China Credit Insight 1: “Chinese company” or “China company”

When we were planning for this book, we set to use the term “Chinese company” to denote a company located in China. It was a logical choice because “Chinese” is an adjective of “China”.

Then one of the draft reviewers pointed out that a “Chinese company” also means a company owned by a Chinese individual, but the Chinese does not necessarily to be located in China.

We knew that the real life was not simple. If we had adopted the format of “China company”, then should we change from “Chinese Government” to “China Government” for the sake of consistency? Well, we admitted that the “Chinese Government” is a special case because there is only one “China Government”. So, there would be no misunderstanding of using “Chinese Government”.

After some back and forth discussions, we got two choices:

• 1st Choice: Use “China” whenever there is a chance to generate confusion (like “China company”), but stuck to “Chinese” wherever it is unambiguous (like “Chinese Government”).
• 2nd Choice: Stick to “Chinese”, and declare at the beginning of this book that the word “Chinese” used in this book solely means “of China”

The first choice was very clear and grammatically correct, but we had to remember the rules. The second choice was simple for both writing and reading.

In conclusion, we picked the second choice and stuck to using “Chinese” instead of “China” because what we talked about in this book would be only related to China.

This Credit Insight is an extract from the book Happy Customers Faster Cash, China Edition and on sale at Amazon.

More companies sell on credit to their customers in China. This book shares with you, using statistical data, the true picture of payment behavior in China. It also contains lots of cultural insights for you to better understand the business environment in China. A chapter is dedicated to discuss various aspects of China company credit reports.