ICEBREAKERS

BRILLIANT!

1. Do your homework. Not only should you know everything you can about the businesses you plan to work with, know everything you can about your Chinese counterparts. They will know all about you. When Chinese executives go out of the country, they make every effort to thoroughly research the people they will do business with.

In the book China Safari by Serge Michel and Michel Beuret, a government functionary in Africa related this story about Chinese executives visiting the Congo:

I don’t know how they do it. They study every manager, every minister. They always build the right relationships. Once, during a dinner given for a Chinese delegation touring Africa, I sat next to a big cheese in the Chinese Ministry of Trade. ...

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