Chinese negotiation operates within hierarchical awareness. How you can negotiate depends on your position relative to your counterpart. Subordinates cannot negotiate with superiors as equals—direct demands that ignore hierarchical reality typically fail.
Instead, work within the relationship: demonstrate value, build connection, frame requests in terms of superior’s interests, exercise patience. Even among formal equals, sensitivity to relative status and face shapes interaction. Recognize where your counterpart sits in their own hierarchy—what constraints they face, whose approval they need, what flexibility they actually have. Treating them as autonomous decision-makers when they must answer to superiors misunderstands the situation. Map the hierarchical context within which negotiation occurs; work with that reality rather than against it.
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