Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: An Ethnographic Study of Transnational Chinese Corporate Culture in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Starting in 2001, China’s Going Out policy has encouraged Multinational Corporations (MNCs) and expats from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to participate in the global economy at an unprecedented rate. Tens of thousands of Chinese businesses and millions of expats now span the globe. Despite the addition of this large, recent, and influential population to global capitalism there is little academic work on PRC corporate cultures or expats outside of China. Even in Thailand, home to the largest Chinese community outside of China/Taiwan, there is almost no corporate culture anthropology and no systemic study of recent Chinese business behaviors. This work attempts to fill that academic void. Informed by almost two decades of professional work in Thailand and China and over a year of ethnographic field work in Chinese companies in Shenzhen and Bangkok I detail the construction of imagined Chinese corporate cultures and Chinese spaces.