreement but is actually a deferral.
This process is not evasion. It is how organisational decisions are made in a context where public disagreement — at a meeting attended by both sides, recorded in minutes — costs face in ways that cannot easily be repaired. The informal process exists precisely to allow real positions to surface, be tested, be modified, and be genuinely committed to — without any of that working-through happening in a context where one side or the other could lose face in front of the other. By the time a position reaches the formal meeting, it is meant to be settled. If it is not settled, the meeting cannot settle it — only the informal process can.
The implication for Western JV partners is significant: if you want something to move, you need to engage the informal process, not the formal one. The committee is the notification mechanism. The informal bilateral is the decision mechanism.
Jítǐ juécè is the process of building internal consensus before any formal commitment is made. For a steering committee agenda item to produce action, it must have completed this process on the Chinese side — the relevant internal stakeholders must have seen it, raised their concerns, and reached a position. An item that appears at the committee before this process is complete will receive surface agreement and produce no action. Pushing harder at the committee level does not accelerate jítǐ juécè — it produces more elaborate surface agreement and the same non-implementation.
Three reasons a committee item does not produce action — and how to tell them apart
Not all committee inaction has the same cause. Before deciding on a response, it is worth diagnosing which of the following is producing the paralysis on a specific item.
The informal process is incomplete. The item genuinely needs more internal alignment on the Chinese side before it can move. The committee agreement was real but premature — the person who agreed had not yet cleared the item with the people whose support is required for implementation. The tell: the item drifts without specific friction, follow-ups produce vague responses about “internal coordination,” and the Chinese side is not uncomfortable when the item is raised again — they simply say it is still being worked through. Response: engage the informal channel to understand where the internal alignment process is stuck and whether there is anything you can do to support it.
The committee agreement was face-preserving rather than genuine. The Chinese side has a real position on the item that differs from what was agreed in the committee, but could not state it directly in that setting without losing face or creating a public disagreement. The tell: the item consistently fails to move despite apparent agreement, and when you probe informally the responses are more nuanced than the committee minutes suggest. Response: create a private channel — a bilateral conversation, a dinner, an intermediary — where the real position can surface without the face cost of a public contradiction.
The decision-maker was not in the room. The people who attended the committee can agree but cannot commit the organisation. The actual decision requires endorsement from a figure — the laoban, a board member, a government relationship — who was not present and whose informal approval has not been obtained. The tell: the item requires resource allocation, strategic direction, or risk acceptance that is above the authority level of the committee attendees. Response: identify the actual decision-maker and find a channel to their informal assessment of the item.
When a committee item is stuck because the real position cannot surface publicly, a trusted intermediary is often the only channel through which the genuine position can be communicated. A zhōngjiānrén who has standing on both sides can carry the conversation that the formal structure cannot hold — finding out what the Chinese side’s real position is, testing whether a modified proposal would receive genuine support, and creating the conditions for the informal process to reach a conclusion that the committee can then formally record. The intermediary does not bypass the committee; they make it functional.
Making the formal structure work by engaging the informal one
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Stop trying to fix the committee and engage the process that precedes it
The committee is a symptom of where the real process stands, not the cause of the problem. Adding accountability mechanisms, escalation protocols, or more frequent formal meetings addresses the symptom without touching the cause. The informal bilateral — a dinner, a direct conversation between the right people, a channel that does not produce minutes — is where the stuck item needs to be addressed. Specifically: identify what has not yet been resolved in the Chinese side’s internal process and engage it there.
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Pre-socialise agenda items before they arrive at the committee
The most effective steering committee is one where nothing on the agenda is a surprise to anyone in the room — because both sides have already tested positions, modified proposals, and reached informal alignment through bilateral channels before the meeting. This requires investment in the informal channel between committee meetings: conversations, calls, dinners where agenda items are discussed informally and real positions are surfaced. Items that have been pre-socialised produce action. Items that arrive cold at the committee produce face-preserving agreement and non-implementation.
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Identify who actually needs to endorse each item — and reach them
For each stuck item, ask: whose genuine commitment is required for this to move, and is that person engaged? In many cases the answer is a figure who is not at the committee — whose informal endorsement has not been obtained and whose absence from the room means the committee agreement cannot commit the organisation. Identifying this person and finding a channel to their informal assessment — through a senior bilateral, a zhongjianren, a dinner that includes them — is more productive than any amount of formal follow-up.
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Create a private channel for real positions to surface
If you suspect that a committee agreement is face-preserving rather than genuine, the only way to surface the real position is to create a context in which it can be expressed without a public face cost. A private bilateral dinner, a conversation with a trusted intermediary, or a direct personal exchange between the most senior figures on each side — these are the venues where a Chinese counterpart can say “we agreed at the committee, but actually our real concern is X” without it constituting a public contradiction. Once the real position is in the room, it can be addressed. Until then, the formal process will loop indefinitely.
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Accept that the committee’s role is endorsement, not decision
The most durable adjustment is a shift in how you use the committee. Treat it as what it is for the Chinese side: a formal endorsement mechanism for decisions that have already been made through the informal bilateral process. Design your engagement accordingly — invest in the bilateral, use the committee to record and formalise what the bilateral has already settled. This is not a concession to a dysfunctional structure; it is an accurate understanding of how governance works in a Chinese organisational context, and it produces results that the committee-first approach cannot.
How to open the informal channel without threatening the formal one
Why improving the committee’s procedures makes things worse, not better
The Western instinct when a formal process is not producing results is to improve the process: clearer templates, tighter timelines, named owners, RAG status tracking, escalation protocols. In a Sino-foreign JV context, each of these improvements increases the formality of the committee without addressing the underlying problem — and increasing formality has a specific cost.
A more procedurally rigorous committee requires the Chinese side to engage more formally, which means their responses must be more carefully managed. A casual response that reveals a real position is no longer possible; every engagement is a record. The informal space that allowed real positions to surface — however imperfectly — is reduced. The Chinese side becomes more procedurally compliant and less genuinely communicative. The committee works better by its own metrics and produces less real movement. This is the structural trap: the improvement makes the problem invisible without solving it.
The bilateral-first model
The real work of the partnership happens here. Issues are raised informally, positions are tested, real concerns surface through conversations that do not produce minutes. Both sides adjust their positions through the informal channel until genuine alignment is possible.
Before the committee convenes, both sides know what is on the agenda and broadly where each item stands. Items that are not ready for formal endorsement are held back or tabled as discussion rather than decision items. No item arrives at the committee cold.
The committee records, formalises, and gives institutional weight to decisions that have already been made through the bilateral process. Items move quickly because they are already settled. The meeting is productive by design, not by pressure.
Because the committee endorsement reflects real positions rather than face-preserving ones, implementation follows. The people who need to act have already been part of the informal process that produced the decision. They are not being surprised by a committee minute that they did not contribute to.