Business: How to Dicker with the Chinese

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That can be the most trying part about doing business in China. Marshall Goldberg, director of administration at Brooklyn's Monarch Wine Co., which will import Chinese beer and vodka into the U.S., recalls a telling episode. During Monarch's negotiations in Peking, disputes over how much advertising would have to be done in the U.S. got so prickly after three weeks of talks that "we walked away saying, 'Let's part in friendship.' " The Chinese, Goldberg recalls, then coolly "took us to the Peking opera that evening and the next morning put us on a train to Ts'ing-tao to see the brewery there. Through the train window, they said, 'We'll see you in Peking to resume negotiations.' They had wanted to see if we might say something different, the night before, when we were together socially. We didn't, so they knew we meant business." A deal quickly followed.

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