Risks in Chinese construction market: contractors' perspective

With China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Chinese construction market will be increasingly open and finally become part of the international market. Because of different social and economic systems, as well as different historical and cultural backgrounds, contractors are likely to encounter different risks in different markets. Based on questionnaires and case studies, this paper adopts an importance evaluation index and makes an importance evaluation of various risks encountered by Chinese contractors when contracting for projects in Chinese markets. This paper also makes comparisons between and analyses of the research findings and related available investigation results. The Cox-Stuart trend increase test method is applied in the current research, the results indicating that the variance corresponding to the importance index value tends to increase as the risk event importance decreases. This tendency shows that those investigated tend towards unanimity in terms of higher importance risk events. This paper also examines the reliability of the questionnaires by means of Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient. The research shows that the main risk currently encountered by Chinese contractors in domestic markets includes owner's irregular behavior and government departments' interference in construction markets. China's accession to the WTO has provided greater opportunities for international contractors to enter the Chinese construction market. Therefore the research results described in this paper can provide valuable data enabling international contractors to gain a better understanding of the potential risks in the environment of the Chinese construction market.