Marketing Ideas&Management Stuffs

http://ibrahim.cn/2011/12/31/social-status-in-modern-china/SOCIAL STATUS IN MODERN CHINAMarketing Ideas&Management Stuffs

Chinese society is ascription-oriented: a person’s family background plays a key role. “Where is your family from?” or “What
do your parents do?” are the most frequent questions raised during social talk or even a job interview. For some Chinese managers
recruiting new staff, family background is more important than education or commercial background. Not surprisingly, “What
are your parents’ jobs and positions?” is one of the questions in the job application form provided by most Chinese companies.
There is an old saying; “The dragon produces a dragon, the Phoenix produces a Phoenix, and the mouse produces a mouse,
who is destined to dig a hole.” Chinese people are still very class conscious.

Chinese society was classified into four classes by Prime Minister Guanzhong in Qi State, 2,500 years ago. The classes were
scholar, farmer, artisan (later, industrial workers) and merchant.  During the Cultural Revolution, Mao recast this to military
person, worker, farmer and scholar. This was ruthlessly enforced: “Class struggles” became the daily life of Chinese people.
Military people became the upper class, for the first time in Chinese history. Intellectuals suffered particular demotion; they
were called “Stinking Number Nine” which means they were the ninth type of people to be abominated, alongside landlord,
Kulak, counterrevolutionary, criminal, rightist, betrayer, spy and capitalist-roader.

Deng reinstated the scholar’s high status and elevated businesspeople’s status enormously. The current social hierarchy
is scholar, businessperson, worker, farmer. Although China is the world’s fastest growing economy, two thousand years of “scholarship
superiority” is still implanted in the Chinese mindset; many entrepreneurs still want their children to become scholars first
and then inherit their business as a second choice. As a result, businesspeople classify themselves into a hierarchy of four classes,
which are, in descending order of status:

• Official/governmental businesspeople who manage SOEs.
Their nickname is “Red Hat Merchant,” because the first official businessman in China one and half centuries ago wore a red hat as the symbol of his position. In government, all officials have to be an expert in some academic field or at least have a higher education degree.

• Scholarly businesspeople who have achieved in the academic field and then manage a private business. Their nickname is
“ConfucianMerchant,” as Confucius was the original scholar, and also because these people tend to have a Confucian
mindset in leading their business.

• Representatives of foreign companies who are overseas returnees or have trained in multinational corporations (MNCs). Their nickname is “Sea Turtle” (the Chinese phrase for “sea turtle” is pronounced “ha^ı gu¯?,” the same as “return
from overseas”; this is intended to be teasing rather than dismissive) or “Foreign Comprador.”

• Businesspeople from farmer backgrounds, the undereducated entrepreneurs. Most of the first generation of Chinese
businesspeople who responded to Deng’s call are put in this category. Their nickname is “Peasant Entrepreneur.”

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