Abstract Social Obligation

[WestTexas]

What Chinese Want: Culture, Communism and the Modern Chinese Consumer

Been looking at this and it's quite good. More than a lot of books, the guy really hits the nerve of what makes the Chinese tick differently from foreigners. I feel like he gets it. A lot of the books written about China by foreigners just seem to be expats either (A) projecting their own culture/ideas onto China or (B) trying to win a 'look at me I went into a really Chinese part of China' contest. I don't feel like this book falls into that trap. It explains a lot of things about how Chinese society works and how many Chinese think. Some of the chapters are outright about business, but they illuminate deeper cultural aspects. TBH I can't put it down.

I heard a rumor that this book may or may not be available to read for free on certain websites that may or may not obey the copyright laws of every country.

[gato]

I haven't read Tom Doctoroff's book, but I did find his article below on the same topic to be pretty insightful. Since he works in advertising in China, he certainly knows the Chinese better than a lot of other people.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-doctoroff/chinese-consumers_b_1548249.html

Tom Doctoroff

CEO, JWT North Asia

What Chinese Consumers Want

[akdn]

can anyone recommend any books which compare and contrast American and Chinese culture?

How about this?

http://www.amazon.co...g/dp/1877864811

It takes a 'critical incidents' approach to exploring a range of intercultural communication situations in the US and China. The scenarios illustrate a communication problem from the perspective of either an American or Chinese participant. The reader is then presented with a choice of potential 'explanations', to prompt discussion. The authors then comment on the relative strength and weakness of each explanation, with reference to concepts derived from the academic study of intercultural communication (reviewed early in the book).

Some of the incidents feel a bit contrived and stereotyped, but the explanations are not prescriptive. The authors openly acknowledge the main limitation of their work - that there may be different ways of interpreting an intercultural communication problem (they surveyed the content to seek validation - which revealed a lack of consensus at times). That cultural interpretations are themselves relative is something which came up earlier in this thread.