Minding their business: Discourses of colonialism and neoliberalism in the commercial guide for US companies in China

Abstract

In recent years, China has emerged as a major economic and trade partner of the USA. In the light of the increasing ‘neoliberalization’ of the Chinese economy – as exemplified by privatization, deregulation and globalization, China has come to be situated in the economic and political imagination within mainstream managerial US discourses of commerce and trade. As a strategic economic partner for US-based businesses, much academic, policy-based, and commercial literature has focused on ‘relationship management’ issues to guide US-based business management practices directed toward China. In this article, we focus on the discourses of ‘relationship management’ in the 2009 through 2011 versions of one such document: Doing Business in China: Country Commercial Guide for US Companies, a publication of the US and Foreign Commercial Service and the US Department of State. Using an entry point for putting the postcolonial and ‘political economy’ theoretical frameworks in conversation, as exemplified by the works of Edward Said, Arif Dirlik, and David Harvey, this document was analyzed for congruent themes and the ways in which these themes depicted the relationships of power and control within contemporary configurations of neocolonialism. Three themes were reflected in the discourse: (1) China as a juvenile business field; (2) primitive business culture of the Orient; and (3) globalization as improvement and development. These themes were examined in detail and explicated in relation to postcolonial and neoliberal political economic theories, elucidating the relationship among neoliberalization, the nation state and neocolonial framing of the Orient.