Thanksgiving in China: How industrial groups turn gratitude into corporate culture

Thanksgiving is not a public holiday in China, but the idea of gratitude is increasingly present in internal communication and HR calendars. For many industrial groups, Thanksgiving in China has become a strategic moment to talk about corporate culture, safety, ESG and long-term loyalty – far beyond a simple Western-style team dinner.

In this article, we look at how several Chinese industrial companies used Thanksgiving 2024 to strengthen their corporate culture and employee engagement, and what international groups can learn from these best practices.

1. Why is Thanksgiving becoming an internal cultural moment in China ?

Several trends explain why more industrial players are adding Thanksgiving to their internal engagement calendar:

• Gratitude is already central in Chinese corporate culture. Many pages explicitly mention Thanksgiving as a value –“thankful to have you” is a common slogan in HR content and internal posters.
  
• Year-end timing is perfect for recognition. Late November is a natural time to review the year, celebrate milestones in production, safety and innovation, and thank both front-line workers and engineers.
  
• A “soft” Western festival that adapts well locally. Unlike more religious holidays, Thanksgiving is easy to frame around gratitude, family, team spirit, community – themes that resonate strongly in China.
• It creates a bridge between HR, ESG and branding. Internal Thanksgiving campaigns often combine employee recognition, CSR actions (donations, education, sustainability) and storytelling about the company’s mission.

In other words, Thanksgiving in China is less about turkey, and more about building a culture of appreciation, loyalty and responsibility – especially in large manufacturing ecosystems.

2. Case studies

A – Finelyte: a high-tech battery plant

Finelyte New Energy Technology is a high-tech company specializing in electrolyte solutions and solid-state electrolyte materials for lithium and sodium batteries, with multiple production bases in Hunan, Henan, Anhui and Guangxi. Its products serve electric vehicles, energy storage and advanced electronics – a highly competitive, innovation-driven sector.

The 2024 Thanksgiving + birthday event

On 28 November 2024, Finelyte’s Anhui base organized a combined Thanksgiving and employee birthday celebration. According to the company’s news release, the local general manager delivered an emotional speech expressing sincere thanks to all employees and emphasizing the importance of their contribution to the group’s growth.

While the detailed agenda was not disclosed, the way the event is framed says a lot. Thanksgiving is explicitly used as a moment to express gratitude to staff, not just to customers or partners.

The company links the celebration with employees’ birthdays, reinforcing the idea of “family at work” within a multi-site industrial group.

The event is positioned as carefully planned, signalling that internal culture is treated as seriously as production or R&D.

What this does for corporate culture

For a high-tech industrial player like Finelyte, the Thanksgiving Chine activation serves several purposes.

It helps humanize a highly technical environment: in plants and R&D centres, most communication is about quality, metrics and safety, whereas a gratitude-centred event sends a different message — “you matter as a person, not just as an operator or engineer.

It also reinforces loyalty across multiple sites, as different production bases sharing similar rituals (Thanksgiving plus birthdays, speeches from local leadership) contributes to building a unified group culture. 

Finally, it connects innovation with people: Finelyte communicates heavily on its solid-state electrolyte R&D and industry awards, and using Thanksgiving to thank the teams behind those achievements makes the company’s innovation achievements more credible and relatable.

B – Jiangsu Beiren: an AI-driven factory

Jiangsu Beiren Intelligent Manufacturing is an A-share listed company specialising in intelligent welding lines, industrial robots and “embodied intelligence” systems for sectors like automotive, shipbuilding and heavy steel. The company positions itself at the intersection of industrial automation and AI.

The 2024 “Say thanks out loud” campaign

For Thanksgiving 2024, Jiangsu Beiren

launched a special internal activation titled ‘Say thank you with courage’.

According to the company’s news page, the campaign encouraged employees to actively express gratitude to their colleagues, with the goal of strengthening communication and relationships within teams.

Instead of focusing on gifts or one-way speeches from management, Jiangsu Beiren framed it as a peer-to-peer recognition moment.

They positioned “saying thank you” as an act of courage and openness, which is meaningful in engineering-heavy environments where emotional expression is not always natural and used the event to reduce silos between teams working on different parts of complex industrial projects.

What this does for corporate culture

For a company selling smart factories and industrial robots, this kind of Thanksgiving in China activity sends several strong signals. 

It supports a “high-tech, high-touch” positioning: the company doesn’t only optimize lines and robots, it also cares about human connections on the shop floor and in project teams.

It reinforces collaboration in complex projects, since welding lines, industrial robots and AI-driven systems involve long value chains, and encouraging workers to thank colleagues in other teams makes inter-departmental collaboration more visible. 

Finally, it helps normalize emotional intelligence in industry: by describing gratitude as something you have to “dare to say”, management legitimizes vulnerability and recognition as part of professional behavior.

C – Yahong Pharma: Turning Thanksgiving into a green ESG ritual

The 2024 “Vegetables for books” Thanksgiving event

In its 2024 ESG report, Yahong describes a Thanksgiving event designed around sustainability and education.

The initiative, called “vegetables for books”, invited employees to bring vegetables to exchange for books, symbolically linking healthy living, knowledge and gratitude.

The event was also connected to a donation to a Hope School in the Daliang Mountain region, strengthening ties with disadvantaged communities, and was supported by internal communication (administrative newsletters and ESG-themed issues) to promote low-carbon behavior and raise awareness among staff.

Here, Thanksgiving is explicitly positioned as part of the company’s environmental and social responsibility narrative.

What this does for corporate culture

For Yahong, this “Thanksgiving China” activity helps align everyday employee experience with ESG strategy: employees don’t just hear about ESG in annual reports, they actively take part in practical, symbolic actions. 

It also connects gratitude with purpose, since being thankful is not only about colleagues and managers but also about giving back to society. 

Finally, it promotes low-carbon lifestyles in a positive way: instead of framing sustainability as a constraint, the campaign links it to playful exchange and solidarity.

Conclusion

Thanksgiving is now spreading far beyond the United States: the holiday is becoming a global excuse to talk about gratitude, care and corporate culture, whether in Chinese factories, European headquarters or regional hubs in Asia. For international groups, the challenge is no longer simply to ‘copy and paste’ an American concept, but to adapt it to local codes, team expectations and business priorities (ESG, safety, innovation, talent retention, etc.). 

This is precisely where HI-COM comes in: helping brands translate, script and localize their Thanksgiving campaigns – and more broadly their key HR moments – so that they truly resonate with Chinese teams while remaining aligned with the group’s global culture and narrative.