Circulation of Resources and Corporate-Political Human Relationships
from Part II - Forces Acting on the Corporate Ecosystem
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2022
This chapter demonstrates that personal relationship networks (guanxi) are still an important element of the Chinese corporate ecosystem, undermining central control through subversive, self-interested informal social structures. Though not as necessary in everyday commercial transactions any more due to the rise of e-commerce and standardized contracts, guanxi is still essential for private firms to gain access to limited natural resources and large-scale finance from state banks during their growth phase and to receive protection from predation by rapacious officials or powerful competitors. The chapter uses the case of Ye Jianming and the CEFC Group to illustrate both the importance of guanxi for private firm development and the risks of collapse when guanxi strays over the line into corruption. The chapter also shows how multinational financial and pharmaceutical firms have attempted to negotiate the narrow path between guanxi and corruption in China, with only limited success.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.