I read a benign-sounded characterisation of guanxi the other day, in Charlie Hill's International Business:
Guanxi literally means relationships, although in business settings it can be better understood as connections. Guanxi has its roots in the Confucian philosophy of valuing social hierarchy and reciprocal obligations. Confucian ideology has a 2,000-years-old history in China. Confucianism stresses the importance of relationships, both within the family and between master and servant. Confucian ideology teaches that people are not created equal. In Confucian thought, loyalty and obligations to one's superiors (or to family) is regarded as a sacred duty, but at the same time, this loyalty has its price. Social superiors are obligated to reward the loyalty of their social inferiors by bestowing "blessings" upon them; thus, the obligations are reciprocal.
Today, Chinese will often cultivate a guanxiwang, or "relationship network", for help. Reciprocal obligations are the glue that holds such networks together. If those obligations are not met--if favours done are not paid back or reciprocated--the reputation of the transgressor is tarnished, and he or she will be less able to draw on his or her guanxiwang for help in the future. [...] In a society that lacks a strong rule-based legal tradition, and thus legal ways of redressing wrongs such as violations of business agreements, guanxi is an important mechanism for building long-term business relationships and getting business done in China. According to tacit acknowledgment, if you have the right guanxi, legal rules can be broken, or at least bent.
One thing I think causes puzzlement over guanxi is it's hard to know if there is anyone left alive who actually does it well. Oh sure, there's lots of people building networks and doing favours, but how many of them are actually adept at social obligations? If anybody ever was any good at the being a model Kongzi in the past, you gotta assume they were probably knocked on the head some time in the last fifty years, and what're "we" left with...?