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Comment by squidlogic | Hacker News Reader

Doing business in China is definitely doing it in 'hard mode' from my experience. If you can become successful there, where contracts mean nothing and guanxi with people in power is everything, you will probably plow right through anything you find in the states.

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I think if you reflect on "contracts mean nothing and guanxi with people in power is everything" you may find the seed to an answer.

China has 1.4 billion people. There are many that will follow a contract or work with you to adjust agreements to both parties' mutual benefit.

If you are leveraging guanxi, ask yourself why you feel it is ok to further empower a person that is causing harm to society. There are many in China that do represent your values. When you engage in guanxi, you are "feeding the dragon": empowering the wrong people and dis-empowering the right people.

note: when I say "you", I don't mean you personally.

You are also correct. There is a beautiful simplicity to business interactions when you tell them up front: hey, I'm only going to tell you the truth, I'm not going to buy you gifts and alcohol and prostitutes. I'm just going to try to find the best outcome for all of us.

So much easier.

Yet so much harder.

But that's China ;)

After starting a business in China I spent a year in London then a year in LA. What irritated me about doing business in the US was the pain of complex inter-state tax nexuses, dealing with government in general (TSA etc.), immigration and expensive legal overheads in general, the need to drive everywhere and the long distances to get to the rest of the world. Certain things, such as the lack of a global perspective in most of the locals, the cheapskate approach to employee holidays, and a half-broken financial system were very similar to China.

Everything you say resonates with my experience too. And not to contradict myself but on the plus side for business in China, I found the expat entrepreneurs there to be pretty close-knit and more than happy to collaborate and help you out. That made things a lot easier and was probably the saving grace for many of my peers.

Having said that, after navigating those waters for awhile, I enjoy dealing with a clear legal framework, laws that are more often than not applied uniformly, and a government that doesn't stifle the free exchange of ideas on the internet to such a point that you need a pretty beefy VPN solution just to do a Google search.

Just my opinion though, good to hear you have been successful in your work - good luck and keep on trucking!

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