Where a mean­der­ing route makes more sense

Source: The Edge Singapore

Update: Apr 27th, 2026

The twisting and turning is a metaphor for the frustration foreigners feel with negotiations in China

Look­ing down at a pub­lic park from the 18th floor of my hotel, I can imme­di­ately determ­ine the coun­try I am in. If I am in the West, then the paths through the park are all laid out in straight lines. If I am in China, the paths twist and turn across the park.

Cyn­ics might say that the twist­ing and turn­ing is a meta­phor for the frus­tra­tion they feel with nego­ti­ations in China.

They are cor­rect, but not for the reas­ons they give, which are rooted in West­ern cul­ture and which show little under­stand­ing of the Chinese approach to seek­ing har­mony in out­comes. And it is not just busi­ness that suf­fers from this poor under­stand­ing. Dis­cus­sion at higher polit­ical levels between Chinese and West­ern lead­ers suf­fers from the same dis­tor­tions of under­stand­ing.

The Chinese park­land paths are a per­fect meta­phor for how con­clu­sions are reached and nego­ti­ations are con­duc­ted in a Chinese con­text.

This becomes par­tic­u­larly import­ant when explain­ing or resolv­ing a prob­lem. Res­ol­u­tion is often com­plic­ated by lan­guage. What we under­stand a word to mean is not always what our Chinese part­ner does. It is import­ant to loc­ate these “com­mon” word mis­un­der­stand­ings very quickly because they can lead to sig­ni­fic­antly dif­fer­ent inter­pret­a­tions of the same event or agree­ment. Unless caught quickly, going down this road leads to con­trac­tual dis­aster.

Be alert to words used in place of our com­mon expres­sions. A request

for someone to invest­ig­ate a prob­lem is accept­able. A request to solve the prob­lem, or fix the prob­lem, or find a solu­tion to the prob­lem, is not likely to give the res­ult you want. The dif­fer­ence? My Chinese part­ner can invest­ig­ate a prob­lem and not find a solu­tion, and still have face.

Sur­mount­ing the lan­guage mis­un­der­stand­ings does not always solve the prob­lem. Straight-line think­ing is often not read­ily accep­ted and, in some cases, it is seen as offens­ive and impol­ite.

Prob­lems are approached from many dif­fer­ent angles. The cent­ral issues are returned to again and again. This aspect of “touch­ing base” and “revis­it­ing” mat­ters that, from the West­ern per­spect­ive, have been dis­cussed and resolved, is frus­trat­ing and irrit­at­ing. But it is part of the pro­cess. It is the mean­der­ing Chinese path rather than the West­ern straight line bull­dozed through all obstacles.

It is a lengthy pro­cess designed to con­sider all rel­ev­ant mater­ial and to test and retest each step before mov­ing on to the next. It is not a frivol­ous exer­cise because, once the decision is made and the prob­lem resolved, it is cast in stone to a greater degree than those reached by straight-line bull­doz­ing.

A West­ern land­scape designer who

uses curved paths soon finds his design is defeated by West­ern think­ing habits. The park users blaze new paths dir­ectly across the gar­dens, always in a straight line from point A to point B.

The next time you choose to leave the path and take a dir­ect short­cut across a Chinese park, remem­ber how this is a product of West­ern think­ing and how this style of think­ing impacts busi­ness dis­cus­sions.

Tech­nical out­look of the Shang­hai mar­ket

The clas­sic Guppy Mul­tiple Mov­ing Aver­age (GMMA) break­out in the Shang­hai

Index has con­tin­ued with the 4,100 res­ist­ance level under attack. Pre­vi­ously, the index spent sev­eral weeks hov­er­ing around this level, so this is most likely to become a sig­ni­fic­ant bar­rier to fur­ther rises.

The out­look sug­gests side­ways con­sol­id­a­tion around 4,100, with a poten­tial retreat that could test the uptrend line.

This is a rally and not a trend. A rally is an index rise from a single point, shown as C.

A trend is cre­ated after a pat­tern of ral­lies and retreats that provides three anchor points. The trend line is plot­ted through anchor points A and B. The trend is con­firmed by a pull­back and test of the pro­jec­ted trend line. This cre­ates a third anchor point and the trend is then con­firmed.

This has not happened and it leaves the rally vul­ner­able to a sig­ni­fic­ant retreat back to around 4,020 or the lower edge of the long-term GMMA. A fall to near this level fol­lowed by a rebound would cre­ate a third anchor point for the trend line.

The short-term group of aver­ages is well sep­ar­ated, sug­gest­ing strong rally sup­port from traders. The index is clus­ter­ing along the upper edges of the short-term GMMA.

This has become a clas­sic GMMA break­out. The short-term group of aver­ages has moved com­pletely above the long-term GMMA. This shows excep­tional optim­ism from traders. The long-term GMMA has quickly turned up and com­pressed. Proof of long-term sup­port from investors comes when the long-term GMMA expands as investors become strong buy­ers.

An index retreat to the lower edge of the short-term GMMA or to the upper edge of the long-term GMMA remains con­sist­ent with a con­tinu­ation of this uptrend.

Daryl Guppy is an inter­na­tional fin­an­cial tech­nical ana­lysis expert. He has provided weekly Shang­hai Index ana­lysis for Main­land Chinese media for two dec­ades. Guppy appears reg­u­larly on CNBC Asia and is known as “The Chart Man”. He is a former national board mem­ber of the Aus­tralia China Busi­ness Coun­cil.