We all have disagreements or don't see eye to eye with our managers all the time. If this is happening to you, take a deep breath and settle in. This piece hopes to help you navigate these potentially treacherous waters a little more safely.

First, it's usually a good idea to get a second set of eyes on the situation. If you have a amentor or another person you trust within the firm or industry, present them with the situation, but perhaps without all the details. They might have valuable insights to share.

But if you're in need of further ideas, take a look here for the Top 5 things NOT TO DO, Top 5 things TO DO, and 5 key takeaways in regards to disagreeing with your boss on a business decision.

Top 5 things NOT TO DO when disagreeing with your boss:

Every office has their winners, but here are just a few of the goofy things you might encounter while working with Chinese colleagues. Those with China experience, definitely sound off at the bottom here.

1) Now while I’m sure what I eat in the office gives my colleagues room for pause as well, there are a few things that should never happen. Probably number one on my list thus far is eating hot dogs on a stick and milk for breakfast.

A close second is eating spicy peppers on the hottest days of the summer, both so that they sweat to cool off and also so they breathe more heavily so their mouth cools down too. It’s all about balancing their Qi, I am told. Which brings me to number 2.

2) There is no need for a Qi or FengShui App on your smartphone to help you with your work. If you are following your Qi app that is telling you to drink chrysanthemum tea in the late morning because your inner temperature is too cool, I’m going to go ahead and argue that you’ve got a shedload more to study about this whole Qi thing before you call yourself an expert.

I'm currently a Private Equity Analyst in Shanghai, China. Academically, I graduated from a target school majoring in Economics and Chinese. I also spent my time at college as the president of an on-campus student organization related to Finance and Economics and a volunteer for a local school program. I have always had a nose for digging deeply into matters that I can't grasp as first, and thus trying to make sense of financials and business strategies in China seemed like a perfect challenge after college.

After spending some time as an Analyst for a publicly-listed Chinese company, I networked my way to my current position through meeting a few members of the firm and eventually the stars aligned. At this point my role is mostly in portfolio company management and deal screening, but have strong exposure to the Directors and Investment Managers in the firm as well. I'm happy to speak about the daily life of a private equity analyst here in Shanghai, differences between PE in the U.S. and China, networking in China, and general topics related to finance in Asia.

Editor Note: This is meant to be a live and ongoing discussion and resource for anyone seriously considering investing abroad. Any questions whatsoever about living abroad, value investing, China, and cross-border private equity- shoot away.

Hi guys, I’m here today with a friend of mine, Dr. Jeff Towson. Dr. Towson currently runs the Towson Group, a boutique private equity group, and is also Professor of Investment at Peking University in China. Instead of working on Wall Street, he developed expertise in cross-border investing as head of Direct Investments for Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia.

He has also published several books and articles on investing, the most recent being “What Would Ben Graham Do?”, an Amazon #1 best-selling book on emerging markets investing. He is currently writing another book on China with Jonathan Woetzel, of McKinsey’s Shanghai office. His writing can be found at www.jefftowson.com. In his own words:

Q1: I noticed Blackstone recently announced a $300 million scholarship for Tsinghua University and seems to have long-term ambitions win China. From your view, how well are foreign private equity firms doing in China?

Just in case anyone was worrying about running out bonds to buy China looks to be gearing up for a massive push towards urbanization through a bond market reform.

I'll admit, I've long been critical of how the Chinese do things and certainly I'm dubious of the viability of this massive of an effort. There are major structural deficiencies in China and to think that local government are going to be able to foot the tab for much of this is a stretch. Last time I checked many localities in China were underwater anyway and they still have to deal with slowing growth and a lower class clamoring for wage reforms. Not that any of that is necessarily a deal breaker, but, certainly should be cause for concern.

In case you missed it, there’s been an ongoing, sustained effort by the Chinese government to hack foreign governments, companies, newspapers-- basically anything or anyone with a computer. As usual, the Chinese government is trying to play coy in the face of a mountain of evidence. It really doesn’t surprise me though; it’s just another example of the country’s “why figure it out for ourselves when we can just steal it” mentality.

In the comments from my post last week about differences between the US and China, a few people had expressed interest in what Chinese people see remarkable about our culture. I think the biggest thing that almost in a sense fascinates Chinese people about our culture is our spirit of individualism. China is, and has been, a collective culture for thousands of years.

This is also the biggest thing that divides our cultures.

Have you ever wondered if all the new stuff they’re doing in China is really everything it’s chalked up to be? It’s a perfectly legitimate question to ask, especially so because in China appearance is far more important than substance. This isn’t meant to be a value judgment, to say that this is good, or bad, or whatever. That’s just how it is here, and this is one of the major ways in which working in China is different than the west.

Every society in some way has the concept of ‘face’, but the Chinese take to a whole new level. There’s a whole art, almost a science to it. There’s a defined procedure as to how to exchange business cards (with two hands, among many other things) how to receive a gift (try to decline it at first, but once you accept it, don’t open it in front of the person who gave it to you), the list goes on. Doing things correctly allows you to ‘gain face’ and consequently you will see your social standing rise. Not following procedure will cause you to ‘lose face’ and your social standing falls.

Working in an office in and of itself usually wouldn’t expose one to hazardous conditions. The city in which one lives could have its fair share of dangers though. Crime is a given; all big cities have their fair share of crime, but it’s usually isolated in certain neighborhoods. The truly awful smog in Beijing the past few days has made me to give a little more thought to the silent killer that is pollution.

So 2012 is essentially over and it's been an interesting year by all accounts. I think it's been a fairly bad year, both geopolitically and in terms of finance (although for myself it's been quite good!). Some of my key moments of 2012:

• LIBOR - Global hatred of bankers reached new highs this year with various scandals including money laundering, derivative mis-selling and of course, LIBOR manipulation
• Heightened tensions in the Middle East - Iran, Israel, Palestine, Syria, all of these have been involved in conflicts of some sort and it seems like this will only escalate further in 2013

A few days ago, I gave Miss Cleo a call and got some ideas about a different perspective on my comments last week. Specifically she told me that I was painting too nice a picture and wasn’t being critical enough in my views. So without further ado, here are the same points told from a slightly different perspective.

More Outbound Investment / M&A

Olaf has looked into his crystal ball and sees a bright future for China in 2013. Naturally there still are serious problems that pose an existential threat to the ruling party (property prices, bank capitalization, demographic trends, wealth gap, etc.), but my feeling is that these won’t come to the front burner quite yet. So without further ado, I present my predictions:

More Outbound Investment / M&A

Last week the Party wrapped up its 18th Congress and announced who gets to be part of the management team for the next five years. There were a lot of questions and what-ifs revolving around what exactly the outcome would be since the guys at the top are notoriously reclusive. In the end though there was only one real surprise: that Hu Jintao broke tradition and handed over control of the military immediately, rather than hanging on to the post for a few more years as his predecessors had done.

The world is applauding China for completing a relatively peaceful leadership transition. Aside from the whole Bo situation, mostly everything has gone according to plan. Even the new management is just as dry as the last bunch. But this is actually what causes concern for me, the fact that the new crop does not include the ‘reformers’ the country really needs.

This past week, we saw the market impact of Investment Canada’s decision to initially reject PETRONAS’ (the Malaysian State-owned Enterprise) proposed takeover of Progress Energy Resources, a Canadian oil and gas company. In order to approve a takeover of a Canadian company, Investment Canada requires sufficient evidence of a ‘net benefit’ to Canada.

While this net benefit test is, at the moment, quite vague, the broader issue is the takeover of Canadian companies by SOEs with an even higher profile case in that of CNOOC/Nexen. Of course, this issue is not directly relevant to the U.S., but what are your thoughts on takeovers by SOEs in general? Should they be treated like any other corporation – ExxonMobil for example? And for my fellow Canucks out there, what are your thoughts on selling our resources to SOEs?

Shortly before the beginning of the weeklong holiday to celebrate the founding of the PRC, former golden boy Bo Xilai was officially expelled from the Communist Party and formally charged with a variety of crimes, one of which was that he "maintained inappropriate sexual relationships with many women". While a public allegation such as this is likely to ruin any politician’s career, it’s a little bit different in China…

I’m not talking about the last time I went out to a night club in Beijing (although there may actually be some correlation). This is about the demographic challenge hitting China that is only going to get worse in the future. The proportion of the working-age population is beginning to decline, and will continue to do so, with major implications for the country’s economy.

If there was ever a time to pivot your attention to China, it is now. Major events are going to be happening over the next few weeks. We got kind of a head start this year with the Bo Xilai soap opera, but things are going to come to a head next month. And you should be following it because it’s what happens in China is going to influence the world much more than the presidential election.

The trial of Bo Xilai