Country Driving [173]
The bosses had more important issues to worry about. For one thing, nobody was buying bra rings. The new company had machinery, raw materials, technicians, assembly-line workers—but not a single customer, at least for the rings. They had old buyers for the underwire, which they had produced for years, but the new product required a fresh start. Boss Gao told me this is how business works in Zhejiang. “If you don’t have a product, you can’t sell it,” he said. “You have to produce it and then you start finding customers. That’s why we had to set up all of this first.”
Once the sample books were ready, the bosses began to travel around Zhejiang, meeting representatives of companies that manufacture brassieres. For guanxi, it’s standard practice for a new factory to woo buyers with gifts; it’s not enough to simply show them samples. The bra ring bosses gave out bottles of Wuliangye baijiu and cartons of Chunghwa cigarettes, which are the preferred brand of most Zhejiang bosses. Sometimes they handed out gift boxes with yellow croaker fish, a Wenzhou favorite. In addition to factory buyers, government officials also had their hands out. The tax bureau was particularly important—if these cadres are unhappy, they can ruin a business. “You know how China is: toushui loushui,” Boss Gao said. “Stolen taxes and leaked taxes.” He meant that if the factory was going to follow the standard practice of under-reporting its income, they would need good relations with the cadres. “We haven’t started doing this yet, but eventually we’ll have to take a lot of the tax officials out to dinner,” he said. I asked him if these banquets would also be used for giving gifts, but he shook his head. “You don’t give a gift at dinner,” he said. “Those things are separate. For the gift you stop by their home.”
They had few bank loans for that reason. In China, acquiring such a loan isn’t easy for a small entrepreneur, and it always requires more guanxi. Boss Gao told me they would need to make friends with bank officials and loan officers; everybody would expect dinners and bribes. In order to avoid this expense, Boss Wang had invested strictly cash, and Boss Gao had only small bank loans. He saved his bribes for the more important officials. He told me that in Lishui such cadres required a gift with a value of roughly two thousand yuan—nearly three hundred dollars. In Wenzhou it would have been even more expensive, which was one reason they had located in this part of the province. “The rent is cheaper here, and it’s cheaper to pull guanxi,” Boss Gao explained.
At first, the details of guanxi seemed mysteriously complex, because as a foreigner I was distracted by the rituals—the banquets and the secret meetings. But over time I realized that it’s actually a system, and in a place like southern Zhejiang it’s highly functional. Gifts are standardized and portable, which makes them a kind of currency. A carton of Chunghwa can be received by one businessman, given to another, and then passed on to a cadre, who might in turn bestow it upon a higher-up. If only Chunghwa cigarettes could talk! There are probably boxes that have traveled from the marshes of Ouhai to the gardens of Hangzhou, spanning the whole length of Zhejiang Province, pausing for brief sojourns in Buttontown or Pleatherville. And most important, guanxi is convenient. Boss Gao told me that sometimes he gave officials a cash card that could be used at the local supermarket. I asked how he knew the correct amount.
“You just know,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“I can’t explain, but it’s obvious,” he said. “Around here even a schoolchild can figure it out!”
One afternoon that March, I was sitting with the bosses in their upstairs office when a trio of officials arrived from the tax bureau. The