It's perhaps best to think of guanxi as an umbrella term for a number of different things you'd definitely see in any Western society too - crucially, that woul

It's perhaps best to think of guanxi as an umbrella term for a number of different things you'd definitely see in any Western society too - crucially, that would include both 'good' and 'bad things. So it encompasses business networking, social favors, family favors, but also nepotism, political corruption, perjury, bribery etc. So if the guy at the print shop gave me a good price after my firm helped him out the week earlier with his broken air conditioning, then that's guanxi. If I managed to illegally obtain environmental certificate for my horrendously polluting plastics factory because my brother works at the environment department, that's also guanxi.