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ABSTRACT: After a phase of slow development, e-commerce has become widespread in rural China, being promoted by both local governments and corporations. How has it changed business culture and business networks? Based on an ethnographic study conducted in a rural county in Henan, the article explores shifts in patterns of group formation and identity among local businesspeople. Fieldwork included 60 interviews with e-retailers, manufacturers, and local officials, as well as participant observation conducted from 2016 to 2019. The study suggests that online retailing has fostered the emergence of a shared ethos, which values quality and professionalism rather than the ability to build strong interpersonal ties through leisure and credit practices. This new ethos, congruent with state-sponsored, nationwide shifts in the economic structure, entails the emergence of a more far-flung integrated business community, while accentuating local processes of social differentiation.
KEYWORDS: e-commerce, rural China, entrepreneurship, professionalism, networks.
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This article explores the role of online retailing in shaping business culture in rural China. Scholars have long characterised Chinese business culture in terms of "guanxi" (...): a personal relationship in which "ganqing [..., feelings] and material obligation are linked together" (Kipnis 2002). Business in China is thought to be closely linked, on the one hand, to specific "guanxi production" practices (creating and maintaining interpersonal ties through invitations, entertaining, and presents) and, on the other hand, to networks relying on traditional social structures such as family and locality (Davies 1995; Buttery and Leung 1998; Wilson and Brennan 2010). Despite studies hypothesising that the importance of guanxi would decline as the Chinese economy became more institutionalised (Brinton and Nee 1975; Guthrie 1998; Gold, Guthrie, and Wank 2002; Anderson and Lee 2008), other scholars have found that guanx/ practices had endured throughout the reform period (Yang 2002; Nee and Opper 2012).The importance of guanxi in China is thought to have fostered the emergence of an ethics of brotherhood, loyalty, and patronage, which constitute the basis of personal morality and social status in China (Osburg 2008).This business culture allows for a social mobility "cultivated in the nightclub," with entrepreneurs constantly seeking to transform impersonal business relationships into ones rooted in affect and emotions (Osburg 2018).
The rapid development of online retailing, however, may alter how...