Abstract
In recent years, China has emerged as a major economic and trade partner of the USA. In the light of the increasing ‘neoliberalization’ of the Chinese economy – as exemplified by privatization, deregulation and globalization, China has come to be situated in the economic and political imagination within mainstream managerial US discourses of commerce and trade. As a strategic economic partner for US-based businesses, much academic, policy-based, and commercial literature has focused on ‘relationship management’ issues to guide US-based business management practices directed toward China. In this article, we focus on the discourses of ‘relationship management’ in the 2009 through 2011 versions of one such document: Doing Business in China: Country Commercial Guide for US Companies, a publication of the US and Foreign Commercial Service and the US Department of State. Using an entry point for putting the postcolonial and ‘political economy’ theoretical frameworks in conversation, as exemplified by the works of Edward Said, Arif Dirlik, and David Harvey, this document was analyzed for congruent themes and the ways in which these themes depicted the relationships of power and control within contemporary configurations of neocolonialism. Three themes were reflected in the discourse: (1) China as a juvenile business field; (2) primitive business culture of the Orient; and (3) globalization as improvement and development. These themes were examined in detail and explicated in relation to postcolonial and neoliberal political economic theories, elucidating the relationship among neoliberalization, the nation state and neocolonial framing of the Orient.
Keywords
The global flow of goods, services and labor has been marked by the increasing acknowledgement by communication scholars of the relevance of critical interrogations of the managerial discourses that carry out the interests of dominant power structures in neoliberal configurations and in contemporary markers of neocolonialism (Dutta, 2011; Dutta and Pal, 2010, 2011; Ganesh et al., 2005; Harvey, 2005; Holmer Nadesan, 2001; Pal and Dutta, 2008a, 2008b). Globalization processes are embodied in the underlying neoliberal logic that supports political-economic configurations of global control in the hands of transnational corporations (TNCs) on the basis of the logic of the free market with minimum state involvement, played out through privatization, deregulation, withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision, and opening up of nation states to foreign investment and foreign capital (Dutta, 2011; Ganesh et al., 2005; Harvey, 2003, 2005; Krugman, 2002; Zoller, 2006). Neoliberalism embodies a political and economic logic of organizing global markets that emphasizes the creation of free market conditions for global businesses to operate, circulating the discourse of minimum state interventions and minimum barriers to the operations of transnational corporations across the boundaries of nation states, managed through the purview of the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). In spite of the global influence of neoliberalism both as a discursive as well as a material practice (Dutta and Pal, 2010; Ganesh et al., 2005; Holmer Nadesan, 2001; Pal and Dutta, 2008a), communication scholars have paid limited attention to the communicative practices through which the discourses of global organizing carry out the agendas of neoliberalism and neocolonialism, particularly as it relates to the management of cross-cultural relationships by organizations through corporate public relations practices (Kruckeberg, 2000; Vercic, 2009). Whereas in the public relations literature there is an increasing acknowledgement of the important role of culture in transnational public relations (Kent and Taylor, 2011; Sriramesh, 2009; Vercic, 2009), mostly absent from the move to internationalize public relations are critical interrogations of the interplays of power and control embodied in transnational public relations practices (Bardhan and Weaver, 2011; Dutta and Pal, 2011). A critical interrogation of neoliberalism in public relations contexts would entail the critique of the very discourses of managerialism that are embedded in the policy articulations of neoliberalism by examining the interplay of the discourses of the state and the discourses of the business, particularly as they relate to establishing a state–TNC hegemony within the global landscape through transnational public relations practices (see for instance Van Dyke and Vercic, 2009).
The rhetoric of neoliberalism emphasizes the opening up of markets to foreign capital, goods and services, with minimum intervention on the part of the state (Harvey, 2005). Minimization of the role of the state facilitates the minimization of trade barriers and state-based subsidies, opening up new global markets for TNCs (Dutta, 2011). As the goals of neoliberalism have been played out through the markers of domination and control embodied in the policies promoted by the WTO, WB and IMF, greater opportunities have been created for TNCs to manage their business across the boundaries of nation states (Dutta, 2011). Particularly worth noting in contemporary neoliberal articulations are the paradoxes in the definitions and constitutions of relationships among transnational corporations and the nation states that carry out the public relations tasks of the neoliberal hegemony; in contrast to the broader discourses of free trade on the basis of minimum state involvement, nation states continue to play key functions in structuring and shaping foreign markets for TNCs (Dutta, 2011; Harvey, 2005). The nation state and its national culture emerge onto the neoliberal space as the sources of power for shaping the policies of international financial institutions (IFIs) as well as the foreign markets for the capital, products and services manufactured by TNCs.
The knowledge of culture and intercultural communication guides neoliberal trade across national boundaries (Dutta, 2011, 2012; Dutta and Pal, 2011; Pal and Dutta, 2008b). The effectiveness of TNCs depends upon their ability to manage their relationships with core stakeholders in intercultural and global settings, working still through the signifier of the nation state as an entry point for managing, implementing, and evaluating global policies that control the scope of operation of TNCs in global markets (Dutta, 2011; Pal and Dutta, 2008a, 2008b). Furthermore, the effectiveness of transnational public relations is intrinsically linked to the capability of transnational public relations practitioners to develop knowledge of local cultures and intercultural communication processes in global settings (Kent and Taylor, 2011; Sriramesh, 2009; Vercic, 2009). The management of global markets not only happens through the explicit corporate public relations practices of the TNC (Vercic, 2009), but also through corporate public diplomacy efforts that are directed at fostering sustainable global markets for the TNC by shaping policies of nation states (Dutta, 2011, 2012; Dutta-Bergman, 2005). The extension of corporate public relations to the domains of corporate public diplomacy is based on the notion of convergence between public relations and public diplomacy efforts (Van Dyke and Vercic, 2009). The negotiations of international policies, national bureaucracies and local cultures constitute the key functions of transnational relationship management practices (Kent and Taylor, 2011; Kruckeberg, 2000; Vercic, 2009). 1 In shaping global policies around the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) and Trade-related Intellectual Property (TRIPS), nation states therefore not only manage the geostrategic interests between each other, but also become the intermediaries for TNCs by harvesting global market opportunities (Dutta, 2011). In this global brokerage of power and market structures, the USA has played a vital role in propagating the hegemony of neoliberalization, serving as a the center of major TNCs and pushing global policies that carry out the agendas of US-based TNCs through its powerful relationship with IFIs (for instance, the USA continued to dominate the agendas of the WB through its leadership presence in the Bank) (Dutta, 2011, 2012). As a nation state, the USA has emerged as a frontrunner in the negotiation of international market spaces to carry out the agendas of TNCs and, therefore, as a mechanism for carrying out the neoimperial goals of neoliberalism by exerting state power to open up markets for US-based TNCs (Dutta, 2011, 2012; Dutta and Pal, 2011; Dutta-Bergman, 2005; Harvey, 2005).
In recent years, China has emerged as a key player in the balance of power and economic relationships in the global landscape, serving as a space for global investments of capital, as a resource for labor, as well as a market for products and services manufactured by foreign corporations (Harvey, 2005; Ong, 2006). 2 Furthermore, based on its strong economic performance, China has emerged as the largest lender to the USA (Barboza, 2011). Of particular interest to the USA and the TNCs based in the USA is the emerging Chinese market as a space for investment, capital inflow and commodity sales. With its growing economic presence and the large market size that may be tapped by TNCs, China offers enormous commercialization opportunities for global US-based corporations. The economic opportunities offered by China are reflected in the substantive body of public relations research that focuses on understanding Chinese culture and developing appropriate intercultural public relations practices in China (Huang, 2000; Hung, 2003). It is in the backdrop of the agendas of these US-based corporations that the US nation state plays the role of a cultural liaison, the bridge that offers diplomatic, advocacy, market intelligence, market knowledge and cultural linkage resources facilitating the entry and operation of US-based TNCs in China. In the US, China has risen to prominence in the corporate public relations discourse as a marker of economic opportunity, promising a large market for US-based TNCs. Relationship management then becomes a key construct for US-based TNCs in negotiating their relationship with China and Chinese culture, providing a window into the perceptions of China and the Chinese culture in the discursive spaces of the US that guide the business agendas, procedures, and accompanying cultural and societal guidelines for US corporations that are issued by the state (Hung, 2002). The interest of the US in developing and maintaining its commercial relationships with China serves as the cornerstone of the Country Commercial Guide for US Companies, Doing Business in China, a publication of the US and Foreign Commercial Service and US Department of State (2009–11), the purpose of which is to provide market overviews and entry strategies for US companies that seek to export and invest in China. In this project, we bridge the frameworks of neoliberal and postcolonial theories to deconstruct the Chinese Commercialization document, attending to the contemporary neocolonial and postcolonial politics of neoliberalism as embodied in the managerial discourse on China that get configured into the US state department articulations of doing business with(in) China.
Power, control, postcoloniality and globalization
At its foundation, postcolonial theory primarily engages with the dominant power of the West that imperializes developing nations by advancing the modernist logic of progress and development to justify global control of resources and markets 3 (Said, 1978). Emphasizing the constructions of the Orient in the discursive spaces of western hegemonic structures in reductionist binaries of primitive and modern, postcolonial theory examines the agendas and goals served by the rhetorical structures of neoimperialism that seek to control the structures in global spaces with the goal of creating and sustaining new markets for transnational hegemony (Dutta, 2008; Dutta and Pal, 2010, 2011). It questions the idea of linear progress by drawing attention to the differences that have emerged economically and politically in the global situation, particularly pertaining to the differential terrains of economics. Simultaneously, it critically interrogates the dichotomies that circulate in the discursive spaces of knowledge production, marking the Orient as the other within these discursive spaces (Dutta, 2008). Identifying capitalism as central to West-centric knowledge production, postcolonial theory interrogates issues related to inequality and exploitation in the capitalist world order and the disparities in the representations of the other in the dominant discursive spaces (Dirlik, 2000; Shome and Hegde, 2002). Fundamental to the new form of global capitalism is ‘transnationalization of production’, which seeks to find new markets for western transnational corporations (Dirlik, 2000: 564). In the context of China, the growing interest in China as an emerging market for transnational Western capitalism constitutes the agendas of the discursive spaces of hegemonic neoliberal structures constituted in the managerial discourses about China articulated by the nation state. How then does China get constituted within these desires of expansionism for US-based TNCs as articulated by the state?
Postcolonial theory is committed to developing a critique of colonialism and imperialism, particularly paying attention to the ways in which cultures get articulated within discourses of development, modernization and capitalism. While colonialism typically is defined as overt coercion in the form of territorial occupation, imperialism is an act of economic and political domination that is carried out at the ideological level. Neoimperialism defines the contemporary terrains of imperialism, exploring the intersections of state, corporate power and international institutions in carrying out the interests of specific geographically based power structures. Postcolonial deconstructions of neoimperial agendas interrogate the circulation of dichotomies that continue to reinforce the primitivization of the Third World even as this Third World is introduced into the market space as a site of doing business and generating profits. Generally speaking, postcolonial theory argues that under global capitalism, western power seeks to establish its hegemony not only politically, militarily and economically, but also culturally and ideologically (Prasad, 2003). Postcolonial theory is thus rooted in decolonizing the mind at political, economic, and cultural levels with the goal of achieving an equitable global system.
Some of the foundational concepts in postcolonial theory can be attributed to several influential theorists. Said’s (1978) Orientalism deconstructs western discourses or cultural representations of the Orient. Arguing that the Orient is not Oriental in the commonplace sense, but that it was made to be Oriental, Said dislocates the ‘familiar’ concept of the Orient to expose how the Other helps define the West via contrasting languages, experiences and images in ‘a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony’ (1978: 5). Bhabha points out that the idea of Otherness is an ambivalent simultaneous production of ‘an object of desire and derision’ (2004: 67) On one hand, colonial discourse suggests that the non-West is a category that is radically situated as the Other, outside of the West. On the other hand, it draws the non-West into the West by way of western epistemologies and as a site of western intervention. Hence, Bhabha forwards the concept of ambivalence in defining postcolonial subject positions. Articulating the division between the West and the non-West as the fundamental epistemological and ontological basis of the relational space within which the West and the Orient are projected, Said (1978: 7–8) writes:
Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand. And why should it have been otherwise, especially during the period of extraordinary European ascendancy from the late Renaissance to the present? The scientist, the scholar, the missionary, the trader, or the soldier was in, or thought about, the Orient because he could be there, or could think about it, with very little resistance on the Orient’s part. Under the general heading of knowledge of the Orient, and within the umbrella of Western hegemony over the Orient during the period from the end of the eighteenth century, there emerged a complex Orient suitable for study in the academy, for display in the museum, for reconstruction in the colonial office, for theoretical illustration in anthropological, biological, linguistic, racial, and historical theses about mankind and the universe, for instances of economic and sociological theories of development, revolution, cultural personality, national or religious character. (emphasis in original)
Essential to the political economy of western epistemology is the creation of the dichotomy between the West and the non-West that serves as the ontological basis of western knowledge, which in turn is mobilized as the rationale for western interventions framed under the rhetoric of development (Dutta, 2011). The hegemonic control over the Orient is maintained through the portrayal of the Orient as primitive and in need of intervention. However, with neoliberal modernization, as the distinct global markers of development discourse have started disappearing, how then have the portrayals of the Orient been taken up in neoliberal discourse, especially as the Orient now is specifically presented as a site of doing business? How is the identity of the Orient constituted in contemporary markers of transnational hegemony that are specifically crafted with the goals of addressing the Orient?
It is also this demonstration of the structure of world power relations as a legacy of western imperialism that makes postcolonial studies relevant in the context of globalization. Globalization has led to a number of situations – migration of people, blurring of national and economic boundaries, simultaneous homogenization and fragmentation within and across societies, and the interpenetration of global and local among other phenomena (Appadurai, 1995; Dirlik, 1995). A postcolonial lens critically explores these phenomena and argues that global capitalism manipulates the local for the interest of the global. Dirlik (1995: 466) writes:
What is ironic is that the managers of this world situation themselves concede the concentration of power in their (or their organizations’) hands; as well as their manipulation of peoples, boundaries and cultures to appropriate the local for the global, to admit different cultures in the realm of capital only to break them down and to remake them in accordance with the requirements of production and consumption, and even to reconstitute subjectivities across national boundaries to create producers and consumers more responsive to the operations of capital.
Ultimately, then, the Orient emerges in the global space as a cultural icon to be deciphered and deconstructed for the purposes of transnational hegemony. Therefore, as Shome and Hegde suggest, a postcolonial intervention enables more ‘socially responsible problematizations of communication’ (2002: 261) with the goal of eventually producing ‘a more just and equitable knowledge base about the third world, the other, and the ‘rest’ of the world’ (2002: 261) Postcolonial theory creates discursive openings for examining the political nature of knowledge production, and urges us to disrupt the neocolonial interests of transnational hegemony by taking an activist stance in our articulations of knowledge. Given the spatiality of power and control in the ways in which resources are distributed and exploited, it is essential to explore the symbolic representations of the ‘West’ and the ‘Third’ that sustain colonial/neocolonial processes.
Transnational corporations, nation states, and civil society
Postcolonial theory is particularly relevant in the context of contemporary globalization processes as it offers a theoretical lens for examining the ways in which the intersections of TNCs, nation states, global policy organizations, civil society, and local elite work hand-in-hand to perpetuate the ideology of neoliberalization. Neoliberal economic policies are articulated in the backdrop of national agendas, and continue to embody the frameworks of orientalism in order to serve the goals of TNCs (Dutta, 2011). Commenting about neoliberalism, Harvey (2005: 2) notes:
Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.
Inherent, then, in the neoliberal configuration is the protection of the interests of private property owners, TNCs and financial capital, themselves culturally situated values embedded within national cultural politics. The relationships between nation states get played out within these broader domains of power structures in neoliberalism. Accordingly, the impetus is on channeling the influences of local, national and global policies to facilitate the operation of free markets and free trade, with minimal state intervention. The role of the state, then, is to ensure the operation of the free market, at the same time intervening minimally once the market has been created in order to ensure that this market operates smoothly under its so-called ‘free market’ logic. The paradox of neoliberalism lies in the very role of the state in enacting violence to ensure the smooth running of the TNCs. Although the theorization of state power is limited, in practice, nation states become the key sites for brokering global structural policies for the TNCs. This is well articulated by Harvey:
The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. The state has to guarantee, for example, the quality and integrity of money. It must also set up those military, defense, police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets. Furthermore, if markets do not exist (in such areas as land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution) then they must be created, by state action if necessary. (2005: 2)
Contrary, then, to the rhetoric of the free market, neoliberalism operates on the very basis of state power that works continuously to bring about the marketization of economies across the globe. It is in this backdrop of the examination of the role of the nation state in marketizing the global economy that we propose to examine the relationship management knowledge circulated by the US Department of State in its guidelines for doing business in China (US and Foreign Commercial Service and the US Department of State (2009–11).
In the backdrop of these state-sponsored systems and mechanisms of power and control that lie at the base of neoliberalism, the core of the neoliberal logic perpetuates the idea of minimal state intervention, deregulation, privatization and the withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision that were previously considered the responsibilities of the state. Harvey goes on to note:
But beyond these tasks the state should not venture. State interventions in markets (once created) must be kept to a bare minimum because, according to the theory, the state cannot possibly possess enough information to second-guess market signals (prices) and because powerful interest groups will inevitably distort and bias state interventions (particularly in democracies) for their own benefit. (2005: 2)
Worth noting here is the irony in the conceptualization of the state in its relationship to multinational and transnational corporations. While on one hand, the state serves as a mechanism of exerting power and control for ensuring the creation and maintenance of the global markets for TNCs, the role of the state is simultaneously omitted in the realm of regulating the profit-making ventures of private corporations. As a result, the state becomes a colonizing tool that continually serves the interests of the dominant social classes to enjoy profit and to maintain class power in the global arena (Harvey, 2006). Worth noting here is the clustering of TNCs within a certain configuration of nation states at the center (particularly so in the USA and UK), and the continual utilization of national agendas and resources in the international arena to secure the interests of TNCs. It is in this backdrop then that we interrogate the role of the US state in articulating commercialization strategies for US businesses in Chinese markets. We ask the following question: How does China emerge in articulations of relationship management in the Country Commercial Guide for US Companies, Doing Business in China, published by the US and Foreign Commercial Service and the US Department of State?
Method
The documents chosen for the analysis were the 2009, 2010, and 2011 versions of Doing Business in China: Country Commercial Guide for US Companies (US and Foreign Commercial Service and US Department of State, 2009–11). As a part of the Country Commercial Guide series, the purpose of this document is to provide market overviews and entry strategies for US companies that seek to export and invest in China. At the time this study was carried out, the three documents were the most recent and comprehensive policy documents published by the US Department of State that address the principles of relationship management in the business arena with China. The guide is organized into 10 chapters, including ‘Doing Business in China’, ‘Political and Economic Environment’, ‘Selling U.S. Products and Services’, ‘Investment Climate’, ‘Contacts, Market Research, and Trade Events’, and ‘Guide to our Services’.
The US Commercial Service is a part of the US Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration and promotes international trade by offering market research and trade promotion expertise, with an ultimate emphasis on catalyzing market entries in foreign markets by US organizations and increasing the foreign market sales of US organizations. The goals of the US commercial service are to increase US exports and US jobs as well as foster a level playing field internationally for US businesses through advocacy and commercial diplomacy. The organization engages in a range of activities including market intelligence, trade counseling, trade promotion, business matchmaking, and advocacy and commercial diplomacy. Doing Buisness in China is an appropriate artifact for the thematic analysis guided under the broader research question examining the postcolonial agendas of ‘Othering’ the Orient as sites of control and market expansion.
In developing our themes, we use a theoretical sampling framework with the constant comparison method offered by Corbin and Strauss (2008). We refer to Corbin and Strauss’s definition of theoretical sampling as a ‘data collection methodology based on concepts/themes derived from the data,’ (2008: 143), and one that essentially looks for relationships between concepts. Theme identification and development was guided by Owen’s (1984) criteria of recurrence, repetition and forcefulness. Recurrence referred to the identification of ‘the same thread of meaning, even though different wording indicated such a meaning’ Owen, 1984: 275). Repetition involved the ‘explicit, repeated use of the same wording (Owen, 1984: 275) Forcefulness referred to the rhetorical framing and rhetorical choices used in the data. For instance, trading and other business-related policies issued and enforced by the Chinese government are often described as ‘restricting’, building up ‘barrier’ and ‘limiting’. Similarly, while they are under the ‘bound’, ‘obligation’ and ‘commitment’ to WTO to ‘liberalize the trade regime’, U.S. companies can benefit from ‘fair competition’ on a ‘level playing field’. One recurrent theme throughout the document, then, is the aspiration to a free market.
Close reading of the document was conducted using the aforementioned criteria. This involved reading through the document, one paragraph at a time, and marking out repetitions, recurrences and forcefulness of ideas in each paragraph, while simultaneously examples that helped demonstrate the theme were also collected. The unit of analysis in our case was individual paragraphs in the policy document, thus examining the expression of key themes in each paragraph of the document. This process of close reading and theme recognition is akin to what Corbin and Strauss (2008) refer to as ‘open coding’.
Subsequently, individual articulations were constantly compared to each other, and the interrelationships amongst these articulations were identified. Moreover, the authors discussed the themes developed from their individual reading of the document. Only those themes whose description and explication were found to be mutually agreeable to the authors were included in the final analysis. Differences and disagreements with themes identified were regarded as engagement and discussion questions about the variations and complexities in that particular theme. It can thus be seen that the process of identifying themes was highly inductive and derived purely from the data. The analysis evolved from a close reading of the text to determining interpretive areas of congruence and categories. In moving away from the data to a generalized abstraction, the method used could be regarded as an ‘emic’ methodology (Corbin and Strauss, 2008).
Primitive culture, development, and business
The key themes that emerged in the three commercial guides from 2009 through 2011 are articulations of the business environment in China as juvenile and substandard, its business culture being primitive and exotic, the business profit of the USA as legitimate, and the role of the USA and international treaties as agents of development and modernization. The portrayal of China in reductionist terms serves as the framework for articulating the business roles of the USA in bringing developed practices into China and simultaneously benefitting businesses in the US nation state from this form of altruism. The cultural knowledge about China as configured in the commercial guides serves as the guiding knowledge base for managerial practices of US-based businesses in China. The political economy of neoimperial discourse is articulated in the managerial recommendations for cross-cultural business management that emerges in the prescriptive ideals made by the US nation state to serve the twin functions of uplifting Chinese businesses and profiteering by US-based corporations, set on the backdrop of Chinese primitiveness. Through these three themes, knowledge about the Chinese business environment is disseminated in the Doing Business in China to shape the terrain of intercultural corporate communication processes undertaken by US-based TNCs in China. The US Department of State serves as the source of cultural knowledge guiding corporate communication practices within the realm of relationship management (Ni, 2009).
China as a juvenile business field
The discourse of China as a juvenile business field is carried out in Doing Business in China by the articulation of the ‘unpreparedness’ of China to partner with the USA in international business interactions. In particular, the business environment in China is described as first and foremost a market, but one that lacks infrastructure, administrative expertise, and efficient legal protection for business. These themes are often carried by the comparison between the business and administrative practices in China to what is believed to be the international standards and norms. Portraying Chinese government and business people as lacking the knowledge and expertise of how business should be normatively carried out and regulated even as China’s neoliberal reforms are praised, Doing Business in China states in the overview that:
Despite these remarkable changes [referring to the neoliberal reforms in China], China is still a developing country, albeit one with vast potential. Spread over a population of 1.3 billion, China’s colossal economy does not represent a large amount of disposable income for each person. Annual per capita income in China is around USD 1,700. Yet, surprisingly, China stands as the world’s third largest market for luxury goods behind Japan and the United States. The income distribution within the country is highly uneven with urban centers, such as Beijing and Shanghai, enjoying a per capita income of more than double the nation’s average. Some studies estimate that there are now more than 200 million Chinese citizens with a per capita income over USD 8,000. That said China’s per capita income figures are poised to change dramatically. Over the next several years, many economists predict a surge in the number of people achieving middle class status. (2009: Chapter 1, ‘Market Overview’ section
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The excerpt highlights the identity of China as a developing country with low per capita disposable income and uneven distribution of wealth. The evaluative framework of China as a developing country is situated amidst the modernist developmentalist lens of the USA implicit in the document. This sets the tone of the Country Commercial Guide that renders China as a subject – of intervention – by putting the ‘remarkable changes’ (referring to neoliberal reforms) in perspective: by placing China, after all, as a developing country, decoded in the standards of US-centered modernization logics. The document transposes between what it portrays as an aspiration of the developing country to become like the developed countries of the globe (referring to the US and its western European allies), and the market potential that is inherent in the transition by singling out the fact that China is one of the biggest luxury goods markets in the world. Here, luxury goods are used as markers of symbolic experiences of the West, and exist ‘surprisingly’ in China as anomalies. Based on this context, the prediction of rising income levels is nothing more than citing business potential, with the emphasis visibly on the affluent part of the Chinese population, even as China enters into the evaluative framework of being scripted as developing because of the inequities in income distribution. The paradox here lies at two levels: (1) in the absence of reflexivity in interrogating the structural inequities that exist with the USA or in other so-called developed economies that are rooted in neoliberal reforms, and (2) in the framing of the luxury goods market as an opportunity even as the inequities in China are foregrounded to mark it as a developing nation. The Orientalism in the above discourse is played out through the portrayal of China as primitive, as constituted within the modernist framework of development rooted in the USA. Here is another excerpt that carries out the Orientalist depiction of China:
While China is one of the most promising global markets it is also one of the most challenging environments for American companies. Many US companies are able to profitably enter the Chinese market, but each year a large number of ventures face serious difficulties which all too frequently culminate in extremely costly local business disputes. A large number of these disputes might have been successfully avoided by thorough due diligence. The primary causes of commercial disputes between Chinese and American companies include breach of contractual payment obligations, irregularities in accounting practices, financial mismanagement, undisclosed debt, and the struggle for control within joint ventures. These problems can be minimized by investigating the financial standing and reputation of local companies before signing contracts with them. Both US and Chinese firms with offices in China conduct due diligence investigations. (2011: 28)
Note here the depiction of the Chinese business climate in terms of corruption that calls for investigating the financial standing and the reputation of the organization. The desirability of China is juxtaposed amidst the portrayal of the dangers of doing business with China, represented as one of the most challenging business markets. Here is the continuation of the Orientalist theme in the portrayal of China:
Continued economic reform is essential for China to achieve high levels of economic growth. China’s own leaders recognize a more balanced economy relying more on domestic demand and development of the service sector are essential for China to become a mature economic power. (2011: 3)
China’s business is depicted in terms of its needs for economic reform and development. Assuming a paternalistic position that is symptomatic of Orientalist discourse, the document then goes on to prescribe what is needed for China to become a mature economic power (relying more on domestic demand and developing a service sector) Note the inherent assumption here that China has not yet arrived in the global market in spite of the large-scale debt of the US to China (Barboza, 2011); the ‘immaturity’ of China serves as the foundation for the articulation of US economic interests and for the offering of prescriptions by the US State Department.
Also, the articulation of the primitive practices of China is established in terms of its protectionist policies, set in the backdrop of the implicit assumption of the superiority of the neoliberal ideology as an organizing framework for markets in the global configuration:
China has a government that practices mercantalistic style policies. China has made significant progress toward a market-oriented economy, but parts of its bureaucracy still protect local firms, especially state-owned firms, from imports, while encouraging exports. WTO membership will mitigate these tendencies over time – but progress is only gradual. (2009: Chapter 1)
The government practices of China are established as mercantalistic and therefore primitive, set in contrast to the implicitly assumed rhetoric of the market-oriented economy of the USA (although critical analysis by Harvey documents the protectionist strategies that are utilized by the US to prevent market entries of foreign corporations in certain sectors). The protective bureaucracy of China emerges in this discourse as a marker of the primitiveness of the political economy of China, while simultaneously downplaying the protectionist tendencies within US markets that are protective of specific business types at specific stages of development (see Harvey, 2005 for a detailed analysis). WTO membership is articulated as a catalyst of progress, although progress is assessed to be slow based on standards of liberalization imposed by the USA and rooted in its neoliberal goals of expansion, particularly as it pertains to opening up foreign countries to US economic interests. The articulation of neoliberalism as the marker of development and modernity is utilized to depict the planned economy of China as a symbol of its primitivism. Consider the following excerpt:
China retains much of the apparatus of a planned economy. A five-year program sets economic goals, strategies, and targets … The understanding of free enterprise and competition is incomplete in some sectors and political connections or goals at time trump commercially-based decisions. (2010: Chapter 1)
The standard put forth for the evaluation of China’s development is founded on the neoliberal principles of free enterprise and competition. The development of China is considered incomplete in terms of the evaluations of the Chinese understanding of free enterprise and competition made by the US State Department as the author of the document. Principles of neoliberalism serve as conceptual foundations for the rendering of China as backward, ignoring the extent to which the very rhetoric of free enterprise is located within political connections that underlie US commercial policies and programs and the global interests of US-based TNCs (see Dutta, 2011, 2012).
Here’s another excerpt that further depicts the Orientalist discourse of the China Commercialization document:
China often lacks predictability in its business environment. A transparent and consistent body of laws and regulations would make the Chinese market more predictable. However, China’s current legal and regulatory system can be opaque, inconsistent, and often arbitrary. Implementation of the law is inconsistent. Lack of effective Chinese government protection of intellectual property rights is a particularly damaging issue for many American companies, both those that operate in China and those that do not, have had their products stolen by Chinese companies. (2009: Chapter 1)
The depiction of China here refers to its opaque, inconsistent and often arbitrary regulatory system. Reference to the poor intellectual property laws is noted as a weakness that can lead to the theft of intellectual property owned by American companies. The portrayal of China is carried out in terms of the depiction of the corrupt climate where intellectual property rights (IPR) get stolen (assumed once again in this articulation is the erasure of the large-scale intellectual property theft that US-based corporations have been accused of in the global context, see Dutta, 2011).
The advance of US business into the market is mitigated by what the document posits to be an underdeveloped business environment. While explaining business potential in e-commerce, Doing Business in China elucidates the poor infrastructure and the unpreparedness of the market in China (2009: Chapter 3):
While e-commerce in China has great potential, three major impediments still remain:
China is still a cash-based society and use of credit cards is still limited;
Local distribution channels are not well developed for the delivery of items purchased over the Internet;
Limited awareness of the need for appropriate Internet security software products.
The norm of business practice in the USA (i.e. credit card use) is used here as a benchmark to gauge the level of development in the e-business environment of China. Similarly, markers such as the logistics and internet security are often used to constitute the image of a developing (read: underdeveloped) society where business still happens on cash and in physical shops, although implicit here is the great potential for US corporations in the context of e-business in China. What is missing in the articulation is the success of the locals to mobilize resources in their business arrangements within the local contexts through local mechanisms of transactions. While acknowledging the improving conditions of infrastructure, the guide raises the issue of expertise, as articulated in the following paragraph:
The State and the Communist Party directly manage the only legal labor union … Certain industrial sectors are prone to over-investment. Excessive investment leads to over production, bad debt and declining prices in affected industries. (2009: Chapter 1)
The articulation of the business environment is framed in light of administrative expertise, but more importantly, the articulation transcends to the discourse of sociopolitical system and ideology. What is particularly relevant here is the way ‘free enterprise and competition’ are treated not as an expression of neoliberal ideology rooted in specific localized logics of political economy, but as universal knowledge that should be understood as prerequisite for business participation, and the evaluation of such knowledge in terms of the completeness of understanding. China is framed as having incomplete knowledge about the free market and free enterprise. The neoliberal frame in the guide employs a slippery slope argument that equates the lack of ‘free enterprise and competition’ to over-investment, over-production and bad debt, etc. While imbuing ideology with knowledge, the dichotomy between the West and the Orient is then not one about the difference of opinion, but one that reinforces the Orient as ignorant and primitive with reference to a specific configuration of knowledge that is situated amidst the political-economic interests of the Empire (Said, 1978). More political articulation of the Orient can be found in narratives about the nation state and the power institutions of the nation state. State power is portrayed in the document as too restrictive and not strict enough at the same time, articulated amidst the knowledge predictions of neoliberal ideology and the interests of US-based transnational corporations (TNCs):
The advertising industry in China is heavily regulated, and the government still exercises ultimate control over content. The Advertising Law is not completely transparent; therefore, interpretation and enforcement may be arbitrary and varied, and legislation usually favors consumer protection over business promotion. (2009: Chapter 3, Section 1) Police and prosecutors (known as the Procuratorate in China) may lack familiarity with IPR criminal matters. As a result, these authorities may require an excessive level of formality concerning evidence from a victim, including repetitive authentication and consularization of documents. Still developing in China are the relationships between administrative and criminal causes of action, the handling of recidivists, and the preservation of evidence. (2009: Chapter 3, Section 4)
Here we find paradoxical rhetoric concerning the role of nation state that, on the one hand, highlights the laissez-faire logic of the ‘free market’, and on the other hand, emphasizes strict law enforcement to deter and punish behaviors that disrupt the market. The imagination of the nation state emerges in the document as a marker and facilitator of neoliberal ideology that operates to facilitate and safeguard business (read TNC) interests in the market. In the first paragraph above, ideological markers such as ‘ultimate control’ and ‘legal transparency’ are used to construct an overpowering state apparatus that needs to be brought down through international interventions so that corporations can operate freely. The idea of transparency is an often used ideological tool in the neoliberal articulation against state power for monopolizing information, and has a strong derogative undertone of underhanded operation and conspiracy. The second paragraph, however, portrays the legal system as being too bureaucratic and meticulous to effectively curb IPR issues. The court needs ‘excessive’ formality of evidence and ‘repetitive’ authentications – the subjective evaluation of the judicial exercise is apparently based on the norm of speedy punitive action in another, non-Chinese setting, as the paragraph seems to attribute the performance of the authorities to ‘lack(ing) familiarity with IPR criminal matters’.
Primitive business culture of the Orient
Bhabha (2004) points out that the Orient is simultaneously ‘an object of desire and derision’. In Doing Business in China, this duality exists in narratives of primitive and uncivil business culture of China that must be tamed and exploited to generate profits for US corporations. While standing in stark contrast to western sophistication and civility embodied in US business practices, the difference played out in the primitive business culture of China also provides a point of entry for western intervention and domination. The theme of ‘primitive business culture of the Orient’ operates through marking the Orient as (1) primitives bounded by kinship and kinship-like ties, (2) lack of ethical code and self-control, while (3) aspired by the West, especially western lifestyles as sources of profits. The emphasis here is the discourse of modernity versus the Orient, where the Orient is the ‘Other’ that is situated outside the globalized West, and is simultaneously an economic resource for the globalized economy. The construction of Oriental China as the ‘other’ is presented through the description of the nature of social structure as based on kinship and kinship-like ties, as in the following paragraph:
Personal relationships (‘guanxi’ in Chinese) in business are critical. ‘Guanxi’ is deeply rooted in Chinese culture and is basically ‘a tool to get business’ and ‘a way of getting things done.’ It often takes months, perhaps even a year or more, to establish ‘guanxi’. It is important for exporters, importers, and investors to establish and maintain close relationships with their Chinese counterparts and relevant government agencies. It is equally important that American exporters encourage strong personal relationships between their Chinese agents or distributors and the buyers and end-users. A web of strong personal relationships can often help ensure expedited governmental procedures and the smoother development of business in China. (2009: Chapter 3, Section 1)
The unique Oriental experience is constructed and reinforced through linguistic means in this paragraph: a new word ‘guanxi’ is coined from the Chinese pronunciation to highlight its difference from the English translation ‘personal relationships’. The introduction of the new term emphasizes a lack of transferability of the Oriental experience to the West: the Chinese ‘guanxi’, then, is only analogous to, but not equivalent to the western idea of personal relationships, thus it can be observed and intervened in subjectification without reference to the western experience. ‘Guanxi’, after all, exists in the Orient, and in the Orient only, as the description of it being ‘deeply rooted in Chinese culture’ suggests. Cultural markers emerge into the neoliberal narrative of the USA (as depicted in the guide) as resources for profiteering, framed as the multicultural ‘other’ that emerges into the neoliberal space as a homogeneous entity that can guide profit-making agendas of TNCs. Articulation of the Orient is achieved by employing multiple cultural depictions that are then brought into juxtaposition with the market. Strong personal relationship, for example, has reference to sites of simple, less-developed social structures, and so is the articulation of time and efficiency in the sentence: ‘It often takes months, perhaps even a year or more, to establish “guanxi”.’
The theme of primitive Oriental culture is reinforced by representations of widespread antisocial behavior in the forms of missing ethical codes and self-control. A large part of this narrativization is carried out by telling stories of IPR infringement or other types of fraud, as in the following paragraph:
While not all unsolicited interest is fraudulent, American companies should always be cautious when considering such situations. Requests for advance payments, samples or prototypes to be sent in advance of sales negotiations, cash for a banquet far in excess of typical costs, cash for travel expenses for an ‘essential’ U.S. meeting, all pose red flags that a business opportunity may be fraudulent. (2009: Chapter 3, ‘Warning Signs of a Scam’ section)
China is a dangerous place for doing business, although it is in navigating this danger that profits are to be made. Detailed description of frauds, some of them quite similar to standard business practices within the USA, underlies a sense of fundamental division between the ‘self’ and the ‘Other’: the Orient, the risks attached with it, and its unpredictable and corrupt power have to be brought under control and surveillance. Warnings are therefore the type of sign US corporations should be careful of. The issue of ethical behavior and of surveillance is of more importance in a partnership scenario, as shown in the following excerpt:
Given the complexities of the Chinese market, foreign companies should also consider using a domestic Chinese agent for both importing into China and marketing within China. With careful selection, training, and constant contact, a U.S. exporter can obtain good market representation from a Chinese trading company, many of which are authorized to deal in a wide range of products. (2009: Chapter 3, Section 2 of ‘Using an Agent or Distributor’)
The paragraph emphasizes the importance of scrutinizing (‘careful selection’), cultivating (‘training’) and keeping constant surveillance (‘constant contact’) as preconditions to successful business partnerships with local Chinese companies. What is interesting here is not only the hint of western superiority that provides the rationale for surveillance, but the detailed narratives of intervention that take place on individual business level. What further demonstrates the western superiority is the portrayal of the West as a site of aspiration for the Orient in the following excerpts:
Heightened consumer awareness to such problems has given U.S. companies with strong international brands an advantage in the Chinese market, as American products and services are generally considered to have superior sales and customer support standards. (2009: Chapter 3, ‘Customer Support’ section in ‘Sales Service’) Encouraged by a government eager for foreign capital and technology… thousands of foreign firms have charged into the Chinese market. (2009: Chapter 1, ‘Market Challenges’ section) Inadequate market access for foreign films, books, and music has led to a large black market for these goods. (2009: Chapter 3, Section 6 of ‘Protecting your Intellectual Property’)
In these excerpts, the West and the Orient are dichotomized through juxtaposing narratives of the superiority of the West and the aspirational products of the West that are sought out by the Chinese. Chinese customers are described as being ‘aware of’ the ‘superior standards’ of American products, willing to purchase American goods and products, to the extent that a large black market is created for American cultural products. Meanwhile, Chinese government is ‘eager’ to do business with Americans for ‘foreign capital and technology’. In short, what the West has the Orient wants, and is willing to pay for. It will be an easy victory for US corporations in a global free market as American products are considered superior and services are considered better.
Globalization as improvement and development
Globalization as improvement and development is constructed by constantly using level of market deregulation as a gauge of social development, especially in the repeated articulation in Doing Business in China of international trade treaties as major site of intervention in the Orient. Globalization is epitomized in the free market principles, and the opening up of the Chinese market is therefore seen as a market of development. The following excerpt places the socioeconomic changes in China with its accession into WTO:
the Chinese Government took significant steps to revise its laws and regulations in a manner consistent with WTO obligations and strengthen its role in the global economy. (2009: Chapter 5, ‘Trade Barriers’ section)
Worth noting here is the articulation of the role of the WTO in reforming Chinese civil and political societies. The strengthening of the role of China in the global economy is guided by the participation of China in the WTO, where WTO obligations are framed as offering top-down pressure on China to reform its laws and policies. Here, the WTO obligations are seen as indicators of development, which also mean that the market spaces of China become more accessible to US corporations under these obligations. Similarly, note the following frame in the document:
In the past several years, the United States … have conducted numerous national and local training initiatives, focusing on China’s WTO obligations, including its civil, criminal, administrative, and Customs enforcement. (2009: Chapter 3, Section 3 of ‘Protecting your Intellectual Property’)
Once again, worth noting here is the role of the US as a leader and as a source of knowledge in the realm of development. Development knowledge of the neoliberal type flows from the US to China through local training initiatives that focus on the political, civil and administrative elements of WTO-style development along with the economic elements.
Consider furthermore the following two excerpts:
As China liberalizes its trade regime and continues to further open its markets under its World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments, new products and industries are increasingly present. (2009: Chapter 3, ‘Protecting your Intellectual Property’ section) China has a government that practices mercantalistic style policies. China has made significant progress toward a market-oriented economy, but parts of its bureaucracy still protect local firms, especially state-owned firms, from imports, while encouraging exports. WTO membership will mitigate these tendencies over time – but progress is only gradual. (2009: Chapter 1, ‘Market Challenges’ section)
Two things stand out in these narratives of global trade treaties and their effect on an Oriental nation state. First, trade treaties such as the WTO are powerful tools of intervention, and ones that ensure western dominance: an Oriental nation state may have to change laws, regulations, market access and trade balance situation in order to fulfill its ‘WTO obligations/commitments’. These WTO obligations become conduits for serving the interests of TNCs, and more specifically, US-based TNCs. Thus, the WTO becomes the leverage for neoliberal reforms and for top-down neoliberal organizing principles directed at the Orient to disrupt the autonomy of the nation state to set up protective policies that would support local advantages. Second, compliance with the WTO is portrayed as a sign of development by placing markers of progress (strengthened economy, new products training initiatives) and the rhetoric of WTO-directed neoliberal reforms side-by-side, in the rhetorical practice of equating the two, or establishing a causal relationship between the two. In other words, implicit in the logic of liberalization is the assumption of the progress of the nation state achieved in the social and political aspects of organizing through the reforms achieved in the market, only to then serve as a way for profiteering US-based TNCs and increasing their business opportunities in China while simultaneously following protectionist policies in the USA (Harvey, 2005). The opening up of the market is therefore seen as the harbinger for democracy and for political changes that would align China with the developed nations of the globe. Development in other spheres, such as politics and society, get tied to the economic logic, and more fundamentally, to the prospects of developing better market opportunities for US-based corporations in China.
Conclusion
Doing Business in China reflects the desires of the US nation state to find exploitable markets in China, documented through the generation of cultural knowledge directed at guiding corporate relations practices in an intercultural setting (Vercic, 2009). In contemporary neoliberal managerial discourse as depicted in the guide, the US nation state emerges as a key actor in the negotiation of global spaces as markets for TNCs, continuing to narrate Eurocentric colonial tropes in spite of the growing empirical evidence that points toward the possible fissures and failures in universal US-centric narratives of global management based on neoliberalism (Dutta, 2011). The US managerial discourse about China as depicted in the guide on one hand constructs China as a primitive site in need of emancipation through modernized organizational practices based on neoliberal principles of market freedom; on the other hand, China continues to emerge in the discourse as a marker of desire and as a source of immense economic profiteering for US-based corporations that is brokered ironically by the US nation state. The hypocrisy of US state-based neoliberal discourse lies in the intrinsic relationship of the market with the state, negatively evaluating other nation states (in this case China) as primitive for their state involvement and, simultaneously, serving as the very resource for guiding US-based TNCs attempting to expand their markets into China from the authorial position of the US state. The fundamental premise of the functioning of the US nation state as a promoter of US-based exports and sales abroad contradicts the US conceptualization of the free market that is paraded as the relic of development. One of the fundamental paradoxes in the US state’s position of doing business with China is the intersection of the business interests and state functions even as the state function positions itself as pushing minimal state involvement in China so that US-based corporations can do business effectively and efficiently in China. The US state emerges in its top-down role as a producer of knowledge about China and its business, thus bringing forth the irony in the portrayal of minimal state involvement as the indicator of development as depicted in the free market logic of neoliberalism (Dutta, 2011; Harvey, 2005).
The double standards in the managerial discourse of the US nation state in the constructions of China on one hand evaluates China as primitive because of what it perceives as the heavy involvement of the Chinese state in businesses, and at the same time precisely uses the power of the US state to negotiate and push for the entry of US corporations into the Chinese state through the use of market intelligence, trade advocacy and commercial diplomacy. This very hypocrisy in the organizing principles of the neoliberal logic lies at the crux of the political-economy of neoliberalism (see Dutta, 2011). Our postcolonial analysis of managerial discourses in the state’s articulations of development draws attention to the necessity for contemporary organizational communication scholarship to continually interrogate the discourses of managerialism in the economic and political terrains of globalization that serve specific geospatial and neocolonial configurations within the context of neoliberalism. Although communication scholars have examined corporate relations practices in the context of globalization (Monge, 1998; Sriramesh, 2009; Stohl, 2005; Vercic, 2009), theorizing of the neoliberal logic in constituting corporate relations discourses and practices has been minimal. Our examination of a specific type of global corporate relations discourse (that issued by the state as a directive for organizations in the neoliberal context) suggests the importance of postcolonial deconstructions of other discourses (such as those utilized by organizations operating in China) in drawing attention to the paradoxes in the organizing principles of neoliberalism as the essence of globalization. Furthermore, whereas there is a specific directionality of flow in our current examination of US discourse toward China (which also fits within the broader role of the US as a champion of neoliberalism in the global arena), it would be worthwhile to examine the ways in which the US emerges in Chinese corporate relations discourses.
It is in this landscape of the nation state as a site for articulating neoliberal agendas that national guidelines are developed for creating and managing business relationships in national cultures across the globe. Relationships between nation states get constituted within managerial discourse that guides the organizing of corporate relations practices in the backdrop of a homogenous national culture. China emerges in the discursive spaces of US policy making and directives toward US businesses as a site of profiteering for US businesses; The US state utilizes its knowledge about China to guide corporate relations activities of US-based TNCs in China. Chinese culture emerges as a marker of difference to be homogeneously constituted within the discursive space of Doing Business in China as a site for surveillance and management for the purposes of economic gains to be made by US-based corporations. Therefore, critical to the portrayal of China is the portrayal of the amounts of money that have been made in China by foreign businesses, drawing attention to the spaces of desire and profitability in China.
Even as the economic opportunities in China emerge as representations of desire for US-based TNCs, these stories of economic opportunities are interrupted by the narratives of the backwardness of the Chinese managerial culture. Chinese culture appears in the discourse of the guide as a representation of homogeneous Chinese culture, articulated in the form of certain primitive business practices and the implications of these practices for US corporations (such as the poor IPR laws and the relationship-based transactions) The managerial guidance offered in the guide is built on this assimilation of Chinese difference into the market economy; the difference becomes a marker of knowing and managing the economy to serve the interests of US-based corporations. The neoliberal trope operates here through the framing of Chinese cultural difference as an entry point for business management and intercultural corporate relations practices that guide the ability of US-based businesses to operate in China. The representation of China as the ‘Other’ within the neoliberal frame continually goes back-and-forth between portraying China as a primitive space and a space for exponential profits where profits are managed through the development of adequate cultural knowledge (see for instance Culbertson and Chen, 1996). Chinese underdevelopment emerges in the discourse of neoliberal management as a space to be monitored through adequate surveillance. Worth noting here is the Oriental portrayal of China as having backward business practices against the backdrop of the large-scale debt that the US owes to China.
In our analysis of Doing Business in China, we note the articulation of colonial themes in neocolonial configurations, thus drawing attention to the intersections between neocolonialism and neoliberalism. Essential to the project of neoliberal management of China is the primitive framing of China and its business practices and environment, which then offers the substratum for resurrecting neoliberal development. Neoliberal governance is pushed as a solution to portrayals of underdevelopment (Dutta, 2011). Neoliberalism becomes a site for enacting the power differentials across the globe that continues to draw upon Orientalist themes, although, paradoxically in this instance, it is precisely the economic promise of the Orient (read China) that captures the imagination of the USA. Therefore, even as US businesses seek to make profit out of China, the managerial guidelines caution the reader to be careful, to watch out for the corruption and the theft, and to seek out forms of surveillance in order to exert control on Chinese markets as resources for making profits. China emerges on the landscape of difference to be homogeneously depicted and managed within the economic logics of neoliberalism. Cultural difference therefore becomes a site for knowledge production and knowledge management that serve specific homogeneous needs of the neoliberal marketplace through intercultural corporate relations activities (see Vercic, 2009). We see the necessity of future work in public relations that is continually critical of the discursive constructions of culture in global corporate relations discourse as culture emerges in these discourses as a site of knowledge production to serve the agendas of TNCs.
In managerial discourses of neoliberalism, nation states become constituted as market spaces, and enter into the domains of global trade and management. In contrast to postcolonial theories that suggest the weakening of the nation state, our postcolonial interrogation suggests that the nation state continues to be a key marker in the discursive spaces of neoliberal hegemony, mediating the relationships created and maintained by TNCs in international markets, and playing a key role in the neoliberal arrangement through the manufacturing of intercultural corporate relations knowledge bases about cultures. The Orientalization of China and the construction of the Chinese space as primitive continue to circulate in the neoliberal space as justifications for contemporary neoliberal interventions, locating market-based logics that profit US corporations as markers of development. Therefore, ultimately aligning China along the US-based definitions of the free market principles through the language of development creates greater opportunities for US-based corporations to do business in China. Development logics emerge into discourses of neoliberalism as resources for profiteering and as justification for interventions. The development of China along the terms of US dictates of neoliberalism would serve the USA well by creating additional opportunities for US-based corporations through the adoption of recommended trade liberalization. Ultimately, therefore, in exploring the intersections between political economy and postcolonial theory in the examination of Doing Business in China, we call for the relevance of theorizing the state as a key player in the politics of neoliberalism. What are the kinds of cultural knowledge that are produced by the state to guide corporate relations activities in global free markets? The symbolic is constituted in the terrains of the material not only within the specific configurations of material structures (such as US–China relations in the contexts of politics and economics), but the symbolic also becomes the precise terrain for managing the material through articulations of knowledge about culture (see also Cheney and Cloud, 2006; Dutta, 2011, 2012). Future postcolonial critiques in corporate relations contexts ought to critically interrogate the relationship between the realms of the symbolic and the material that emerge in the managerial discourses of nation states.