Opening Ops: a place for cross-border expertise

Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference’s opening session in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing

Analysis

No one reading anything about China this week could escape the news that local representatives from the GBA and across China were off to Beijing for the Two Sessions from 4th March. The public relations operations leading up to the Two Sessions have been in full swing. There is a simple and informative video on “What to expect at this year’s two sessions? [sic]” in English with Chinese and English subtitles. It clarifies the roles of the National People’s Congress (China’s top legislature) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference National Committee, the NPC’s top political advisory body. High on the agenda is the government’s Work Report, a review of last year and socio-economic development goals for the next. Heartening is the emphasis on more than economic goals with proposals to be put forward by representatives and members on critical topics covering people’s well-being, high quality growth, the curiously worded “new quality productive forces”, innovation in science and technology, and ecological conservation: high humanity-based values.

This is the last year of the 14th five-year plan (2021-25) and these sessions are important for the development of the next five-year plan (2026-2030). Worth highlighting is a statement underlying the government’s visualised context of the country’s near future, “as China moves closer to the center of the global stage and becomes more interconnected with the world.”

Success depends upon ability, motivation, and environmental opportunities. Regarding opportunities, the USA is showing strong signs of nationalism and an insular focus. The comparison of the actions and announcements, particularly in this last month, between these two largest country economies offer a deeper insight into the potential opportunities for China than would have been discernible without the juxtaposition. The recent shift in geopolitics opens the window wider for China to be an inviting and trustworthy nation open to the world.

The groundwork to create the talent, capacity and infrastructure for China’s opening up has been laid over previous years and likely to be reviewed in favourable terms in the Work Report. For a number of years, the publicity and ongoing strategic announcements about China’s direction on the global stage proves the existence of motivation. Opportunities are often said to be created, but changes to the environmental context can have exponential effect on the possibilities, which we can expect to see taken advantage of in this next 5-year plan.

A litany of positive results has been reported this week: restrictions lifted on foreign investment in manufacturing, further expansion of opportunities for those from outside in education, the healthcare sector and parts of telecommunications. Investment by foreign firms increased 9.9 percent in 2024 (to 59,080 firms). Foreign trade also increased 5 percent over 2023, although recovery through Covid would have influenced the denominator. Environmental and ecological conservation is also emphasised with improvements in air quality and surface water quality numbers being presented. On the human side, the opening of visa access was a success, with 112.3 percent increase in foreign national visitation – again those numbers come off almost non-existent travel exiting Covid. However, the fact is the official publication of these figures provides cues as to what is meaningful to the authorities.

On the first day of the Two Sessions, promises of more to come were expounded upon: The China Daily reported reforms in foreign trade, lowering costs and increasing trade security; foreign investment reforms; and higher quality Belt and Road Initiative development. To facilitate the broader vision of opening-up, human-level and institutional openness and removing red-tape are mentioned. Spokesman for the 3rd session of the National Committee, Liu Jeiyi, spoke of active global economic cooperation, globalization and shared prosperity.

Whilst the Chinese government is presenting the details of the policies, strategies, directions, incentives and measures of the economic opening up, it is in the realities on the ground, in communities and workplaces that we see evidence of the sincerity and success of those policies.

Under the policies and promises, economic and well-being measures of government announcements there are real human actors. To accomplish such an opening, innovation, cooperation and collaboration which is spoken of at these sessions requires the movement of individuals from their home bases whether inwards or beyond China’s shores. There are adjustment challenges in these cross-border activities which need to be met to achieve the desired outcomes.

Fortunately, over the last couple of decades I have been involved in academic publishing on global mobility, including papers which never make the cut – actually the greater proportion of submitted papers are culled. What has been noticeable has been the rise in manuscripts given to the rigorous double-blind review process dealing with expatriates into China as well as flows from China to other nations for work. Many of the latter studies describe the increase in Chinese labour mobility to places outside China which only now is beginning to be reflected in research and publications. The prevalence of this type of research is a good sign because what we learn from one context is not necessarily the case in another: for instance, a highly efficient government bureaucrat may be an abject failure as a tech start-up CEO, and cultural and institutional distances between countries potentially widen the performance gap. Over the last decade we are just starting to see an uplift in non-western context research in global mobility studies.

We are dealing with psychological and socio-cultural issues in these papers: language skills, cultural intelligence, feelings of isolation, loneliness, organisational and family support structures as well as institutional safety-nets. Chinese work mobility is of particular intellectual interest due to unique aspects of Chinese culture (such as reciprocal networks) and psychological schema based upon filiality and community bonding. These cultural foundations have implications in cross-cultural work contexts as they influence how organisational citizenship behaviours, reciprocity, engagement and acceptance of responsibility and empowerment in the workplace are exhibited. Executives manage people based upon the working theories they hold about what motivates people to work well, and this can backfire badly when staff come from different cultural backgrounds.

In the context of the governmental discussions in Beijing this week this might seem all too academic. Opening up economically, however, requires and will continue to demand an openness of mindset to different ways of achieving outcomes across borders by unskilled labour and blue-collar workers through to senior executives and bureaucrats. Take the UAE for instance, in the year 2000 there were only 7,000 Chinese living there; in 2023 over 400,000 were recorded. The demands of such mobility are not small and they will influence our cultures in multiple ways and directions.

The success of the economic and social policies in the global context will depend upon whether the people involved will hinder or advance those goals. Drawing upon experts who study and understand people in cross-border organisational contexts, and how to get the best from them whilst supporting their well-being will be critical to achieving China’s 2030 economic and social goals and beyond.

By Leanda Lee, MDT