China is the world's second largest economy by nominal gross domestic product (GDP) and purchasing power parity (PPP). Despite the considerable amount of IS research in China, little work has been reported on the use of decision support systems (DSS), particularly large-scale business intelligence (BI). Because of the significant cultural differences between the West and China it may be that this Western technology is of little use in Chinese management structures and processes. In particular, the Chinese cultural norm of guanxi may affect BI usefulness. This research seeks to contribute to practice by developing a theory that will help Western BI practitioners to understand and better use guanxi in dealing with Chinese organisations. It is also expected to provide an important addition to knowledge, including BI theory and IS research methods.