When helping relationship meet “guanxi” – Understanding of helping relationship in Mainland China

Abstract

The helping relationship is considered to be the core of social work practice. Relationship building is one of the inextricable processes in the entire field of social work helping that may highly influence the outcome of an intervention. Social work as a newly developed profession in Mainland China, has generally adopted Western social work knowledge and skills and applied them directly in the local context. Integral to the Western understanding of helping relationship are individualism, democracy and Christianity (Yip,2004). As a result, many disparities and incongruence have been identified in the conceptual understanding of the 'relationship' in Mainland China (Ngai, 1996; Hutching, 2007; Yuen-Tsang et al. 2002). Despite the acknowledgement of the significance of helping relationship in social work practice, local knowledge and practice wisdom pertaining to the helping relationship were rarely found in Mainland China. This study aims to examine the nature of helping relationship in Mainland China through the in-depth interviews with local social workers in Guangdong. The findings suggested that the helping relationship was more like companionship than a professional relationship with distance. The understanding of “guanxi”, i.e. relational networks, reciprocity and face culture etc. obtained from and influenced by Chinese culture inevitably influenced the people’s orientation towards the helping relationship. Connections within the interpersonal network served as facilitating forces as well as barriers in real encounters with the service users. The study proposed helping relationship within the cultural milieu, flexible adoption of the contextual understanding of relational network and mutuality to facilitate the helping process. Implications for indigenization of the social work knowledge and practice including the redefinition of the helping relationship and professional boundaries within the sensitivity of local Chinese culture will be discerned.