Make money online + made in China - Lie to survive
Made in China, Opportunity, Entrepreneur, Business September 15th, 2007This is part of my intention of sharing my experience on dealing with “Made in China” manufactures. In my previous post about “Make money online with made in China.” I planned to break this topic into several subsets of topics. Please remember that I am leaning and sharing what I know while doing it myself.
If you really like to deal with “Made in China” manufactures or trading companies yourself and make your million dollars online, please feel free to read and leave a comments. Sharing experience will make all of us success.
Does Chinese lie to survive?
First of all, I am a Chinese, who have traveled between Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and USA a lot. I am just telling the truth about dealing with Chinese in China. There is no intention to look down anyone from anywhere in the world. It’s about telling the truth.
Let me cut to the chase. As I said in the past posts, dealing with Chinese has something to do with understanding their culture. Chinese from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China are acting differently due to their regional culture and education. In many case, it’s matter of knowing how to survive in those regions.
I will just focus on people from China. As you all know that China is crowded. With billion population, competition between Chinese are huge than you can image. There are many rich people and poor people. If you want to have better life, you have to compete with many others and find your survival skills.
Regardless their education level, many Chinese survived by telling lie. Although they are not trying to lie, they have to do so to keep their face. “FACE” is what many Chinese care about most. They can lose anything but FACE. What does that mean? They want people to think they are rich, intelligent and anything that is better than the average people. They want people’s respect. So they sometimes pretend knowing what you are asking for.
For example. I was lost in the city. I have to ask about 20 people to get the right direction. People will point you a wrong direction because they don’t know exactly what the direction is. They don’t want you to know that they don’t know. So they lie. Why is that? China is a huge country. Many farmers or urban residents left their home town and go to the bigger city to make living. They have to work hard to make money and feed their families. In many case, the husband or wife have to separate for months to years to find job in different cities. Thus, many people you’ve asked or talked to are not local people. They don’t know what you are asking. In order to pretend that they know what you are asking without losing the face. They lie. And you thank them. They felt your respect.
Why is this important? This is the fundamental survival guide you have to know when you deal with Chinese business in China. I am not saying Chinese are bad person. The huge competitive environment forces them to do so to survive. It’s really hard to survive in this brutal world. However, when they are used to lie to people. They lie a lot more day by day. It’s pity.
Business is business. What is really pathetic is that TRUST almost doesn’t exist when dealing with Chinese. You have to do your home work and double, triple check your deal with them. Ask as many manufactures as you can to find the best deal for you.
Another example. I have set a deal with one of the manufacture. We have the item price confirmed. When I stop by at the company door and pick up out final deal. We go over each items and hand-writing them onto the invoice for the final purchase. I saw different price. The staff secretly adding RMB $20 on some of the items when we were counting and packing them. It’s over charging me RMB $1000 or more.
In most of the case we have dealt, the company will hand-writing the invoice. The chance is that you won’t be able to catch the “mistake” when you are busy counting your items from hundreds to thousands products.
I asked them to give me a list of item price every time. I will type those into Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. I will them compare with the item price when I do the final purchase. I will, then, compare the price again and again to make sure they did not add price somewhere.
I will use Excel to calculate the subtotal, total and find the difference. It’s time consuming, but it is worth to do so. In some cases, they told me that they don’t have Excel installed on their PC. I asked them for the Internet access. That’s when Goggle?s Doc & Spreadsheets comes in handy. I do that in front of their eyes. So they know that I am not a stupid customer to rip off.
Again! Do your home work. Preparation is very important to prevent from being a victim.
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10 Responses to “Make money online + made in China - Lie to survive”
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September 15th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
You’re right about the FACE part. I am Chinese also, and I hear how it is very important not to lose face.
September 15th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
[…] to share stories of his journey and post interesting topics, including his most recent post, “Make money online + made in China - Lie to survive.” Be sure to visit his blog, Terence Chang - Almost A […]
September 16th, 2007 at 4:47 am
@宝茹
Chinese are sometimes too superficial. They don’t look too far in the business world.
September 16th, 2007 at 5:39 am
But there are many successful Chinese business people. It would be interesting to study the business practices of different cultures~
September 16th, 2007 at 5:58 am
@宝茹:
That’s right. I felt funny when I decided to talk about how Chinese doing business. The way Chinese doing business are so much different between Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and Chinese from many other countries. Most likely the education play am important role.
I have dealt with online business for sometimes. Dealing with real people face to face are so much different.
September 17th, 2007 at 5:34 am
How is online business like with Chinese?
September 18th, 2007 at 2:41 am
@宝茹
In China, online business is not like in the other countries. e-Commerce in China is not very convenient and secure. Too much fraud around because of lacking good online payment system. People are used to pay by cash. There is also no return policy. Once the goods is out of door, it’s not refundable. So doing online business in China is still not mature enough.
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:24 pm
[…] Make money online + made in China - Lie to survive […]
August 11th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Wow, great information you have got here. I have some Chinese friends so I perfectly understand their culture and why these people are very good at business!
August 12th, 2008 at 11:03 am
@Mark:
Thank you for stopping by. As you know, there are huge market in China now. People have to survive in the big market. They learned faster than countries in the world.