How does decision-making work in Chinese organizations?

The conference room on the thirty-fourth floor of a Shenzhen office tower seats fourteen. On a Tuesday morning in March, eleven people file in, pour tea, and open their notebooks. A finance director presents a plan to restructure procurement — a decision affecting sixty suppliers and several million yuan. She speaks for five minutes. The general manager surveys the table: "Does anyone have anything to add?" Six seconds of silence. Polite nods. "Then it's settled." The meeting has lasted twelve minutes. A British consultant attending as an observer checks his watch, bewildered. Where was the debate? The challenge? The devil's advocate? The debate happened — all of it. It happened the previous week, in fragments: two WeChat voice messages on Monday, a shared taxi on Wednesday, a long lunch in the staff canteen on Friday, a carefully timed elevator ride with the general manager. By the time the calendar invitation went out, everyone in the room knew the decision. More importantly, everyone knew that everyone else knew. Welcome to one of the most misunderstood rituals of the Chinese workplace: the meeting that decides nothing, because everything has already been decided.

The meeting took twelve minutes, but the decision had already been made in the days before it.