Business Negotiation in China (Oct 12, 03)

On the way back from a business meeting with an international client, my local colleague is giving me a lecture on how to do business negotiation with Chinese clients. He said it works very differently from western business culture. For Chinese companies, you always work for free or give them for free in the first negotiation, then they will regard you as buddy and you will get more paid deals or order from them afterwards. While he observed that western companies don’t do the same. Discount only comes in when a long term relationship is built. I am not sure if this is true to all the companies but at least quite true to the industry I am in.