在日本工作和在中国工作有何差别？ [美国媒体]

What's the difference between working in Japan vs. in China?

在日本工作和在中国工作有何差别？




Nell Zhang, Differences make the world fun.
Updated Sep 29, 2016 · Upvoted by Xinchun Li, lives in China
Being a Chinese who has working experience in both China and Japan, here is some of my personal observations, please take it with a grain of salt (Warning: Generalization ahead!) :

作为一个中国人，我在日本和中国都工作过，以下是我的个人观察，所以对我说的话要持怀疑的态度：

Office politics aside, (it happens in both countries, of course, as well as in any other countries) imagine employee A and B.

不谈办公室政治（两国都有，当然，任何其他国家也都有），想象一下有雇员A和B。



And A? He would not be liked too much, quite the opposite. Some managers and coworkers would doubt his work ethic and attitude, in many cases he would be isolated- certainly not a bright future.

而A呢？人们不会太喜欢他，恰恰相反。某些经理和同事可能还会怀疑他的职业道德和态度，大多数情况下他会被孤立，不可能拥有美好的未来。

Want to hear the opposite scenario? Welcome to China!

想要听相反的情形吗？欢迎来到中国！

There is a famous Chinese saying which describes the majority of Chinese companies’ culture- “It doesn’t matter if it’s a white cat or a black cat, a cat that can catch rats is a good cat!” It ROUGHLY means- “I don’t care how you do it, how much time you spend on it, how much efforts you put in, which means you use, the means is good or not… as long as you give me a good RESULT, you are good!”

中国有一句着名的话，很好的说明了大部分中国企业的文化——不管黑猫白猫，能捉老鼠就是好猫。意思是我不在乎你怎么做，花了多少时间，付出了多少努力，使用了什么方法，只要你能给我一个好的结果，那你就是棒的！



Process-focus Japanese and Result-focus Chinese, I feel they come from Mars and Venus.

关注过程的日本人和关注结果的中国人。我认为他们来自火星和金星。

I feel other differences too:

还有其他方面的差异：

The HR system. Equalitarianism and seniority in Japan. Performance-only-matters company values in China. My coworkers often jokingly say “China is a capitalist country with a name of socialist; Japan is a socialist country with a name of capitalist”.

人力系统。日本的平均主义和论资排辈。只注重业绩的中国企业价值观。我同事经常开玩笑说“中国是社会主义名义的资本主义国家；日本是资本主义名义的社会主义国家”。

Data-and-detail-lover Japanese VS Data-and-detail-hater Chinese. A typical Japanese style business report format is an A3 paper, full of numbers, charts, with a super small font size, make you admire and dizzy. Still your Japanese boss will always find out any typos or inconsistent borders. Get ready to revise it at least 3 times. A typical Chinese style business report format is… well, in most cases (if it’s not an outward-facing presentation), you don’t need to make it. Your Chinese boss has no interest to read it anyway. Talk to your boss, better smoking together, in 5 minutes, that’s it. You will get a clear yes or no.

注重数据和细节的日本人，讨厌数据和细节的中国人。一个典型的日本风格的业务报告是一张A3纸，写满了数据和表格。但是你的日本老板还是能找到错别字或者不一致的边框。准备至少修改三遍吧。典型的中国风格的业务报告是，好吧，大部分情况下，如果不是对外的展示，你都没必要做。中国老板没兴趣看。可以和老板聊，最好一起抽抽烟，只要5分钟就搞定。老板会清楚的告诉你行还是不行。

Risk-hater Japanese VS Risk-lover Chinese. My Japanese boss’s catch phrase is “What do you think about the risks?” And my Chinese boss’s response?- “Risks mean bad things not happened yet right? Let’s talk about them when they happen.”

讨厌风险的日本人和喜欢风险的中国人。我日本老板的口头禅是“你觉得风险有多大？”而我的中国老板的回应是“风险意味着坏事还没有发生，对吗？那等它发生了我们再来讨论吧。”



I learned much from the differences.

我从这些差异中学到了很多。