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GUANXI’S CONSEQUENCES:  
PERSONAL GAINS AT SOCIAL COST 
 
 
 
 
 
Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 38, Number 4 / July, 2002, pp. 371-380 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
YING FAN 
  
Department of Marketing 
University of Lincoln 
Brayford Pool 
Lincoln LN6 7TS 
ENGLAND 
Tel 44-1522-886345 
Fax 44-1522-886032 
Email yfan@lincoln.ac.uk 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
GUANXI’S CONSEQUENCES: 
 PERSONAL GAINS AT SOCIAL COST 
 
 
 
 
ABSTRACT 
 
Is guanxi ethical? This question is largely ignored in the existing literature. As guanxi 
has an impact on the wider public other than the guanxi parties, it must be studied in 
the context of all stakeholders. This paper examines the ethical dimension of guanxi 
by focusing on the consequences of guanxi in business, from ethically misgiving 
behaviour to outright corruption. Guanxi may brings benefits to individuals as well as 
the organisations they represent but these benefits are obtained at the expense of other 
individuals or firms and is thus detrimental to society. It can be argued that guanxi is 
an inevitable evil under the current political and socio-economic systems in China. Its 
role and importance in business life will be diminished as the country moves towards 
an open market system. 
 
KEY WORDS: Guanxi, relationship, business ethics, corruption, China 
 
 1
 
 
 
 
GUANXI’S CONSEQUENCES: PERSONAL GAINS AT SOCIAL COST 
 
 
 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
Guanxi, a Chinese term referring to interpersonal connections, has been receiving 
growing research interests in the western management field. In the existing literature, 
guanxi has been identified as one of the most important success factors in doing 
business in China (Yeung and Tung, 1996; Abramson and Ai, 1999); regarded as a 
source of sustainable competitive advantage (Tsang, 1998; Fock and Woo, 1998); 
linked with some western concepts such as relationship marketing (Ambler,1994; 
Simmons and Munch, 1996), and extolled as the future direction for the western 
business practices in the new century (Lovett, et al 1999). 
 
Despite the growing number of publications on guanxi and the benefits guanxi is 
alleged to bring to business organisations in terms of cost reduction and enhanced 
performance, there is still considerable confusion around the concept as well as its 
function in business. Whether guanxi is ethical is a particular issue largely ignored in 
the previous studies. This paper aims to examine the ethical dimension of guanxi, 
with a focus on the consequences of guanxi. It starts with a discussion of the guanxi 
concept and different types of guanxi, followed by a detailed analysis of the role that 
guanxi plays in business and its consequences to the society.  
 
 2
DEFINING THE CONCEPT 
The term guanxi in the Chinese language has multiple meanings. It could refer to one 
of three things: (a) the existence of a relationship between people who share a group 
status or are related to a common person, (b) actual connections with and frequent 
contact between people, and (c) a contact person with little direct interaction (Bian, 
1994). Guanxi is commonly defined as special relationships two persons have with 
each other (Alston, 1989). Osland (1990) adds on: “…a special relationship between a 
person who needs something and a person who has the ability to give something.” In 
this paper, guanxi is defined as the process of social interactions that initially involve 
two individuals A and B. A may or may not have special relationships with B. A asks 
B for assistance (favour) in finding a solution to a problem. B may have the solution 
at hand, or more often, has to seek further assistance from other connections, i.e. starts 
another process. 
 
This definition presents a significant departure from the literature. Firstly, it 
emphasises that guanxi is a dynamic process which begins with the two persons but 
may involve more parties at later stages. Secondly, in a guanxi relationship, one 
person (B), in most cases, may not have the solution even though s/he is eager to grant 
a favour. B has to search for further connections in order to find the solution. This is 
exactly what guanxi means. Here B’s role is a facilitator or matchmaker, rather than a 
solution-provider. Thirdly, relationships, strong or weak, exist all the time; but guanxi 
can only happen when there is a need for something to be done. This need triggers the 
guanxi process. Fourthly, guanxi involves a series of activities mostly pre-planned 
and carried out between the two or more parties in the guanxi network. Such activities 
can include anything from having a meal together, to gift-giving or doing a favour. 
Finally, contrary to the conventional definitions, guanxi can occur between two 
 3
persons without any shared attributes (guanxi base). If A and B have special 
relationships between them, i.e. they share a guanxi base, a) the guanxi process would 
starts more easily or quicker; b) they had guanxi before, the start of a new guanxi 
process is just to renew it. If A does not have any special relationship with B, A could 
still try to start the process though this would be more difficult. Alternatively, A may 
decide to use a go-between C. There are several sub-processes in this case. The 
process will not stop until either a solution is finally found or the task is abandoned. 
 
CLASSIFICATIONS 
Guanxi is a complex social construct with many variations. In most existing studies, 
guanxi is discussed in general terms; complexity and differences between different 
types of guanxi are largely ignored. There are mainly three types of guanxi: family 
guanxi, helper guanxi and business guanxi. Family guanxi and helper guanxi are 
similar to what Hwang (1987) termed ‘expressive ties and ‘instrumental ties’ 
respectively. Business guanxi refers to the process of finding a solution to a business 
rather than personal problem by using ‘personal’ connections. From the comparisons 
in Table 1, it is clear that the three types of guanxi are quite different in almost all 
aspects: nature, purpose, function and what is exchanged. Family guanxi is rooted in 
Confucian values; emotionally driven, qinqing (affection) is exchanged, in which 
reciprocity is not always necessary. On the other hand, business guanxi is the product 
of current political and socio-economic systems; utility-driven, a deal of money and 
power. In terms of quality, family guanxi is stronger, more stable and requires long-
term commitment. Business guanxi, on the other hand, is characterised as tactical, 
opportunistic and unstable. There is little trust and commitment in the business guanxi 
 4
relationship (Fock and Woo, 1998). The only thing that matters to the parties is their 
own business interests and the utility of other party.   
 
To an individual who has three types of guanxi with different persons, these guanxis 
are treated differently in terms of importance, frequency and intensity, and all these 
may change over time. It is worth noting that guanxi in reality is far more complicated 
as all the three types of guanxi could be intertwined making it difficult to distinguish 
between them. It is also possible that guanxi between two parties may evolve from 
one type to another over a period of time, or members of a guanxi network share more 
than one relationship between them.   
 
CLARIFICATION 
To have a better understanding of how guanxi is related to business and how guanxi 
distinguishes itself from western concepts, the following clarification must be made. 
In the literature, guanxi is frequently referred as the Chinese version of relationship 
marketing or business networking (Amber, 1994; Simmons and Munch, 1996; Lovett, 
et al, 1999). This is a misunderstanding of the concept. Guanxi, by its definition, is a 
kind of personal property: an asset owned by an individual and working only at 
personal level. Whether an organisation can use the guanxi assets of its employees is 
entirely up to the individual himself. He may use his guanxi (in his private capacity) 
to bring benefits to his employer but this guanxi remains as his personal property and 
will not become an organisational asset (Tsang, 1998). When the employee leaves the 
firm, he takes his guanxi with him. Another fundamental difference between guanxi in 
China and a marketing relationship or business network in the west lies in that the two 
individuals engaged in guanxi exchanges are often neither buyer/seller nor business 
 5
partners; the relationship is more likely between a businessman and a government 
official or someone who has connections with the official. Customers and business 
partners may not even be counted in such a guanxi network. In short, guanxi is a 
network of private contacts characterised by personal, informal and clandestine deals.  
 
GUANXI AND BUSINESS 
Business guanxi is a unique Chinese phenomenon and a product of China’s 
contemporary political and socio-economic systems. Much has been written on the 
importance of and benefits brought by guanxi, but how guanxi is related to business 
and what kind of role guanxi plays in business operations remain largely unknown, 
partly because that all three different types of guanxi are tangled in reality, so it is 
hard to separate them. For example, should business guanxi be viewed as a) the 
practice of general guanxi (“family” and “helper”) in the business sector; or b) a 
special type of guanxi that distinguishes itself from the other two types; or c) the 
mixture of personal and business relationships? How can business guanxi be defined, 
and what characteristics does it have? How is guanxi practised by managers to 
achieve their personal as well as organisational objectives? Answers to these 
questions are hard to find and beyond the scope of this paper. It is notoriously difficult 
to get an insight into a guanxi relationship or transaction as both are shrouded in 
secrecy and are not shared with an outsider. The remaining part of the paper will 
discuss the impact of guanxi on business, with a special focus on its links with 
corruption and consequences to society. 
 
In the existing literature, the role and benefits of guanxi have been grossly 
exaggerated and cannot be substantiated. There is no convincing evidence to show 
 6
how and to what extent guanxi is beneficial to business performance. One of the 
major benefits that guanxi is believed to offer is obtaining information on government 
policies, market trends and business opportunities (Davies, et al, 1995). The following 
case shows how such a benefit was actually achieved. The chairman of an Australian 
company seeking investment opportunities in China had a good relationship with the 
local executive of a large state-owned enterprise, who was a close friend of a key 
government official in Shenzhen.  
Throughout the entire negotiation process, the executive continuously 
fed the chairman with prompt information on how the government had 
viewed the project itself. The chairman was able to make an 
appropriate presentation based on this input, which led to a successful 
negotiation outcome (Yau, et al, 2000). 
 
 The paper, citing this as a good example of using guanxi, gave no details on what 
favours were returned to the Chinese official and the local executive. The behaviour 
of the Chinese official and executive had clearly broken rules, if not laws. On the 
other hand, the way that the Australian firm used to obtain information is morally 
questionable. 
 
Another benefit widely cited is that the guanxi network improves efficiency by 
reducing the transaction costs (Davies, et al 1995 and Lovett, et al 1999). However, 
recent empirical studies show the contrary: developing and maintaining guanxi 
relationship is a time-consuming and expensive endeavour and perceived as a major 
disadvantage (Fock and Woo, 1998; Lovett, et al, 1999; Yi and Ellis, 2000). Guanxi is 
also said to help credit collection, but the fact is that most companies in China find 
themselves in the predicament of bad debts and triangular debts (Far East Economic 
Review, 6/7/2000). Under the current market environment in China, guanxi may be 
the effective option, sometimes even the only way to make things work, but it is by no 
 7
means efficient or even the cheaper option in the long term. A survey conducted by 
the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption estimated that guanxi 
accounted for up to 5% of total costs in doing business in China (ICAC, 1993). 
 
An important character of guanxi that is often overlooked in the literature is that the 
intended benefit of guanxi transaction cannot be delivered immediately after the 
‘payment’; in some cases, the delivery may never arrive. By definition, guanxi 
exchange takes place as informal and complicated multiple processes that often 
involve more than two parties. It is largely a future transaction with unspecified 
delivery time; and there is no guarantee in terms of the value or quality of the benefit. 
This is the paradox of guanxi: does it reduce uncertainty or does it increase 
uncertainty? When a firm has a heavy reliance on guanxi to the point that cultivation 
and maintenance of guanxi networks consume much of the financial and managerial 
resources, the expenses and risks may outweigh any potential benefits such guanxi 
could generate. This explains why some companies deliberately try to weaken or 
terminate their guanxi relationships, the so called “guanxi evasion” (Chen, 1995). 
 
THE ETHICS OF GUANXI 
 
The ethics of guanxi has so far received little attention in the literature. In contrast 
with the extravagant claims on the benefits of guanxi, the dark side of guanxi is never 
fully understood. Is guanxi ethically acceptable? It depends on the type of guanxi and 
the context in which guanxi occurs. While family and helper guanxi are generally 
perceived in China as good guanxi that is totally moral or even desirable; business 
guanxi is widely regarded as bad guanxi, a grey area even if it is not implicated with 
corruption. To the Chinese, business guanxi is inevitably associated with favouritism, 
nepotism, unfair competition and fraud. There are countless examples. In 1998 
 8
pyramid selling was banned in China after millions of people lost their lifetime 
savings in the bogus selling schemes (McDonald, 1998). In the majority of cases 
swindlers deliberately chose people whom they had close guanxi relationships with 
(relatives, friends or classmates) as unsuspecting easy targets. Trust was betrayed for 
profits. Ironically, when the victims realised the fraud most of them tried to recruit 
newer victims in the same fashion in order to recoup their losses. Such scandals 
exposed the pernicious side of guanxi. 
 
Guanxi may bring personal gains to individuals, vital resources and cost savings to 
organisations. But these benefits are often achieved at the expense of other individuals 
or firms, as business guanxi dealings create significant disadvantages to the parties 
outside the network, thus stifling competition and being detrimental to the whole 
society. In this way, social goods are sacrificed for personal gains. A simple acid test 
to judge whether a guanxi transaction is ethical is to find whether there are victims as 
a result of such a deal. These victims may be known as the competitor of the firm, or 
the customer, or even unknown in some cases. But the truth remains that such guanxi 
transaction produces gains for individuals or firms but social loss to the whole society. 
A guanxi action is right from the ethics point of view only if there is no third party 
either known or unknown that is adversely affected as a result of this guanxi action. 
Unfortunately, the vast majority of guanxi cases would fail this test. 
 
The proponents of guanxi defend these practices on ethical relativism by arguing that 
guanxi is based on eastern principles, and can be as ethical as any western system 
(Lovett, et al 1999). They looked only at one side of the coin. Confucius did set up 
principles which govern the interpersonal relations in the Chinese society but he also 
 9
placed greater emphasis on virtue by establishing principles of moral behaviour. He 
felt that a person who lived by his rules would develop the habit of ethical behaviour. 
Eventually this behaviour would become deeply ingrained in one’s personality. Those 
who followed his principles would thus achieve virtue. According to Confucius, one 
should always put moral concerns before the pursuit of business interests. Differences 
in business norms and legal systems exist between western developed countries and a 
developing economy like China, and ethical norms might generally be higher in the 
former (Vogel, 1992). However, it is debatable whether the latter would attach less 
importance to ethics and would be more prone to corruption. If certain guanxi 
practices deemed unethical in the west are currently ‘accepted’ in China, this still does 
not justify its existence as morally acceptable, but simply shows that it is the 
necessary evil under the current political and socio-economic environment. There is 
no country in the world where corruption, in whatever forms it may take, is either 
legally or morally acceptable. China is no exception. If anyone obtains personal gains 
through guanxi activities at the expenses of others (competitors or general public, the 
society), this guanxi should be deemed as unethical even if they did not break the law. 
As a matter of fact, the majority of business guanxi practices are totally unacceptable 
even by the current Chinese ethical standard. That is why business guanxi has a 
terribly bad reputation inside China. 
 
GUANXI AND CORRUPTION 
As stated afore, business guanxi is a network of connections between business people 
and bureaucrats. In a society with a long tradition of rule by man instead of rule by 
law, having good guanxi with officials has always been vital. This special guanxi 
relationship between businessmen and officials is aptly termed in Chinese as venal 
 10
guanxi or “qianquan jiaoyi” - the exchange or deal between money and power. 
Guanxi is the matchmaker who ties up the two parties in the following diagram:  
 
Money Å Guanxi Æ Power Æ Corruption 
 
 
Corrupted guanxi and guanxi-based corruption are like Siamese twins that cannot be 
separated. It is safe to say that there is no business guanxi network that is not tinted by 
corruption and no corruption without using guanxi. Inside China, guanxi is the 
synonym for corruption and other malpractices such as nepotism, bribery and fraud 
(Yang, 1994). It is not surprising that in the latest survey carried out by Transparency 
International among 19 major exporters in the world, China was ranked the worst in 
the Bribery Index (Transparency.com). During the economic reform and opening up 
of the past twenty years corruption in China has become so prevalent that it becomes 
the cancer of the society. In the middle of the 70s, guanxi meant to obtain scarce 
consumer goods or to find a better job for one’s children through the ‘back door’. 
Today, guanxi is implicated in all big corruption cases and organised crimes. One 
particular feature is that corruption has evolved from individual wrongdoings into 
institutional corruption that often involve a complicated guanxi network between 
high-ranking officials, businessmen, army/police and mafia. The recent case in 
Shenyang led to prosecution of both the mayor and his deputy along with a dozen of 
officials. They were accused of accepting bribes of millions of US dollars and having 
mafia links. Corruption can be found in any country or economic system, but it is 
guanxi that provides a fertile soil in China for corruption to flourish. The central 
government has waged and lost every anticorruption campaign as new ‘worst’ cases 
are constantly emerging. In the past two years, China executed more than 20 high-
ranking officials, including a vice-chairman of the People’s Congress (the national 
 11
parliament) and a few ministers, the first in the 50 years history of the People’s 
Republic. Other big cases currently under investigation include a smuggling ring in 
Fujian Province, and a custom fraud in Guangdong Province, with estimated value of 
$80 billion and $20billion respectively.  
 
On the other side, it is not uncommon for companies to be forced or even blackmailed 
into the guanxi-related corruption. Jakobson (1999) offered a vivid account of 
business guanxi in reality. A manager in a private company had to spend tens of 
thousands of Renminbi each year improving his guanxi with local officials. If he 
didn’t, he would not be granted export licence, would not get a bank loan, and would 
not even have the electricity and water supply to run the factory. Clearly in this case, 
the firm was forced to maintain its guanxi; thus the guanxi became a powerful tool 
wielded by corrupt officials to blackmail business for their personal gains. Despite the 
persistent campaign by the government, corruption has continued unabated in China 
because the political-economic systems and guanxi culture – the very soil in which 
corruption flourishes – have remained unchanged. 
 
GUANXI’S CONSEQUENCES 
Studies on guanxi has so far been mainly at the personal level, i.e. those who are the 
members of a guanxi network, though some discussions also relate to the 
organisations these individuals represent. This is inadequate. As a guanxi transaction 
influences a far wider public than the guanxi parties concerned, the consequences of 
guanxi must be examined in the context of all stakeholders and at three levels: 
personal, organisational and societal. Firstly, guanxi, by its very nature, discriminates 
against people outside the guanxi network. This is against the Principle of Fairness. 
People have the right to be treated fairly, impartially and equitably. If a person 
 12
(outsider) is treated unfairly because of the special treatment granted by a guanxi deal, 
the ethics of such guanxi deal is called into question. Secondly, guanxi is all about 
exchanging favours, especially about obtaining ‘special treatment’ from those who are 
in power. In this case, guanxi is inherently corruptive as such a special treatment may 
be just legal, but is very much questionable in moral and ethics terms. ‘Special’ means 
to bend or break rules, to act against one’s moral consciousness or act illegally. 
Individuals and organisations that stick to ethic standard will suffer as the result of 
unscrupulous guanxi practice. Where some individuals gain via guanxi, the society in 
general loses. In short such a guanxi transaction does harm to the social goods.  
 
Moreover, business guanxi violates the so-called ‘arm’s length principle’ which states 
no personal or family relationship should play any role in economic decision-making 
(Tanzi, 1994). All the benefits that guanxi is alleged to have in the literature can be 
summarised into two categories: acquiring rare resources and obtaining protections. 
Firstly, guanxi gives its members the opportunity to acquire rare resources which are 
otherwise unobtainable or too expensive. To name some obvious examples: 
ƒ business /import /export license,  
ƒ land, property, shares, personnel, key supplies,  
ƒ cheap bank loans or foreign exchange,  
ƒ inside /confidential information,  
ƒ secure a market or distribution channel, 
ƒ official endorsement for a poor product, etc. 
 
In an open market economy, no individual or firm should be allowed to have such a 
privilege as the advantages enjoyed by guanxi members bring competitive 
disadvantages to other firms and amount to unfair competition. Eventually not only 
those firms suffer but consumers and the society in all will have to pay the price. 
 
 13
The second benefit is protecting guanxi members when they face threats and troubles, 
for example, pollution fines, taxes increase, consumer compensation, court disputes, 
bankruptcy, etc. Such protection offers guanxi members immunity from the law. 
Guanxi-related corruption, no matter if it is grand or petty, is in fact to bribe the 
bureaucrat where the interest of general public is victimised. In a democratic society 
no one should be allowed to be above the law. Those who break the law should be 
punished in order to protect the public interest. Ethically speaking, there is good 
guanxi and bad guanxi. The consequences of guanxi can range from benign, neutral, 
to questionable and corruptive. While family and helper guanxi are generally good or 
neutral, business guanxi at best has misgivings and at worst is corruptive. Although 
there are unlikely to be any simple rules that can be used to judge what guanxi is 
ethically acceptable and what is not, a rule of thumb is that a guanxi practice is ethical 
only if it causes no harm to a third party or to the society. 
 
Corruption exists in every economic system but guanxi-related corruption has unique 
Chinese characteristics. The weakness in the market structure and an inadequate legal 
system, combined with a lack of transparency due to the absence of political 
opposition and media scrutiny, has allowed guanxi to contribute greatly in making 
China top of the league table of the most corrupted countries. Corruption is not only 
present in isolating cases but also institutional and structural, from the top elite 
bureaucrats to bottom, involving almost every part and level of the society. Some 
people ruthlessly use guanxi in their pursuit of personal gains, causing egregious or 
invisible long-term permanent damage to the society. China has passed hundreds of 
laws and legislations each year, but the problem lies in the interpretation and 
enforcement. In a society with the tradition of rule of man and the party above the 
 14
law, it is not uncommon that the standard of stringency and enforcement vary from 
case to case. Each year 70 percent of economic cases remain unsettled after the court 
verdict (China Youth News, Aug. 2000). In some cases, the judicial system itself is 
also plagued by guanxi and corruption.  
 
CONCLUSION 
It is rather strange to see that something detested and condemned in China has found 
its popularity in the western business literature. While China is attempting to move 
away from the guanxi-based system to a rule-based system (the Economist, 8/4/2000), 
advocates of guanxi in the west appeared to have found a new business model with a 
utopian enthusiasm (Amber, 1994; Lovett, et al, 1999, etc.). If China wants to 
modernise herself and join the global economic system, it has to abandon unethical 
guanxi practices. In fact the need of relying upon guanxi in doing business in China is 
no longer as compelling as in the past. As discussed above, business guanxi is a 
product of China’s political and socio-economic environment: imperfect legal system, 
transient market structure and underdeveloped infrastructure as well as traditional 
cultural values. Under the shortage economy of the 70s and early 80s, one had to use 
guanxi to buy a bicycle or train ticket, but there is no need to do so today. The 
development of the market in the last 20 years has made all these uses of guanxi 
redundant. It can be argued that with further progress in the market economy and the 
emerging democratic civil society, the importance of business guanxi (in its current 
form), will be gradually reduced rather than increased.  
 
For international companies doing business in China, guanxi may still have a role to 
play, particularly at the initial entry stage: introduction, negotiation and set-up of 
 15
operation. As soon as the business is up and running, other factors will take over the 
importance of guanxi even though the relationship established at the early stage needs 
to be re-assessed to decide whether to maintain it over time. This is because the 
guanxi stock and the role it plays will be diminished or changed while foreign firms 
move down the learning curve in the Chinese market. This is supported by the 
author’s recent survey of 28 international joint ventures in Eastern China. 
Respondents named branding, quality and distribution channels rather than guanxi as 
the most important factors in achieving marketing goals. Ultimately it is not guanxi, 
but superior marketing strategy and better customer values that make a business 
successful in the Chinese market, just as it is true anywhere else. 
 16
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 17
 
Table 1 A Comparison of Three Types of Guanxi 
 
Guanxi Type Family Guanxi Helper Guanxi 
 
Business Guanxi 
Definition Special relationship, 
the expressive tie 
Process of exchange 
favours 
 
Process of finding 
business solutions 
through personal 
connections 
Nature Emotional, and 
Instrumental 
Instrumental / 
Utilitarian 
Purely utilitarian 
Cultural/ 
Social Root 
Chinese cultural 
values 
 
Cultural values and 
contemporary socio- 
economic factors 
Current political 
/economic structures, 
eg. weak legal system  
Base Mostly blood base,  
some social base 
Social base 
 
Social base, or 
through intermediary 
Core Values Qinqing / affection, 
obligations, empathy 
Renqing, face, trust? 
Credibility 
Renqing, face, power/ 
Influence 
Motivation / 
Purpose 
Mutually dependent, 
emotion-driven 
‘To get things done’  
utility-driven 
 
To overcome 
bureaucratic obstacles, 
to get special 
treatment /protection 
Function Ends and means Means 
 
Means 
Exchange Love / affection, 
Support 
Favour ‘Money and power 
deal’ 
Condition Reciprocal not 
necessary, can be 
altruistic 
Reciprocal expected, 
but the weaker party 
benefits more  
Strictly reciprocal, 
‘gain and loss’ 
bargaining  
Relation ‘Own people/ 
zijiaren’, member of 
a big family 
‘Shouren- familiar 
person’, outsider 
(but not  stranger) 
Outsider, 
a mixture of private 
and business relations 
Quality / 
Closeness 
Strong and stable Medium, normally 
unstable 
 
Varies (depends on 
the existence of other 
bases 
Downside 
 
Nepotism Burden of renqing - 
‘human debts’ 
Corruption, social loss 
Time Long term or  
Permanent 
Temporary, one-off Temporary 
 
 
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