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Cultural entrepreneurship in China
Carsten Herrmann-Pillath and Xingyuan Feng
Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University, Germany
Rural Development Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
Corresponding author: Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, email: cahepil@online.de
February 2017
Abstract
In China, many entrepreneurs activate and create cultural capital to organize business activities.
We explore this phenomenon of ‘cultural entrepreneurship’ based on field interviews and
secondary sources, including more than 60 single cases of individuals and companies. Our
approach proceeds on a middle ground between cultural determinism and rational choice,
highlighting cultural creativity and hybridization. We present a dozen cases in more detail,
arranged in four topical fields, the activation of kinship relations in coordinating business, the
role of religion, networking via associations, and corporate culture.
Keywords: cultural entrepreneurship, Chinese culture, lineage, popular religion, associations,
corporate culture
Cultural entrepreneurship in China
1. Introducing the notion of cultural entrepreneurship
In contemporary China, we observe the phenomenon that entrepreneurs and companies adopt
important roles as leaders in expressing and creating culture. For example, entrepreneurs may
donate for the reconstruction of temples or even become temple managers, companies explicitly
adopt Confucian management styles, or management scientists refer to classical sources such
as the Yijing (Book of Changes) in designing indigenous management approaches. In this paper,
we explore these phenomena and interpret them in terms of the analytical paradigm of ‘cultural
entrepreneurship’. In introducing this concept, we wish to navigate between the analytical
Charybdis of cultural determinism and the Scylla of rationalist reductionism.
Culture has emerged as an important topic in economic research, following a tradition in the
management sciences, where cross-cultural management issues and the concept of corporate
culture have received attention for long.1 These various areas of research share one fundamental
assumption on culture: Culture is conceived as an exogenous determinant of economic
conditions. The exception is corporate culture, which is partly approached as being subject to
managerial design, partly as evolving spontaneously. Yet regarding ‘national’ cultures, the
assumption of exogeneity is often taken for granted in economic and management research.2
This assumption strangely runs against one fundamental premise of economics, namely the
ideas of methodological individualism and rationality. The exogeneity of culture means that
certain aspects of action are not subject to human choice, but are determined by behavioural
rules inherited across generations. One way to resolve this contradiction is to assign culture to
the domain of preferences. Yet, even in this case the methodological stance of subjectivism
would be given up, as preferences would assume the essential feature of being ‘social’, hence
being observable and even measurable.
These uses of culture go against the grain of the anthropological understanding of culture, which
has rejected the essentialist notion of exogeneity across the board.3 Here, culture is conceived
as an aspect of human creativity, reflecting the anthropological universal of the human need for
‘sense making’. 4 Culture is a creative activity that happens in human interaction, and which is
being embodied in symbols, artefacts or behavioural patterns. These embodiments in turn
become the object of sense-making, hence ongoing creative action. Interestingly, this view
comes close to the standard economic model, if we would accept the generalized concept of
rationality. In this view, culture would be the object of rational decisions, hence embodiments
of culture would be subject to rational manipulation by human actors. This would be a special
case of sense-making, which would also downplay the role of social interactions.
In this paper, we introduce an approach that combines the anthropological and economic
perspectives by introducing the concept of ‘cultural entrepreneurship’, and we apply this on
1 For a comprehensive and illuminating survey, see Beugelsdijk and Maseland (2010).
2 The classical case is the extremely influential Hofstede approach, who speaks of ‘mental programming’. See
Hofstede et al. (2010). For a lucid critique of culturalist arguments in economics, see Jones (2006).
3 For a classical treatment, see Hannerz (1992). There has even been the tendency in anthropology to discard the
concept altogether, see Brumann (1999).
4 This emphasis on sense making is by no means an approach excusive to anthropologx, for example, in sociology
Fligstein and McAdam (2012) introduce this as a basic notion in understanding society. There is a long intellectual
pedigree, leading back to giants such as Max Weber.
China.5 Cultural entrepreneurship refers to the various activities of sense-making and cultural
creativity in the economic domain, which relate to the existing embodiments of culture in the
larger context of a given society. We do not refer to entrepreneurship in the narrow domain of
culture in the meaning of cultural industries, the arts or the media, although this can be also
included. That means, our use of culture is the generic anthropological one, as it is also adopted
in the aforementioned economic research on culture. Thus, cultural entrepreneurship includes
the following:
• Cultural entrepreneurs build on an existing stock of cultural capital in a given society
and either manipulate elements of this stock or introduce new elements in order to
pursue economic goals, such as creating a particular kind of corporate culture or
designing a specific product for the market.
• Cultural entrepreneurs mobilize cultural capital in order to create social capital that
undergirds their economic actions.
• In implementing the aforementioned types of actions, cultural entrepreneurs adopt both
rational strategies and pursue strategies of identity formation. In the latter case, cultural
entrepreneurs activate culture for expressive action, thereby forming their own identities
as social actors, and aiming at co-creating the identities of other actors.
• In pursuing their goals, cultural entrepreneurs act as cultural innovators in the broader
context of society, changing the stock of cultural capital, and thereby changing the
context of other actors who also use this cultural capital. This implies that cultural
evolution will be shaped by unintended consequences of cultural entrepreneurship.
• As a result, cultural entrepreneurs play an important role in endogenizing cultural
change in a given society.
As we see, this conceptualization of cultural entrepreneurship differs from other existing uses
of the term. Here, the term has also adopted practical significance, such as in the design of
academic programs, in referring to the introduction of business approaches into the domain of
the creative sectors, such as artists adopting business frameworks in order to communicate or
plainly sell their creations.6 Our approach differs in two senses. Firstly, we define culture in the
generic sense, and not only in the context of the creative sectors institutionally demarcated as
such, so that we include the entire range of anthropological aspects of culture (such as kinship).
Secondly, we do not extend the notion of entrepreneurship to including all kinds of social
activity, but confine it to the domain of the economy, so that we clearly distinguish between
entrepreneurial and creative action. That means, for example, an artist is not an entrepreneur,
but may turn into one; and, although her entrepreneurial action regarding the creative sector is
a meaningful cultural action, it becomes relevant in terms of our notion of cultural
entrepreneurship only if this action also contributes to changes in the cultural capital of society.7
On the other hand, all entrepreneurs in the economic domain may have the potential to become
5 In economics, this specific use of the term was coined in Herrmann-Pillath and Zweynert (2014). It follows
similar extensions of the notion of entrepreneurship such as ‘political entrepreneurship’.
6 On these uses, see as examples: https://culent.com/definitions/; https://i-lab.harvard.edu/deans-
challenge/cultural-entrepreneurship/; accessed February 8, 2017. It should be emphasized that we also met this
kind of entrepreneurship in our field research, for example, a scholar who launched a museum of artefacts of local
traditional culture, or a local community which set up an open air exhibition of their traditional settlement. Some
of our cases also include this type of entrepreneurship, such as when temple building also serves tourism.
7 This implicitly implies that we side-line dysfunctional and deviant aspects of culture, especially as criminal
actions such as mafia-type organizations, which is evident in our cases. Clearly, this awaits further consideration.
cultural entrepreneurs, even if they are not active in the creative sector; yet, only a minority of
them will do so, especially in the sense of adding to the cultural capital of a given society.
In this paper, we want to apply our notion of cultural entrepreneurship on the case of China.
We wish to emphasize that we do not claim that cultural entrepreneurship is a phenomenon
specific to China. However, we think that the current context of rapid economic and social
change, accompanied by many cultural disruptions and cleavages, and occurring under
conditions of institutional uncertainty, especially for private business, creates strong incentives
for acting as a cultural entrepreneur. We will look at different aspects of cultural
entrepreneurship, in particular:
• How do cultural entrepreneurs activate traditional notions of kinship to implement
economic actions, and how do they contribute to changing these notions in the context
of modern society? How does this affect the cultural capital in the domain of kinship?
• How do cultural entrepreneurs rely on religious resources as a means to create identities
that undergird the formation and extension of social capital? Which role does this action
play in the revival of religion in China?
• How do cultural entrepreneurs build on traditional symbolic resources to organize
collective action and to coordinate economic behaviour? In which way does this
contribute to the formation of new social phenomena, such as in the emergence of civil
society in China?
• How do cultural entrepreneurs create specific forms of corporate culture which become
new forms of cultural embodiments that add to the existing stock of cultural capital?
Our approach is based on case studies: Cultural entrepreneurship is a complex and hence
singular phenomenon, reflecting the creativity of individual actors. Hence, it is inappropriate to
attempt broader generalizations, such as based on statistics. We combine the insights gained
from five field trips with other contributions in China studies.8 Hence, our material roughly
includes 60 cases of cultural entrepreneurship taken from primary and secondary sources. One
limitation is that most of both our interviews and even the secondary sources focus on the
coastal provinces. Yet, we include both urban and rural cases. In this paper, we present a
selection of topical cases out of our research, sometimes also represented by more than one
entrepreneur or company.
2. Culture and business in China
Cultural explanations have a long tradition in research on Chinese business, epitomized in the
term ‘Confucian capitalism’. These mostly apply to Chinese business outside of Mainland
China, that is mainly Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Southeast Asia. In these approaches,
Chinese culture is treated as a cultural legacy, that underwent hybridization at some places, in
particular Hong Kong. Although in general descriptions of this legacy its diversity is almost
8 We conducted five joint field trips between January 15, 2014 and October 25, 2016 (each for two weeks) during
which we visited and discussed with 55 companies and individual entrepreneurs, mostly in Shenzhen, Dongguan
and Guangzhou of Guangdong province, Baoding of Hebei province, Ningbo and Ninghai of Zhejiang province.
One of us, Feng Xingyuan conducted ten additional field studies in Ningbo, Ninghai and Wenzhou of Zhejiang
province, Chengdu of Sichuan province, the aforementioned three cities in Guangdong, Peking, Xining of Qinghai
province, and Dalian of Liaoning province, which focused on the environment of private enterprises, rural finance
and on the organization of community culture facilities (such as senior associations). In these additional studies,
cultural entrepreneurship was also salient in many cases.
always mentioned, eventually the approaches boil down to Confucianism. Confucianism is
mostly invoked in both the research on corporate culture and in research into the social
organization of business relationships.9
These approaches met immediate criticism, especially from anthropologists and Chinese
cultural studies. A consistent reasoning is that the specific features of Chinese business simply
reflect the adaptation to the conditions of global capitalism since the 1970s, with the growth of
transnational value chains, outsourcing arrangements and high pressure on costs. However,
these plain facts have allegedly been disguised in the phenomenon of ‘reverse orientalism’,
where Chinese practitioners and researchers adopted the Western Confucianism discourse also
to describe their own practices and cultural contexts. So, these criticisms converge on the
aforementioned ‘rational’ approach to culture in arguing that cultural frames and symbols are
instruments that are used intentionally to pursue economic goals.10
In our approach, we can offer a midway solution to these methodological conundrums in
arguing that both explanations may apply, depending on context and individual case. This
follows from the notion of cultural entrepreneurship as outlined above. So, even if an
entrepreneur rationally exploits cultural repertoires for pursuing her or his economic aims, this
maintains and expands the stock of cultural capital, if the products of his action are received
and further processed by other agents. For example, the scientific notion of ‘Confucian
Capitalism’ becomes a cultural symbol on its own and may trigger other responses in which
identity formation actually matters, beyond mere rational motives.
Subsequently, we will present cases of cultural entrepreneurship which reveal this ambivalence,
while emphasizing the effective role of entrepreneurial action in cultural creativity.
3. Cultural entrepreneurship and kinship
Traditionally, Chinese kinship is a complex phenomenon, with the nuclear family at its centre,
and complicated ramifications in extended kinship. Terminologically, this is reflected in the
distinction between jiating 家庭 and jiazu 家族, and traditionally zongzu 宗族. The generic
term for family, jia 家, covers these complexities partially, because it does not only refer to the
jiating. In order to understand these distinctions, it is necessary to distinguish between the
economic and the ritual function of the family. Then, the jia is mainly an economic unit which
can shrink and expand according to economic needs and functions. Traditionally, the ritual
functions have been divided between the jiating as residential unit (embodied in the ‘stove’,
representing the family unit, and represented by religious rituals such as the Kitchen God) and
the lineage. The lineage in terms of actual relationships is the jiazu, and ritually could be
represented as a zongzu (often translated as ‘clan’). In modern Chinese uses, zongzu is often
used interchangeably with jiazu, or even referring to ‘lineage’ only.
In Imperial China, we can identify cultural entrepreneurship in the context of kinship in many
forms, which has misled researchers in the past who failed to realize incipient forms of modern
business organization. In principle, a family might undergo a process of growth in cultural
complexity, for example, when migrating to another place, taking roots and possibly being
9 The seminal conceptualization of ‘Chinese capitalism’ as a cultural hybrid is Redding (1990, 1996). For more
recent discussions of Confucianism and business, see, for example, Chen and Lee (2008).
10 For a seminal contemporary critique, see Dirlik (1996); on ‘reverse orientalism’, see Yao (2002).
successful economically. This allowed for the growth of kinship organizations across the
generations, activating cultural capital, such as sending sons to school in order to succeed in
Imperial examinations. So, eventually a family might evolve into a powerful clan with
thousands of members, including officials, merchants and landlords. This pattern could also
result into cultural innovations, such as the use of lineage structures in order to create corporate
business organizations, which could even include non-members as shareholders and managers,
while maintaining the ritual framework of kinship relationships.11
In contemporary China, we can observe again that entrepreneurs activate the cultural capital of
kinship. This applies for both the internal organization of business and its external coordination.
We briefly sketch three cases.
• The aforementioned traditional phenomenon of incipient lineage formation after
migration is represented by Sanke Holding Group Ltd., a large real estate developer and
construction company in Shenzhen. The founder migrated from Chaozhou to Shenzhen
and has three sons, the company name, according to lineage tradition, uses one
component of the two-syllabic first name of the sons (ke), meaning ‘the three Ke’. The
headquarter of the company is designed according to the model of traditional official
premises, with the ancestral hall at the centre, and living quarters of the family and
offices extending rightwards and leftwards, in a line. The ancestral hall is magnificent
and filled with designs taken from Chinese cultural history and Chaozhou local
culture.12
• In the so-called ‘urban villages’ of Shenzhen (cheng zhong cun 城中村), where roughly
40 percent of the population live, mostly migrant workers, lineage organization stands
at the centre of organizing landownership. The background is the fact that during Maoist
collectivization, land rights were assigned to the collectives, which after de-
collectivization re-emerged as the pre-collectivization villages.13 In South China, many
villages were dominated by a single lineage. In the Pearl River Delta, facing the
expansion of urban settlements with huge profit opportunities, lineages often established
independent land management corporations that became independent from the village
administration, thereby protecting their land rights. This reinstated the traditional role
of lineages, reflected in the peculiar design of shareholder rights, limitations to selling
rights to outsiders or inheritance. Factually, the collective land is treated as lineage land
(‘ancestors’ land). The strength of lineages is visible in the lavish ancestral halls and
temple building activities, sponsored by the lineages.14
11 This symbiosis between kinship ritual and economic organization, including corporatization, has been elaborated
by scholars such as Faure (1996, 2006) and Zelin (2009). Gates (1996) coined the term ‘patricorporations’ referring
to these phenomena.
12 Other cases in our field data base include Xuheda corporation, an industry leader in trading electronics
components. The original company was founded by seven brothers from Fujian province who still live together in
a traditional residential compound in their hometown. Meanwhile, it has been transformed into a loose network
with an informal leader in which the different member companies have been handed over to the children of the
founders, corresponding to the life cycle model of Chinese family companies classically analysed by Wong (1985).
13 On this transitory stage, see Potter and Potter (1990).
14 On this phenomenon, see the rich field reports by Chung and Unger (2013) and Cheng (2014). The most
informative source on lineage land in Guangdong, past and present, is Zhou (2014). Zhou meticulously reports
about the tensions between lineage customary law and modern civil and corporate law. In our own field work
conducted together with Guo Man, we have the case of Phoenix village in Shenzhen that even traces its origins
back to a legendary historical hero in Song times, Wen Tianxiang (1236-1282).
• In Guangdong, lineages have also been frameworks for the formation of business
networks. One salient example is the Luo 罗in Fengshun 丰顺 county, Guangdong,
Meizhou Prefecture, where the Luo represented the majority of the population in their
native town Tangnan zhen 汤南镇 and factually dominated the township government at
the turn of the millennium. A Luo entrepreneur migrated to Shenzhen early, eventually
successfully established a hotel business. Gradually, he attracted other Luo
entrepreneurs to the place, creating a service ecosystem shaped by the lineage activities
(restaurants, shops etc.).15
These three examples clearly show how many modern Chinese entrepreneurs draw on the
cultural capital of kinship in a way revealing many family resemblances with Imperial times.
This can be partly explained by rational action, such as when using kinship ties in order to create
business networks. Yet, at the same time lineage formation becomes an aspect of identity
politics. For example, the urban villages are under threat by modernizing interventions of
Shenzhen municipal government: Even for the younger generation, lineage identity becomes
salient as a means to balance social power relationships. Yet, this does not mean that traditional
structures are simply reproduced. Cultural creativity is important to resolve conflicts between
traditional and modern institutions, such as in gender relations. Yet, these conflicts are often
driven by economic motives. Further, we need to take regional variation across China into
consideration. Our cases are mainly from South-eastern China, which corresponds to the
traditional pattern of strong lineage organization in this region, compared to other parts of the
country.
3. Cultural entrepreneurship and religion
Traditionally, Chinese religion is a complex and ‘diffuse’ phenomenon. Officially, and often in
Western perceptions, organized religion looms large, such as Buddhism or Christianity. Popular
religion is often subsumed under ‘local custom’ or even ‘superstition’.16 Yet, if we deal with
entrepreneurship, popular religion clearly is the primary reference point, as it is also the
framework in which the organized Chinese religions play their role in everyday life.
In our context, it is important to notice that, traditionally, popular religion was closely enmeshed
with economic activity. For example, traditional temple fairs were important venues of business
dealings. Temple building was an investment project that required the collection of funds and
organizing their effective uses. Further, popular religion was driven by cultural creativity, in
the sense that there was no fixed pantheon of gods, but a large diversity of local deities and
sacral places, to which new entities could be added at ease, once there was the public perception
of their efficacy, and eventually even being included into the official pantheon, after
government scrutiny. Accordingly, some researchers have argued that popular religion is a case
in point for the ‘religious market model’ that emphasizes the role of competition and resource
15 This case is reported in detail by Zhou (2003). Throughout the Pearl River Delta, such as in Dongguan, we often
met the phenomenon that migration of entrepreneurs and workers originated in particular villages and townships,
such that local networks are being re-created in at the destination of the migratory flows. However, this often may
not involve direct kinship relations, depending on their prevalence in the places of origin.
16 On this systematic bias in Chinese official and intellectual attitudes towards popular religion, see Goossaert and
Palmer (2011). This has been most pronounced in the context of Chinese aspirations towards modernity in the 20th
century, so is not limited to Communist ideology, but can be even traced back to Confucian rationalism in Late
Imperial China, see Lagerwey (2010).
acquisition and management in evolving patterns of religion.17 This implies that there is strong
role of entrepreneurship in shaping religion in China. We look at the following cases.
• In traditional religion, temples played a central role in defining the territorial identities
of village communities, and were often devoted to deities deeply rooted in local histories,
accompanied by the more universal deities of the Chinese pantheon. There is today a
strong revival of temple building in China, which presupposes entrepreneurial activity
in identifying places, objects of worship, raising the funds and eventually managing the
temple. This does not necessarily presuppose that the cultural entrepreneur or the
investors are ‘believers’. What is at stake is the embodiment of the community identity
in the religious rituals, and the accumulation of cultural capital that defines the role of
the community vis à vis other communities. A case in point is Adam Chau’s study of
the Black Dragon temple in a Sha’anxi village, where we meet the case of a successful
entrepreneur who even gave up his regular business in order to adopt the role of a
cultural entrepreneur exclusively, that is becoming temple manager.18
• It is important noticing that these mechanisms do not only work in popular religion. A
salient example is the role of Christianity in Wenzhou. Many private entrepreneurs have
assumed the role of community leaders and invest strong efforts in church building.
Interestingly, religious and business motives mix up in an inextricable way, reminiscent
of Weber’s analysis of Calvinism. On the one hand, for organizing church construction,
businessmen are often the natural leaders as they can employ their organizational skills
and practices, thus imbuing the community with business-like institutional features. On
the other hand, successful businessmen are also seen as representing desirable virtues,
such as being trustworthy, diligent and morally committed. Further, they have personal
charisma, leadership skills and rhetoric talents. As a result, the strong diffusion of
Christianity in Wenzhou is driven by cultural entrepreneurs who also expand their
activities as religious leaders beyond Wenzhou. Again, we can diagnose a rational
ingredient here, as community building clearly contributes to the formation of social
capital that can be also mobilized for business relations.19 It needs mentioning that
religious activities often take the shape of charities, which we can therefore also include
in our concept of cultural entrepreneurship.20
• One direct impact of business on religion is tourism. Interestingly, this also means that
even local governments may act as cultural entrepreneurs. In their official version,
investing into religious sites or even fostering new forms of expressing religious beliefs
aims at reviving ‘local customs’ and traditions that are manifestations of Chinese
national culture and therefore may be legitimate attractions for tourists who search for
17 On this model as applied on China, see Yang (2006) and Lu et al. (2008).
18 On this case, see Chau (2006). The decoupling of belief and social functions of religion is also reported by other
detailed case studies, such as DuBois (2005). At one of our field sites in Zhejiang province, Ninghai, there was the
case of a monk arriving from outside and raising funds externally (investment) and within the village Fengjia
(donations) for building a new temple, clearly designed as an investment project aiming at returns, which failed,
however (the core construction is still there and sometimes used by the local population).
19 This is the case analysed in much detail by Cao (2008, 2009). In our own fieldwork, we inquired for the role of
Christianity in the activities of Wenzhou entrepreneurs in Guangdong, but failed to trace it. However, we have the
example of a female entrepreneur in Qinghai who set up a hotel and donated substantially for building a Christian
church next to the hotel.
20 On this intermingling of religion and charities, see McCarthy (2013). For example, in Wenzhou, Cai Xiaolin is
Secretary-general of Huafu Charitable Foundation founded by 20 entrepreneurs from Wenzhou, who are all
Christians. Its first donation was made in the winter of 2008. The foundation donated 100 000 thick clothes to the
earthquake area of Sichuan.
edification and entertainment. However, these religious sites may indeed be or become
sanctuaries in the eyes of particular groups of believers, especially since temples can
host various kinds of deities of which some might be important for particular groups.
One feature of popular religion is that throughout the past up to the present, local
communities or community leaders may introduce new objects of religious devotion,
such as today including even Mao Zedong in a temple. One conspicuous example of
this interaction between leadership and religion is the ‘Cultural Park’ established by the
famous private entrepreneur Sun Dawu 孙大午, Chairman of Supervisory Board and
owner of the Hebei Dawu Group in Baoding city. Here we find a site where all important
Sun surname clans are represented, and Sun Yat-sen is put at the centre of devotion.
This combines with a Chan Buddhism temple, where rituals can be paid to popular
deities, in particular Guanyin. The temple also hosts nuns, so transcending mere touristic
functions.21
These examples demonstrate the complexity of interaction between business and religion. The
leaders in religious activities often may not be believers, but at the same time they are not simply
acting in an opportunistic way. Popular religion is traditionally seen as the embodiment of
community spirit, and also as a moral exercise. So, the business leader sponsoring a temple also
feels acting on behalf of a public interest. Eventually, these activities also result into genuine
religious activities among parts of the population. Further, it is important to mention that
religious activities and donations often are seen as a kind of insurance against contingencies
and risk in business or as an exchange for bringing fortune and wealth. That means, in a kind
of Pascalian wager businessmen support temples and religious sites even if they are not strict
believers, yet this reproduces cultural patterns of religion.22
4. Culture and the organization of business
In common views on traditional Chinese society, we often find the idea that the family and the
state are the two poles, with a social desert in between. This is a serious misperception, which
is especially salient when considering business organization. In Chinese society, associations
of various kinds, with a wide range, played a very significant role in organizing social relations
among non-kin.23 In traditional economic activity, merchant associations and, in particular,
native-place associations played a central role, given the fact that many merchants were often
travelling widely, and even lived as sojourners at certain places for many years, without
disrupting the connections to their native places. Certain grassroots level organizational forms
directly survive until today, such as the widespread existence of brotherhoods and sisterhoods
21 On Sun Dawu, see Delman and Yin (2011). The project formally is a site of ‘national learning’ guoxue 国学.
Sun has been giving lectures on ‘Analects’ since 1992 within his company and established a Temple Respecting
the Confucianism (敬儒祠). In our interview in the end of September 2016, Sun himself explained that he is not a
believer (but his mother and wife), yet thinks that religion plays an important role in establishing social order,
moral commitment and peace. On the ambivalent role of tourism in the revival of popular religion, resulting from
the diverse views of different groups, we have now a number of illuminating case studies, such as Kang (2009).
22 This includes highly visible activities such as the joint donations by business leaders Chu Jiwang and Cao
Dewang 曹德旺, together with the Hong Kong Tycoon Li Ka-xing, for a huge Buddhist temple complex. Many
businessmen, following Chinese tradition, also conduct religious activities in their homes, for example, setting up
altars for selected Gods in the loft of their houses. We observed this highly individualized religious activities in
many instances, such as putting up a Buddha statue in the office (this is not a mere decorative act if the statue has
been ‘energized’ in a temple by proper ritual).
23 For the classical statement on this, see Sangren (1984).
in the rural areas which are important forms of mutual support beyond kin relations. So,
traditionally there was a rich cultural repertoire of non-kin associational structures, while at the
same time, as we have mentioned previously, complex kin relations could also obtain
organizational forms which would not mainly reflect the kin logic, but mutual business interests.
In contemporary China, similar activities are often observable in the context of the emerging
and budding civil society, which is, however, still constrained for political reasons, especially
under the Xi Jinping leadership. Yet, business organizations are often seen in a neutral way,
and they have important functions in the interactions between business and local government.
This is especially significant at places where entrepreneurs from many different parts of China
come together. In this context, we observe cultural entrepreneurship; again, we select three
cases.
• A clear-cut case is the role of Hunan entrepreneurs in Shenzhen and the Pearl River
Delta. Traditionally, Hunan is not perceived as a breeding ground for entrepreneurs, but
many Hunan entrepreneurs emigrated to other places. This motivated the creation of the
first modern native place Chamber of Commerce by the cultural entrepreneur Wu Jiyan
伍继延 in Chongqing 2003. Establishments at many other places followed up. Wu
explicitly refers to the traditional model of the ‘shangbang’(商帮), merchant societies,
but also rejects the notion of ‘Confucian entrepreneurs’. Instead, he actively pursues the
construction of a ‘modern Hunanese business culture’ that even draws on Mao Zedong,
pointing to the fact that Mao’s father was a rice merchant. Wu promotes the idea of
‘small government, big society’. He designs political slogans to create cultural
commitments, and the society performs rituals and oaths at its formal meetings.24
• The Hunan case is one conspicuous example of the widespread existence of ‘yidi
shanghui’ (异地商会) which assume important functions, such as informal regulation
of labour disputes, especially also involving workers from the same region of origin,
representing business interests vis à vis local government, or even resolving personal
troubles of businessmen (such as kidnapping cases). In general, they are native place
associations of different degrees of organizational coherence abound in China, but they
are also under close scrutiny by the Party, which wants to contain the emergence of
strong regional identities, and therefore at least nominally prohibits the formation of
national umbrella organizations for the regional groups at different places (native place
organizations among migrant workers are strictly prohibited). A salient example for
these native place associations is Wenzhou. Wenzhou people nationwide, but also with
global reach, everywhere set up Wenzhou associations which serve the interests of the
sojourners and migrants, but also carry with them the regional culture. Looking at the
individual level, these networks maintain close relationships with the native place, and
also undergird parallel activities in the kinship domain. For example, successful
entrepreneurs may donate for these associations, and they may donate for setting up and
maintaining ancestral temples at Wenzhou.25
24 We met Wu on occasion of a seminar of January 16, 2014 at the JunZeJun Law Offices in Guangzhou where he
delivered a speech on economic culture in Hunan. Wu has published a programmatic book on his activities, in
which he explicitly reflects upon the cultural dimensions; see Wu (2014).
25 We visited Liu Chuan corporation in Dongguan several times, also attending family celebrations of the Wenzhou
community. The founder of the company, Mr. Chen, lives in Dongguan with his two sons who have assumed
leading management roles. He is active in setting up an ancestral hall in Wenzhou.
• There are interesting variants of the role of traditional culture in modern shapes for
business organization. One example is the case of a village that specializes on jewellery
and related crafts. The majority of villagers sojourn at other cities all across China, yet
mostly on an individual basis. That means, they would not set up associations there. But
they keep close connections to their native place, also for economic reasons: Important
inputs for their craft are bought collectively via the village community, so that better
prices can be achieved. In this context, regular visits back home are necessary. These
are cast into the shape of traditional holidays and festivals, and the sojourners donate
for the (re)construction of temples and other community places.26
To summarize, we observe a revival of traditional forms of business organization in
contemporary China. Of course, this can be interpreted as a mere functional equivalence, as
there are objective needs to organizing interests vis à vis local governments, for example. Yet,
there is also a need for expressing group identities, which relies on existing cultural capital. In
fact, in places which are dominated by migrants from all parts of China, the lack of a local
identity can become a social and even political issue. The suppression of spontaneous identity
politics based on native place principles may become dysfunctional.27
5. Corporate culture and cultural creativity
One universally recognized aspect of cultural entrepreneurship is the creation of corporate
culture. However, according to our definition this only counts as genuine cultural
entrepreneurship if corporate culture also transcends the borders of the company and becomes
a cultural model in society. In fact, this happens frequently because the Chinese are avid readers
of reports and books about successful entrepreneurs. So, single companies can easily become
cultural models for others, and the ideas of corporate leaders may become part of public views
on culture.
Corporate culture in China today is a field where many forces interact. There are also political
aspects, as mostly in the state-owned corporate domain, the party approaches corporate culture
as means to disseminate socialist ideology and values, and strengthening the role of
corporations as an indirect channel of governing society at large.28 On the other hand, corporate
culture is clearly a domain where creativity seems almost unbound in China today, especially
in mixing international impacts with the selective use of traditional leitmotifs. And finally, we
have to distinguish between corporate culture as designed by the entrepreneurial leaders and as
evolving spontaneously. In this section, we only focus on the former. As regards the latter, for
example, against the common picture of ‘paternalism’ in Chinese business culture, allegedly
reflecting Confucian values, we have to notice the fact that management techniques in China
are often heavily ‘militarized’, especially when dealing with migrant workers. If one were to
refer to traditional values here, this seems to reflect a role for Legalism, the competing,
26 On this case, see Wu (2014, 2015). The cultural dimension is treated more comprehensively in the Chinese
book-length study.
27 A case in point is Dongguan, which we visited several times and investigated into the role of local associations.
As we noticed, the associations can play an important role in governing the relationship between migrant works
and migrant entrepreneurs, for example. Indeed, the Dongguan government has therefore adopted the strategy of
deliberately creating a new local identity of ‘new Dongguan people’, see Ngok and Zhuang (2014). At the same
time, Dongguan also became a pilot area for further exploring the role of yidi shanghui in local governance, see
http://news.163.com/16/1109/06/C5DMVLT5000187VI.html.
28 See Hawes (2008).
infamous but nevertheless influential teachings challenging Confucianism.29 In addition, we
observed in many our field interviews that entrepreneurs often build on personal experience in
the military.
About cultural entrepreneurship in the corporate domain, we choose three cases, again.
• Against the common perception of Confucian roots of Chinese management approaches,
we highlight the role of Daoism. Many Chinese entrepreneurs refer to Daoism as a
source of inspiration, with the most influential example of the Haier founder and CEO
Zhang Ruimin who famously responded to the question, what the most important
entrepreneurial capability would be, ‘philosophy’. However, it may be difficult to trace
the specific impact of Daoism on management, beyond the mere role as fashionable talk.
One conspicuous observation is Zhang’s radical approach to compressing managerial
hierarchies by means of increasing the autonomy of basic organizational units. Via
modern digital technologies, these units are directly connected to market signals, thus
being enabled to act autonomously. This approach aims at minimizing direct
interventions of higher-level decision making. Evidently, this approach is motivated by
Daoist ideas of non-intervention, and approaches the market as a kind of ‘natural flow’
to which the organization has to adapt. Indeed, this idea of the market as a natural
environment that cannot be controlled by business, and thus elicits certain behavioural
strategies that correspond to Daoist values, is often emphasized in the indigenous
literature about Chinese business culture, also with reference to regional cultures.30
• In this context, it is important noticing that a specific aspect of traditional philosophy
has also achieved paradigmatic status in the international literature about Chinese
management, especially in the context of the ‘Management and Organization Review’,
which is the organ of the International Association of Chinese Management. This is the
term ‘Yin Yang Management’. This term refers to the Yijing, one of the oldest sources
of Chinese philosophy, and is interpreted in the sense that thinking in terms of Yin Yang
creates certain cognitive capabilities, especially regarding the perception and
interpretation of dynamic and complex phenomena. In particular, two aspects loom
large. Firstly, Yin Yang generates a different kind of logic, which is not based on mutual
exclusiveness of alternatives (which is called ‘ambidexterity’ in the modern
management discourse), and secondly, Yin Yang also motivates management styles that
explicitly mobilize the creative force of opposites. An example for this is the company
Huaqiu Tianxia, which adopted the symbol of the German shepherd dog for its
leadership approach, interpreted as a synthesis of ‘wolf’ and ‘sheep’, and even has an
explicit strategy of gendering the organization, with most teachers being male and
managers female.31
29 This military management style has attracted much concern in the case of Foxconn, see Ngai and Chan (2012).
On Legalism in general, see Hwang (2008).
30 In earlier times, the Chinese language website of Haier had a sentence of the Dao De Jing as motto (天下万物
生于有，有生于无, The Ten Thousand things emerge from Being, and Being emerges from Nothing; see
http://www.cec1979.org.cn/jjh/view.php?id=75, accessed February 10, 2017). This has been deleted meanwhile.
On the radical restructuring of Haier, see Lin (2009). In Chinese publications on Haier, such as Cao (2014), the
cultural dimension is more visible, as these emphasize the idea of liberating the individual potentials and self-
organization. On Daoism and management in general, see Lee et al. (2008). The regional dimension is emphasized
by Fang and Lin (2011), who refer to Zhejiang business culture as being close to Daoist thinking.
31 Exemplary scholarly contributions to the Yin Yang management approach are Jing and Van de Ven (2014) or
Li (2014). In the case of Huaqiu Tianxia, see the case study in Zhongguo guanli moshi jiechu jiang lishihui (2011).
Reference to ‘wolves’ is another instance of cultural creativity, as the metaphor of ‘wolf’ has gained considerably
• Corporate culture intermingles with national culture in the context of family business,
especially when considering the succession problem. Traditionally, family business
would be handed over in the patrilineal descent line, which can be difficult in the context
of one-child policy. So, many companies would be handed over to a daughter, which is
a cultural change per se.32 However, there are also cultural entrepreneurs who create
new solutions. A famous example is Fotile corporation, where the son succeeded to the
father during his lifetime, which appears to be a traditional way of family succession
and division (albeit with no siblings), but the son requested that no other family
members should be involved in management. At the same time, however, this step
toward managerial modernization was accompanied with the explicit adoption of
Confucian elements in corporate culture, such as introducing mandatory reading classes
devoted to Confucian classics. Another case is the famous ‘family constitution’ of Hebei
Dawu corporation, which is designed after the model of Western political constitutions,
such as the principle of three powers, and where the role of family members is tightly
confined and defined.33
So, these examples show how designing corporate culture also contributes to cultural
innovations in the broader societal context. In the context of family business, entrepreneurs are
often even forced into reflecting upon traditional notions, such as the established informal rules
of inheritance, apart from the formal legal context, which, interestingly, happens in all social
domains, rural and urban, less developed or highly modernized. So, new cultural role models
are created. When defining corporate cultures, existing cultural capital appears to be a fertile
ground for creating syntheses of modern and traditional ways to perceive social and
organizational interactions.
6. Analysis and conclusion
Our cases demonstrate how economic action and cultural creativity are deeply enmeshed.
Neither the rational design nor the cultural determinism approach can fully grasp these
phenomena. A central concern of cultural entrepreneurship on the individual level seems to be
needed to create and communicate individual and group identities, thus tying up with the recent
interest of economists in the so called ‘economics of identity’.34
However, in the Chinese context it seems important to recognize family resemblances with
similar phenomena in traditional China. These have been designated as ‘ritual economy’ by
Mayfair Yang, mainly referring to the revival of traditional religion in the rural areas today,
which manifest the aforementioned symbiosis between religious rituals and economic
activities.35 The notion of the ritual economy can also be referred to the Skinner paradigm of
approaching the market system as a fundamental unit in the social and cultural organization of
the Chinese. As our cases show, this approach also makes broader sense, if we consider as
rituals all actions involving cultural capital that contribute to its reproduction. So, for example,
popularity recently, after the enthusiastic reception of a novel by Jiang Rong, see Wedell-Wedellsborg (2011). The
founder of Huawei corporation, Ren Zhengfei, uses the term to characterize the corporate culture of his company,
see http://wenku.baidu.com/view/7cc3ab2ead02de80d5d84002 (accessed February 10, 2017).
32 This question receives much attention in the Chinese business literature, see e.g. Zhou Xibing (2014).
33 On the case of Fotile, see Fang (2013). We mentioned our field meeting with Sun previously. On his family
constitution, see also Du (2011).
34 On the economics of identity, see Akerlof and Kranton (2000), Kranton (2016).
35 Yang (2007). Faure (2006) also uses the term.
Wu Jiyan’s Chambers of Hunan merchants are clearly designed as ritual organizations, aiming
at creating cultural capital among Hunan businessmen across China, but also contributing to
cultural change in general. That means, the notion of the ritual economy can be expanded
beyond the reference to rural society. Indeed, there are phenomena of ritual even in the most
advanced companies of China. Take, for example, Huawei corporation which draws even on
Maoist rituals in conducting sessions of ‘self-criticism’ of leading managers. This is another
case of corporate culture assuming meaning in the broader cultural setting.36
So, we argue that we can combine the notion of the ritual economy in China studies with the
generic notion of cultural entrepreneurship. We suggest that this conceptual synthesis may
prove fruitful to understanding the peculiar trajectories of modernization in contemporary
Chinese society, which is deeply shaped by economic forces. However, extremely rapid
economic change also challenges the identities of individuals and groups. Hence, economic
actors, and entrepreneurs in particular, feel the need to mobilize cultural resources in order to
express and maintain their identities, both as individuals and groups. One important question
for future research is how generational change will affect patterns of cultural entrepreneurship.
Most of our interview partners were the founders of their companies, some of them even in
retirement. The young generation is still partly following the track laid by the founders, but in
many companies, change looms large. Yet, this also means that the young generation needs to
develop new ways of sense-making, beyond the mundane tasks of operating business. One
conspicuous example is the growing role of daughters in business succession. So, we believe
that cultural entrepreneurship remains an important aspect of Chinese business in the future.
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