ABSTRACT
Introduction The studies presented in this Symposium have focused on the current evolution of Chinese management (for a recent view, see Warner and Rowley 2010), facilitated by the input of new technologies and managerial expertise through foreign invested ventures. Such development will enable Chinese enterprise to play a greater role in world markets and global business networks. In the 'Introduction', it was suggested that nationalism had become the reigning ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders and the economic imperative the driver ofChinese foreign policy. These attributes are exemplified in China's relations with southeast Asia, fuelled by intra-regional trade ftows and crossnational investment. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Chinese empire was a major commercial power in the region and later, in spite of Qing Dynasty edicts against emigration, a Chinese diaspora became active as entrepreneurs and investors. This tradition has continued, as Brown outlines in her study, and this has formed the basis for recent ongoing trade and investment links (Brown 1995). Infrastructural developments, especially the container port at Shanghai, a city with traditionallinks to Japan and Korea, in addition to the growth of foreign direct investment (FOI) in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, in anticipation of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area, are harbingers of China's
closer economic and financial ties with the region (Pang and US Commercial Service 2008).
