No single definition for the complex notion of guanxi exists.

Even among the Chinese, guanxi can be ambiguous as a social phenomenon. Historical circumstances, class, gender and ethnicity all affect how guanxi is perceived and used in China. Scholars discuss how linguistic concepts undergo shifts through time and place. Because of this constant evolution, social classes, generations through time, and individuals in China all recognize the term guanxi, but they may all interpret it differently.

In describing Chinese guanxi, four separate categories of social interaction are presented here. Three are popular discourse: among family, among friends and relatives, and among friendly strangers met on trains and buses or other public places. The fourth discourse is official: It projects authority and political correctness, and is not necessarily confined to bureaucrats. State-run media falls under this category, as well as scholarly publications.

Popular discourse often faults guanxi. It can be considered demeaning. The term is defined as giving someone a gift to obtain a service or favor. In contemporary China, many urban businessmen feel that guanxi causes innocent people to suffer. Guanxi manipulates friends and relatives to provide favors, while denying others who are just as worthy.

But because it is so pervasive throughout Chinese society, and because cunning is needed to successfully carry out guanxi transactions, this behavior is also recognized and admired in popular discourse. Even more interesting is the fact that men tend to accept and employ guanxi tactics more than women, taking a more pragmatic and less emotional attitude toward this behavior.

Popular discourse and foreign thinking also equates contemporary guanxi with corruption. Throughout the 1980’s in China the general population resented the way officials employed guanxi to secure special privileges. In fact, the 1989 student movement in Beijing condemned guanxi among the bureaucratic elite, stating that it harmed both the party and society at large.

In China’s recent past guanxi also had the power to restrict a Chinese person’s desires by exerting social pressures that could not be ignored. For example, a man could be dissuaded from divorcing or changing his job if his wife activated all of her guanxi connections. These people would take turns talking him out of it. In this way guanxi could cause a person to conform to social conventions against his own desires.

Popular discourse also perceives guanxi as a necessary behavior with its own independent morality. Like mathematics, it has positive and negative attributes.

Sometimes a stranger spontaneously helps another person out of kindness rather than need and guanxi is accrued; that’s the positive. Sometimes it is greedy and petty, as exemplified by a man who helps others and gives them gifts only in order to use them: that’s the negative, manipulative side of guanxi.

Truly, guanxi is hard to evaluate by foreigners because the cultural constructs across Western and Eastern cultures are not the same. A Chinese friend stated: “People use guanxi, a deviant route, to achieve reasonable goals.”

For example, changing livelihoods or locations sounds reasonable to most people, but in China such actions may conflict against established regulations, or be very difficult to do, so people employ guanxi to speed up and/or smooth out the process.

For this reason Chinese people tell guanxi stories proudly, and their narratives exemplify the way a common person can “beat the system.” They also describe how friends may rely on each other in order to triumph over powerful bureaucracy.

As my Chinese friend said: Hai ren zhi xin bu ke you, fang ren zhi xin bu ke wu.(A heart for harming others must not be harbored; a heart for defending others must not be lacking).

Another way of viewing guanxi is to regard it as morally neutral. This practical viewpoint is based on evaluating human nature, social and political realities, and the difficulties of everyday life in China. The guanxi relationship may indeed be calculating, but it is also based upon mutual benefit, and should not be morally condemned. Who does not wish to support family and friends?

As a Chinese woman said: Ren bu wei ji, tian zhu di mie. (When people do not look out for themselves, heaven will expel and earth will destroy them.) She went on to explain that we humans have only three tasks in life: to eat, to reproduce and to protect oneself. No one is perfect, and guanxi practices help people to achieve these goals for themselves and their loved ones.

In contrast, official discourse predominantly condemns guanxi practices. This behavior goes against socialist ethics and is considered immoral and incorrect: bu zheng zhi feng; literally: deviant winds.

Government media labels guanxi as feudal, stemming from a backward ethical system that hampers socialist development. Since the reform and opening up, however, government policy also describes guanxi as deriving from a sense of “bourgeois individualism” (zichan jieji geren zhuyi). This is because, in many Chinese eyes, capitalist practices have soured human relationships by turning them into crude monetary and commodity exchanges.

Official discourse also interprets guanxi as antisocial, overlooking the art and ethical principals involved in such transactions, because such things are considered selfish by socialist standards.

In particular, public officials who are employed in the service of the state must always adhere to the principal of gongshi gongban: following neutral regulations set by the state, rather than acting on personal feelings and obligations. Obviously, this is not always easy to do.

Popular discourse, however, maintains a distinction between guanxi and bribery (shou hui). Motive is a key factor: bribery is for selfish reasons, while guanxi is for reasonable requests. Chinese say that they can sense bribes by the way a person asks; guanxi is more subtle. A Chinese said: “Bribery is corrupt, while guanxi is based on ren qing (human sentiments). Friendship, long term relationships, the idea of people helping each other – this is guanxi.”

Popular and official discourses both condemn guanxi when it is used inside a powerful bureaucracy for selfish motives. Officials of the state are supposed to be upright and moral. In China official discourse defines guanxi as antisocial and corrupt. Popular discourse, however, is more ambivalent, containing diverse and often contradictory meanings for this all pervasive Chinese practice. In conclusion, guanxi must be viewed in specific cultural context in order to understand and evaluate it.