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Why Cross-Border Leadership in China Requires Dual-Culture Management

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Editor’s note (2026):
This article was originally written in 2020. While the examples reflect that period, the leadership challenges around trust, speed, and cross-border alignment remain highly relevant. I’ve lightly updated it to reflect my current perspective.

Managing cross-border teams and projects can be difficult. Different languages and customs create daily challenges, and frustrations often appear where you least expect them. This kind of cultural friction is a natural part of adapting to any new environment, and with time and effort, things often improve.

However, terms like cultural friction are often relegated to purely personal experiences. The following article will discuss how culture influences organizational thinking and behavior, and how expatriate and foreign managers must adapt.

The management challenge becomes even more complex when working with large cultural gaps and being expected to balance HQ and local team needs while delivering business results.

Whether you are part of a team or leading a department or office, success depends on more than personal adjustment. It depends on how well you manage within a specific business culture, as well as how effectively an overseas HQ can provide support, where many norms and expectations are often left unspoken.

China is a country and market where these types of issues become unavoidable. Management is often more indirect, and context, relationships, and hierarchy play an important role in how work actually gets done.

Beyond internal dynamics, leaders must also understand local consumers, business partners, media, and government stakeholders. Many decisions leaders are expected to make are shaped by our prior experiences in our home markets, which form an internal map of what we believe works and what does not.

While these mental patterns are useful, they can also limit us and blind us to other possibilities when operating in new environments. But they can also be limiting. This can slowly undermine local trust and decision-making and, over time, lead to business failure.

This is where traditional cross-cultural thinking runs into setbacks. The Chinese market is not simply a culture; it is a complex system of doing business. It is also constantly changing with the breakneck development of a country, which is fragmented by region along different cultural and industrial lines.

What is Dual-Culture Management?

With this in mind, I want to introduce a concept I’ve discussed with students and professionals in Mainland China: Dual-Culture Management (双文化管理).

While it may sound similar to cross-cultural management, there are several important distinctions. First, the idea of Dual-Culture Management focuses on the ability to observe and respect multiple cultural systems at the same time, rather than expecting one to dominate the other.

In my work in China, I have often seen cross-cultural collaboration simplified into the culture with less power becoming subservient to the culture with more power.

This can materialize in the form of Chinese teams in Western companies being forced to adopt Western styles, or Western employees in Chinese companies being expected to conform completely to local norms. In both cases, the result is usually surface-level compliance rather than genuine alignment.

In addition to purely cultural ideas, there are also business practices and market realities. In China, we see traditional culture influencing how business is done, but we also see enormous impact from technological innovation, modern consumer preferences, as well as concentrated industrial hubs.

I began using the term “dual-culture” because bridging cultures effectively requires more than switching between styles. It requires the ability to hold multiple ways of thinking at once. Here, success is not only about meeting business objectives, but about building strong, sustainable, and trusted teams across markets.

To move toward this more balanced approach, there are several areas where I suggest leaders and managers consider making adjustments: communication style, business instincts, cultural sensitivity, and working speed.

Adjusting Your Management and Communication Style

Taking on a management role in a foreign business environment can be challenging. Differences in hierarchy, organizational structure, and workplace culture often shape how teams expect to be led.

For example, when overseas managers move to China, they may find that teams require more direct instruction. This can sometimes lead to misunderstandings stemming from norms in overseas markets. perceptions of micromanagement or the need for additional training around tasks that might be considered basic in other markets.

Communication itself can also be a challenge, especially when English is a second or third language for most of the team. In these situations, the need for clearer direction often exists alongside the expectation of more respectful and indirect communication, regardless of whether someone is a manager or an employee.

In China, there are also long-standing cultural concepts related to management and behavior, including ideas around face, relationship-building, and appropriate conduct. I’ve discussed some of these previously, including the concept of Suzhi, which touches on expectations around character, etiquette, and social behavior.

While every company is different, these factors help illustrate why management practices that work well elsewhere may need to be adapted in the Chinese context.

From my experience, most Chinese colleagues do not expect foreign managers to adapt perfectly. However, those who make the effort to adjust often see greater success in daily communication, team management, and relationship-building over time.

In the end, Chinese professionals and teams want to feel respected by their boss, organization, and even the overseas HQ. They just want to do it in their own, familiar way.

Adjusting Your Business Instincts

When Western companies establish operations in markets such as China, one of the biggest challenges for managers on the ground and leadership overseeing operations from abroad is how familiar business instincts can quietly steer decisions in the wrong direction.

If you want to hit your business targets, you need to understand local market realities. And the realities in China are fundamentally different, from how consumers buy to how companies operate and how the government views risk.

Senior leaders often rely heavily on their previous experience and an unconscious sense of how things “should work.” In China, these instincts can affect decisions across many areas, including people management, partnerships, media engagement, and interactions with government stakeholders.

A Chinese client told me, “we want to work with you because you understand how Huawei does things.” My Western boss told me, “the Huawei way is wrong.”

One common example is local media relations. In many Western markets, media engagement centers on relationships and expectations of editorial independence. In China, media dynamics are shaped by different commercial arrangements, government influence, and regulatory considerations. For overseas companies, this creates both operational challenges and potential risks if these differences are misunderstood.

Another example comes from my own experience. While advising a Western company planning to expand in China, my team presented insights into new retail models that were already working in the local market. The primary feedback from senior leadership was that these approaches did not fit their existing operating model.

This reluctance to consider alternative approaches is not unusual. However, in China, where domestic competitors understand the market deeply and move quickly, this type of mindset can make it very difficult to compete effectively.

Overall, continuing with “business as usual” in a new market is a common instinct. At best, it leads to poor preparation. At worst, it results in serious market mistakes. Leaders expanding into China need to be willing to recalibrate their instincts if they want to succeed alongside local competitors.

Adjusting Your Cultural Sensitivity

Every market contains cultural landmines, but in China, these can be amplified by the speed and scale of digital communication.

One well-known example was when Dolce & Gabbana faced widespread backlash for releasing advertising content in China that many consumers perceived as racist. The situation escalated quickly, leading to the cancellation of events and a widespread refusal by e-commerce platforms to carry the brand.

Another example comes from IKEA in Shanghai. Over time, some of its stores became popular gathering places for elderly residents. When the company attempted to change this practice by forcing older visitors to leave, the backlash on social media was swift and damaging.

These examples highlight how everyday operational decisions can take on very different meanings when viewed through a local cultural lens.

Foreign companies and senior managers must not only adjust how they think about consumers, but also build habits of including local managers and talent in decision-making processes. Doing so helps surface potential issues early and reduces the risk of costly mistakes.

Adjusting Your Operating Speed

Different cultures operate at different speeds. Many people are familiar with examples such as the so-called “Mañana Culture” in parts of Latin America, where work often moves at a slower pace.

China presents a much different challenge.

In the Chinese tech sector in particular, long working hours and intense workloads are common. Employees, especially engineers, are often expected to handle multiple projects simultaneously. Tight schedules, late meetings, and frequent travel are not unusual.

From my own experience working inside companies like Huawei, these conditions reflect the competitive pressure companies face in the Chinese domestic market. They also tie closely to incentive structures, where compensation and career advancement are strongly linked to performance and results.

Many Chinese employees are highly driven, both by personal ambition and by pride in seeing domestic companies compete successfully on the global stage. As a result, speed becomes deeply embedded in how organizations operate.

This “China Speed” phenomenon, which I often discuss on LinkedIn, is a combination of national-level planning, regional infrastructure hubs, and ingrained company behavior. And it can be difficult for overseas leaders and HQ teams to adapt to. Processes may feel unclear, structures informal, and expectations constantly shifting.

However, as can be seen from China’s massive technical advancements in areas like AI, robotics, new energy, and other sectors, China Speed is a huge advantage for Chinese companies, and a huge risk for overseas companies.

For overseas leaders operating in this environment, there is a clear challenge in learning to move faster to compete locally while maintaining alignment and trust with overseas HQ teams.

Closing Thoughts

In recent years, with the rise of domestic competitors, the Chinese market has become more difficult for overseas firms. Likewise, Chinese companies looking at overseas expansion are being met with rising geopolitical risks and consumer expectations.

Dual Culture Management can act as a helpful tool in reframing how we understand, interact with, and build relationships with stakeholders in different cultures, markets, and organizations.

Success does not come automatically or quickly. Frustration and discomfort are natural, especially early on. Progress requires the willingness to move forward while also accepting that other systems, values, and practices that differ from your own are not fundamentally wrong.

To learn more about the intricacies of navigating, communicating, and managing across China and overseas markets, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

If you’re interested in thoughtful perspectives on China, cross-border work, and how culture, incentives, and organizations shape real outcomes, you’re welcome to subscribe to China Culture Corner and receive future posts by email.

I also share related ideas and longer-form video commentary on LinkedIn and YouTube, and post updates across the channels linked above.

BUSINESS IN CHINA

Why China Keeps Winning: Four Gaps Overseas Executives Miss

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Overseas companies are simply not ready for competition from China. For years, China was regarded as the world’s factory, allowing overseas companies to offer high-quality, low-cost products in their home markets.

But Chinese companies have quietly continued to improve their capabilities, increasingly becoming able to compete with overseas companies in China and in overseas markets.

You might remember iRobot, the maker of the Roomba, the first autonomous vacuum cleaner. Not only did the company recently declare bankruptcy, but they were later bought by its own Chinese supplier. This segment is now dominated overseas by Chinese players, including Roborock, Ecovacs, Dreametech, Xiaomi, and others.

In China, overseas brands are also under assault. Starbucks has continued to lose market share to local rivals like Luckin and Cotti. Nike and Adidas are facing competition from local brands. And various overseas fast fashion brands closed their Tmall stores, unable to keep up with local rivals. They all assumed their global brand equity would protect them. It didn’t.

This challenge will only increase for overseas companies, especially for those companies that do not diligently work to close the gaps that leave the door open for hungry Chinese companies that see larger, slower overseas competitors as easy targets.

I’ve spent 15 years operating inside Chinese organizations. In that time, I’ve seen four strategic gaps that impact overseas companies when competing with China. These gaps impact how they plan (or don’t) for competition from Chinese companies in China, as well as their home market: Perception, speed, assumptions, and talent.

Overseas companies that do not actively work to close these gaps will not simply fail to grow in the China market. They will also present opportunities for growth for ambitious Chinese competitors in their home markets.

The Perception Gap

What overseas companies and executives think is happening in China, and what is actually happening, is often very different. This results from not having eyes on the ground and only paying attention to surface information without diving deeper.

Being on the ground in China can be helpful for companies aiming to close their own perception gaps, but it’s not enough. It’s not just about having eyes in the right places. It’s also about having the people who are willing to go where others will not, and report uncomfortable truths to HQ management.

I’ve looked at this directly in two sectors – drones and robotics. In both cases, the surface signals failed to convey actual usage cases, and where Chinese tech companies were choosing to concentrate their efforts.

With drones, it’s common for tourists and executives visiting China to gush over the high-tech coffee and food deliveries made possible by delivery kiosks all over cities like Shenzhen. But the reality few talk about is how this is not a viable business – Meituan is focused on last-mile delivery with drones – coffee deliveries are simply good PR and a way to further refine drone systems.

Robotics is another high-tech sector in China that markets and tests publicly using spectacle, but is selling something completely different. Robots serving tea at expos are, in fact, being trained for lab work. Robots being displayed using musical instruments are being trained to handle machine parts. The truth is clear and obvious, but only for those who take the time to look.

The lessons from this type of perception gap should already be clear. When overseas companies and markets do not pay attention to the developments being made by Chinese companies, often done in the open, companies are not prepared, and markets and analysts are shocked.

We’ve seen this happen time and again with breakthroughs, including Huawei’s advanced chips, BYD’s electric vehicles, and DeepSeek’s AI. Other industries will follow. The only question is whether overseas companies are watching.

The Assumption Gap

It’s one thing to not understand what’s happening in China, far away from your home markets. It’s quite another to not understand your own consumers, what they want, and how their tastes might evolve to prefer offerings from Chinese competitors.

This shift has been going on for years in the domestic China market, with Chinese competitors gaining an edge with domestic consumers over global brands. And it’s not that this represents some form of nationalism or anti-global bias. It’s simply that Chinese companies can now offer products at a quality level as good as overseas brands, at lower or comparable prices, while also adapting faster to what local Chinese consumers want.

We’ve seen this with brands like GUESS, which shuttered stores across China, which was selling an Americana chic style at a price point Chinese consumers weren’t interested in. We’ve also seen it with Starbucks, which was surpassed in terms of the number of stores in China by Luckin in 2023.

I recently sat with a group of overseas executives visiting China and watched a familiar tension play out. They were so focused on what they thought their brand should be that they couldn’t see what local consumers actually wanted or how they thought about brands in the local market.

This tension is common for all global brands operating and selling in China. Multinational HQs are used to thinking in terms of global brand playbooks and global brand equity, leading to sales in international markets. But this approach increasingly does not work in China, where consumers move fast and increasingly want products built for local tastes.

Not understanding how incorrect assumptions shape China market strategy can lead overseas executives and HQs to assume they are losing in China because the market is “hard” or because there are cultural elements beyond comprehension. But this simply hides the real problem.

For now, this phenomenon of Chinese companies outperforming overseas competitors in understanding consumers’ needs is largely confined to the domestic China market. But that doesn’t mean it will remain there.

The Speed Gap

Chinese companies move very fast, launching new products in less time than it takes overseas companies to bring on a new senior hire.

But it’s not just chaos. There are several layers that both help and force Chinese companies to move fast: Infrastructure and government support, market pressure, and operational and structural choices.

For infrastructure, China’s intentionally designed industry hubs concentrate talent and manufacturing expertise, while using economies of scale to produce and sell at lower costs. Informal information networks between manufacturers also allow different companies to jump on new trends far faster than overseas competitors.

Government policies subsidize industrial parks, provide preferential lending, and provide quicker regulatory approval for new categories compared to overseas markets.

Market pressure also plays an important role. The China market has long been saturated with local players, leading to hyper competitiveness, as well as involution (a continuous vicious cycle of price cutting), which the Chinese government has taken a more active role in combating it.

But additional factors push that speed further. Not only do Chinese consumer trends change faster than in many other markets, but China’s digital e-commerce and social shopping closed ecosystems mean that companies can now view, analyze, and act on consumer behavior and feedback in real time, forcing other companies to try to move even faster to keep up.

This speed in the domestic China market has led to Chinese companies making decisions on their operational models to move faster, not just to grow faster, but to simply survive. It may look chaotic on the outside, but they are entirely rational on the inside.

This overall rapid execution speed, not just in manufacturing, but also in sales, marketing, and overseas expansion, presents a real challenge to overseas companies. Multiple Chinese competitors are now leading in consumer electronics and other industries overseas. And more competitors are also viewing overseas markets as new growth areas to escape the competition back home.

Overseas companies face a clear dilemma. Their Chinese competitors not only produce similar or better products than they do, but also do so more quickly and at lower prices. The gaps where overseas companies can potentially compete are narrowing, and overseas companies can no longer remain on the sidelines. Overseas companies can no longer treat this as someone else’s problem.

The Talent Gap

Having the right talent to remain competitive with China is not simply about having smart people who understand China.

After all, many overseas companies have smart, well-educated China teams with deep local experience. But the China team may not be giving the HQ the information it needs, or not moving as fast as local competitors.

In these cases, overseas companies’ China teams are often not working inside the “Chinese system” – they are working inside the “overseas system” with Chinese characteristics.

Overseas HQs that need to approve everything slow down execution and rob local teams of decision-making authority. At the same time, there are many reasons why local China teams might not share the full picture with overseas HQs.

In China, it is common to manage upwards information flow, and this will be intensified when overseas HQs react badly upon learning uncomfortable truths about the China market.

When looking at overseas HQs, it is also common for executives and teams to be incentivized to act in accordance with overseas logic and tempo, instead of China-side speed and logic.

So on one hand, it’s certainly important to have smart, skilled people, both in the HQ and in China. But it’s also vital to ensure both have the incentives and support to act in ways that support the growth (or slow the decline) of the China business.

Sometimes this requires organizational change. Sometimes it requires bringing on outside partners who understand the needs of both sides, where execution, communication, and collaboration break down, and who can say things neither side feels free to.

What overseas HQs urgently need are China teams that can act with authority in accordance with the needs of the China market while communicating clearly with HQ. Repeating the playbook that worked before is simply asking for failure.

How Leadership Can Close These Gaps

These gaps don’t exist in isolation; they compound. A company that misreads what’s happening in China will make decisions based on wrong assumptions. Wrong assumptions then slow the organization’s ability to respond closer to China’s speed. And without the right people in place, people who can operate across both systems and say what neither side feels free to say, none of it will get fixed.

This is not about copying the Chinese approach. It is about understanding that Chinese companies across many industries have spent decades being forced to move fast, iterate constantly, and compete with no margin for error. Many now have the capabilities to compete directly with overseas companies, in China and in their home markets.

We’ve already seen the effect across sectors in China and overseas, where overseas companies were the traditional leaders. Automotives, luxury, consumer electronics. All are facing significant challenges from Chinese players, and the competitive gap has closed faster than most planned for.

Organizations that have not yet adapted are finding that the window to do so is closing fast. Surmounting these gaps requires honest answers to uncomfortable questions about what is actually happening on the ground, whether internal assumptions reflect market reality, and whether the right people are in place to bridge both sides. Those answers rarely come from inside the organization alone.

If you’re interested in thoughtful perspectives on China, cross-border work, and how culture, incentives, and organizations shape real outcomes, you’re welcome to subscribe to China Culture Corner and receive future posts by email.

I also share related ideas and longer-form video commentary on LinkedIn and YouTube, and post updates across the channels linked above.