On January 3rd 2014 I arrived to Shanghai, after arranging a one year secondment from our Social@Ogilvy team in London. It was my first time ever in China, I did not speak the language and did not know one single person in the whole of China. All I had was the knowledge I got from the books and the dozens of articles I read about it. Oh, but I did have a Weibo and WeChat account!

Today, almost one year later, I feel it’s time to give back in a way by sharing what I learned about China – about the culture and the digital and social space (since that’s what I do).

It’s been an amazing learning and discovering experience and I would highly recommend spending one year in China. Although Shanghai is the most international city this country has, and not a reflection of the entire country; so you have to try and visit the rest of the country and interact with people from outside as well.

These are my 7 learnings – they are not positive or negative, but simple observations:

1. There is no shortage of innovation here. China is not just about copying Western products and selling them at lower-costs, as we are used to believe. There is a lot of innovation coming from here as well. But because we don’t really know what’s happening in China, we don’t notice when we are the ones copying them rather than the other way around. We all know China is digitally much more developed than the rest of the world. So a lot of ecommerce, social shopping trends and social apps features are actually imported from China. The most obvious examples being Alibaba and WeChat/Tencent. There is a lot we can learn from this country, and not just the other way around. From their express delivery infrastructure, the way social and ecommerce overlap on some platforms so that you can buy from Instagram-like platforms through just one click, to the development of successful, yet very niche social platforms.

Did you notice the ‘record and send audio messages’ option recently added to iMessages? Did you know that feature has been around since 2011 in China and is one of the most heavily used WeChat features?

I admit there are fewer people who nurture innovation in China – a system that teaches you to be obedient for decades and controls your every word online cannot be expected to be very good at nurturing innovation. But this is gradually changing as they realise the long term economic prosperity of the country is very much dependant on this.

2. Lack of loyalty: towards brands, apps and social networks.

Why towards brands? Chinese will go for the brand that is the cheapest, the coolest or the safest – depending on the type of product. If it’s something that is perceived as a symbol of their status (think car, clothes, jewellery) they will go for the brand that is perceived as the coolest at that time; if it’s a health related product (think baby infant formula scandal) it needs to be the safest and the safest usually means not from China; if it’s a product that they will only use within the walls of their home, therefore not a symbol of their status, it needs to be the cheapest.

Did you know that 60% of Chinese buy a different car make and model the second time, while they always make their final decision based on the exterior styling of the car?

It’s not that much about the quality of the product as status or price. And that is reflected in their online behaviour as well. From a social media perspective – it is much more difficult to get a brand to stand out on China’s social media landscape as it is in Europe for example. And sometimes it’s not about the quality of the content you are producing, but about being able to incentivise them for …their attention. Brands have started to incentivise, users got the taste of it and it’s very difficult to change that now. Unless you’re Louis Vuitton, of course.

Why lack of loyalty towards apps and social networks? This is an easier one actually – it’s about privacy vs. censorship. As a social network or app becomes popular, it starts to get more and more attention from the government and that’s when the users move on to the next app/social network, which is not big enough to be a threat to the system and where the users can freely discuss. Until that one gets big as well…and so on and so forth.

That’s the reason why every couple of years there’s another ‘big social media platform’ taking over China. And that’s why sometimes they don’t get to be as developed as the Western platforms in terms of features or in terms of developing a monetisation strategy, relationship with the brands etc.

3.Punctuality and pro-activeness are not their strength. In China it seems to be almost rude if you show up at a meeting on time. That’s something that I noticed both in agencies and on client side. As for being pro-active and doing something out of your own initiative, that doesn’t seem to happen very often either. And again, that’s perfectly understandable. Imagine you lived your entire life being told you need to be obedient and do what you are told to do, and don’t think beyond that because you might end up saying something that will upset the system.

4. It’s all about immediate incentives. It’s a cultural differences and it manifests both in the working environment and online in the way Chinese engage with brands. I touched on the impact of immediate incentives for brands in the ‘lack of loyalty’ paragraph, so won’t dwell on that.

When it comes to managing a team, the easiest and sometimes only way to get the team to do something is by explaining the immediate advantages of that. Whether it is about an immediate promotion, salary raise or any other similar benefit. It’s much more difficult to explain the long term benefits of an action on someone’s career. Also, it helps if you are their line manager rather than just more senior but your decision has no impact on their direct and immediate promotion.

5. They’re very direct, and yet they dislike confrontation. I find it very interesting that although Chinese are incredibly direct, one may say slightly rude sometimes, although in an innocent way, they hate confrontation when it comes to work related issues.

To give you an example – if on Monday morning you show up at work with a red spot on your face or dark circles around your eyes, it will take no longer than 5 minutes to get someone to ask you ‘What happened to your face?’ or ‘Why do you look so tired?’. And that’s not seen as rude, it’s an innocent observations (well, most of the times).

BUT, if they disagree with something that is work related, in 8 cases out of 10 they will not tell you. And yet they will continue to act according to what they believe and not what they’ve just agreed on with you. That’s mainly because of fear of confrontation.

6. Haggling is important, it can even be seen as an indication of your intelligence.Another very important lesson for me was how important haggling was in the Chinese culture. And I don’t just mean when you’re buying something in a market or from a street vendor, but in every aspect of doing business. If you don’t try to haggle it’s an indication that you are unaware of the real value of the product/business you’re making and so it’s a reflection of your intelligence.

When I moved here I was quite bad at it and was almost embarrassed to do it, but I like to think I got better at it.

7. They are increasingly more proud of being Chinese (read this for more,unfortunately Linkedin does not seem to allow the sentence I wanted to write about this, probably technical failure of some sort). I’ve heard a lot about this concept during the past months from my Chinese colleagues and I am sure we will see and hear more about this in the years to come. This will be the cultural foundation of the next generation in China. It’s a very complicated concept and has a lot of connotations, but what it boils down to is instilling the pride of being Chinese, of being more than just a manufacturing hub and a country that copies everything that is Western, the pride of becoming a country that leads through innovation. And this will have a great impact on how Chinese will interact with Western brands in the future.

This is a very short round up of my main observations about Chinese culture and behaviour. I did not include that much about the digital and social media landscape specifically, but that’s only because I have too much to say about that. So I have decided to keep it for a next post.

First published on Daniela Badalan’s LinkedIn profile.