I can definitely understand ladder-climbing in the workplace but there are countless instances of people acting without dignity or restraint. It's downright unsightly.
Thus proving gbraad's point?
Guanxi is not those things you mentioned. Incidentally, it's not something that is difficult for foreigners to grok - they just need to have some exposure and experience with it.
Maybe it's by taking people out to dinner and getting drunk with them, building up a certain type of camaraderie.
Othertimes it's outright bribery.
But this sort of thing:
> boot-licking, toady, lackey, stooge, sycophantic, brown-nose.
Rarely works to develop good guanxi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_with_Chinese_charact...
"When in Rome" and "know thy enemy" makes sense but the tasteless passion that people have for blatant cronyism is quite unpleasant.
This may also be of interest: