ABSTRACT
A few remarks may be necessary regarding the study of cultural practices today in China, including the ongoing debate about ‘cultural revival’ in order to delineate more clearly the broad perspective in which the cultural aspects of present-day transnationalization of ethnic Chinese business activities may be discussed. As a matter of fact, since, during the 1980s, economic reforms were launched in China, attention has been paid by various studies to the meaning of the revival of given traditional practices and norms, a revival coinciding with the reforms (Wolf, 1996; Siu, 1989). The extent of continuities versus discontinuities in the practices performed today, as compared with the pre-1949 period, has often been discussed, as well as the margin of freedom enjoyed by the population in this realm. The analysis of such a cultural revival, or more exactly, the analysis of present continuities and discontinuities in China with different past temporal sequences, should be clearly distinguished from another, related field of enquiry to be touched upon below: the study of what has been qualified as Chinese capitalism, a paradigm which stresses the cultural homogeneity between Chinese business communities all over the world.
