The NetherlandsvsChina
オランダと中国NLCN
Seen from the Netherlands: each line below describes China relative to the Netherlands.
Culture Map: eight scales
Erin Meyer's eight scales, sorted by how far apart the Netherlands and China sit, largest gap first.
Filled dot: the Netherlands, where you are looking fromHollow ring: China
Where you will notice the difference6 scales
Leading
China keeps more distance between boss and team than the Netherlands (5 steps)
The Netherlands −3, China +2, on a line from −3 (Egalitarian) to +3 (Hierarchical).
Communicating
China leaves more to be read between the lines than the Netherlands (4 steps)
The Netherlands −2, China +2, on a line from −3 (Low-context) to +3 (High-context).
Evaluating
China gives negative feedback more indirectly than the Netherlands (4 steps)
The Netherlands −3, China +1, on a line from −3 (Direct negative feedback) to +3 (Indirect negative feedback).
Deciding
China leaves decisions to the person in charge more than the Netherlands (4 steps)
The Netherlands −2, China +2, on a line from −3 (Consensual) to +3 (Top-down).
Trusting
China builds trust through personal relationships more than the Netherlands (4 steps)
The Netherlands −2, China +2, on a line from −3 (Task-based) to +3 (Relationship-based).
Disagreeing
China avoids open disagreement more than the Netherlands (4 steps)
The Netherlands −2, China +2, on a line from −3 (Confrontational) to +3 (Avoids confrontation).
Not placed2 scales
These scales are left unmarked: either Meyer leaves a country off the scale or no source places it, and drawing it anyway would be guessing.
- PersuadingMeyer leaves China off this scale and describes its reasoning as holistic
- SchedulingNo source places China on this scale
Hofstede: six dimensions
Scores from 0 to 100, sorted by the gap between the Netherlands and China. They describe national averages, not either country's character.
Individualism
China scores 57 points lower than the Netherlands (43 against 100)
The Netherlands 100, China 43, on a line from 0 (Collectivist) to 100 (Individualist).
Motivation towards achievement and success
China scores 52 points higher than the Netherlands (66 against 14)
The Netherlands 14, China 66, on a line from 0 (Consensus-oriented) to 100 (Decisive).
Indulgence
China scores 44 points lower than the Netherlands (24 against 68)
The Netherlands 68, China 24, on a line from 0 (Restrained) to 100 (Indulgent).
Power distance
China scores 42 points higher than the Netherlands (80 against 38)
The Netherlands 38, China 80, on a line from 0 (Low power distance) to 100 (High power distance).
Uncertainty avoidance
China scores 23 points lower than the Netherlands (30 against 53)
The Netherlands 53, China 30, on a line from 0 (Tolerant of ambiguity) to 100 (Avoids ambiguity).
Long-term orientation
China scores 10 points higher than the Netherlands (77 against 67)
The Netherlands 67, China 77, on a line from 0 (Short-term) to 100 (Long-term).
What the sources say, theme by theme
Entries for the Netherlands and China, side by side on wide screens. Each keeps its own confidence label and citations.
Design & quality
Netherlands2 claims
Guido van Rossum created Python at CWI in Amsterdam. He names his frustration with ABC's lack of extensibility and the system administration needs of the Amoeba distributed OS group as motives. He started over the 1989 Christmas holidays and released 0.9.0 on 1991-02-20.
Well attested2 sources2009Datednl-design-1
According to Thomke (HBR, 2020), Booking.com runs more than 1,000 experiments at once and over 25,000 a year. Its internal rule is that anyone can test anything without management's permission.
Attested1 source2020nl-design-2
China3 claims
In AI Superpowers (2018), Kai-Fu Lee argued that a "gladiator" competition that puts speed first and accepts copying produced Chinese startups' rapid iteration. Critics say the book glorifies imitation.
Attested2 sources2019cn-design-1
From around 1998–99, Huawei adopted IBM's IPD (Integrated Product Development), required teams to follow the templates exactly, and enforced a heavy stage-gate process.
Attested2 sourcescn-design-2
In November 2023, Alibaba Cloud had its second major outage in a month, and in the same month Didi apologized for a service breakdown it blamed on a failure in underlying software.
Attested2 sources2023cn-design-3
Failure & risk
Netherlands2 claims
ING moved to a Spotify-style structure of squads and tribes in 2015. In a McKinsey interview (2017), it described each tribe writing down its results and biggest learnings every quarter and celebrating both successes and failures.
Attested1 source2017nl-failure-1
According to Thomke (HBR, 2020), only about 10% of Booking.com's experiments produce positive results; the other 90% or so do not support the hypothesis. The company runs its experiments on that assumption.
Attested1 source2020nl-failure-2
China2 claims
Fupan, a review method named after replaying a game of Go move by move, is used in Chinese companies. A former Lenovo executive calls it a pillar of the company's culture and cites founder Liu Chuanzhi's instruction to think things through without sparing yourself.
Thin2 sourcescn-failure-1
Meyer gives the example of Chinese managers learning not to criticize colleagues in public.
Attested1 sourcecn-failure-2
Feedback & code review
Netherlands2 claims
Erin Meyer cites the Netherlands as an example of giving negative feedback directly on her Evaluating scale, and of open disagreement on her Disagreeing scale. Her book says "the Dutch manager learns always to be honest and to give the message straight."
Attested1 sourcenl-feedback-1
Some expat guides link Dutch directness to polder-model consensus building, explaining that speaking your mind freely is a precondition for reaching agreement.
Thin1 sourcenl-feedback-2
China3 claims
Explainers of Meyer's Culture Map place China on the high-context side and describe negative feedback as tending to be indirect, especially when it could cost someone face.
Thin2 sources2026cn-feedback-1
Empirical studies of Chinese workplaces find that employees stay silent more when they perceive their supervisor's coercive power as strong and when they work under authoritarian leaders. Face (mianzi), guanxi and the doctrine of the mean (zhongyong) are discussed as factors that suppress speaking up.
Well attested3 sources2025cn-feedback-2
In Rastogi et al. (ESEM 2018), which analyzed GitHub pull request acceptance by country, pull requests from China fell in the lower-acceptance group. The cause of the gap was not identified; nationality bias and English proficiency are possible factors.
Attested1 source2019cn-feedback-3
Hierarchy & decisions
Netherlands3 claims
Meyer cites the Netherlands, along with Denmark and Sweden, as an example of an egalitarian culture on her Leading scale. A study guide to The Culture Map places it on the consensual side of the Deciding scale, alongside Sweden and Japan.
Attested2 sourcesnl-hierarchy-1
A study in Contemporary Management Research (2018) analyzed data from 808 managers using structural equation modeling. It found that polder values, reaching pragmatic agreement through consultation and debate, strongly shape the leadership styles Dutch managers prefer.
Well attested1 source2018nl-hierarchy-2
Woldendorp and Keman (2007) reviewed Dutch corporatism from 1965 to 2000 and argue that the polder model has been overrated. Bargaining between the social partners was tough, and the rate of central agreements was low.
Attested1 source2007Datednl-hierarchy-3
China2 claims
Meyer's 2017 HBR article places China in the top-down, hierarchical quadrant. In the case of a US company that expanded to China, Chinese staff saw American managers who did not give detailed instructions as "not just incompetent but arrogant".
Attested1 source2017cn-hierarchy-1
ByteDance is reported to have adopted Zhang Yiming's "Context, not Control", making internal documents open by default, running OKRs on a two-month cycle and sharing information through Feishu (Lark).
Attested2 sourcescn-hierarchy-2
Communication & docs
Netherlands2 claims
On her Communicating scale, Meyer lists the Netherlands with the United States, Canada and Australia as examples of low-context (explicit) cultures.
Attested1 sourcenl-communication-1
The practical guide NL Compass says that Dutch workplaces take meeting agendas seriously and that fixing schedules in advance is the norm.
Thin1 source2026nl-communication-2
China4 claims
In 2022, the Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People's Court ruled that handling work on WeChat outside working hours counted as overtime and ordered the former employer to pay 30,000 yuan. In January 2024, the Supreme People's Court and other bodies published a similar case as a model case.
Attested2 sources2024cn-communication-1
ByteDance's Feishu (Lark) combines documents, meetings, chat and OKRs in one tool and is sold to outside companies as an "organizational operating system".
Attested1 sourcecn-communication-2
In the EF EPI 2024, China ranked 91st of 116 countries and regions (score 455), but city scores such as Beijing (518) and Shanghai (511) are far above the national figure.
Attested1 source2024cn-communication-3
A 2021 study of open source projects at Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent found that providing an English README was the most common internationalization measure.
Attested1 source2021cn-communication-4
Work & careers
Netherlands2 claims
Eurostat reports that actual weekly hours in the main job were 32.1 in 2024, the shortest in the EU (EU average 36.0). The main reason is the high share of part-time work; men in full-time work averaged 38.4 hours (2025).
Well attested2 sources2026nl-work-1
CBS reports that 52% of employed people worked from home at least sometimes in 2023. In the 2022 EU comparison, 12.7% worked from home most of the time, lower than in Finland (23.1%) or Ireland (25.3%).
Well attested1 source2024nl-work-2
China4 claims
In March 2019, the GitHub repository 996.ICU went up in protest against overwork and passed 1,000 stars within its first hour. In August 2021, the Supreme People's Court and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security published typical cases stating that the 996 schedule is illegal.
Attested3 sources2021cn-work-1
In 2021, Kuaishou and ByteDance ended the alternating six-day week (daxiaozhou). At ByteDance the loss of overtime pay cut take-home pay by 17% on average, and an internal poll reportedly found about 30% wanted to keep the old schedule.
Attested2 sources2021cn-work-2
News reports describe a "curse of 35" in which people over 35 are disadvantaged in layoffs and hiring. In a recruitment platform's survey, 87% of programmers were worried about losing their job or finding a new one after 35. Chinese labor law does not explicitly ban age discrimination.
Attested3 sources2025cn-work-3
As a reaction to neijuan (involution), reports describe tangping (lying flat), people leaving high-paying jobs for a 10-to-6, five-day schedule, and runxue (emigrating). Layoffs at big tech firms are also said to be pushing new graduates toward civil service jobs.
Attested3 sources2025cn-work-4
Open source & community
Netherlands2 claims
On 2018-07-12, Guido van Rossum stepped down as Python's BDFL in a python-committers post titled "Transfer of power." He named no successor and left it to the core developers to decide how the project would be governed.
Well attested1 source2018nl-oss-1
ING brought the Spotify model to a large bank, organizing about 350 squads into 13 tribes (McKinsey, 2017).
Attested1 source2017nl-oss-2
China5 claims
OSS Compass estimates that China has more than 2.2 million active open source developers, the most of any country (India has about 2 million).
Attested1 source2025cn-oss-1
In 2020, MIIT contracted a consortium of companies and universities led by Gitee to build a Chinese independent open source hosting platform. In May 2022, Gitee began reviewing all public code before publication and hid large numbers of repositories without notice.
Attested2 sources2022cn-oss-2
A CUHK study found that commits on Gitee dropped sharply after the platform introduced pre-publication review of public code.
Well attested1 source2025cn-oss-3
Ten of 28 projects in the ASF incubator came from Chinese companies. TiDB, from PingCAP (founded in Beijing in 2015), has about 40,000 GitHub stars and more than 1,200 contributors.
Attested3 sources2023cn-oss-4
OpenHarmony is based on code Huawei donated to the OpenAtom Foundation in 2020–21. As of January 2025 it had 401 ecosystem partners, but its leading contributors are concentrated in Huawei and its affiliates.
Attested2 sources2025cn-oss-5