Guanxi, Three Forms or One

Abstract

A consensus holds that guanxi has three forms—family, friendship and acquaintance guanxi—distinguished by the strength of obligation. It is also assumed that through fictive kinship, friendship and family guanxi may merge. The chapter shows that kinship obligations and guanxi obligations are fundamentally dissimilar, thus the notion of family guanxi is redundant, and that pseudo-family ties do not provide access to kin relations but affirm the distinction between family and friendship ties. Because guanxi is cultivated by its participants, friendship guanxi and acquaintance guanxi are not distinct forms but rather different stages of guanxi formation. In considering the sources of these confusions the chapter goes on to discuss problems arising from employment of common-language terms in sociological analysis, untested assumptions concerning Chinese culture, and methodological commitments which privilege latent structures of strong ties. It is shown that the strength of guanxi ties, strategically pursued by participants, fluctuate through agentic practices.