Impacts of Cultural Differences on Sino-American Business Negotiations

Abstract

With the rapid development of global economic cooperation, international business negotiations are on a dramatic increase. In the past two decades, business negotiations between China and the U.S. have been growing remarkably. However, there are huge cultural differences between the two countries and the cultural differences always have a negative effect on Sino-American business negotiations. Hence, it is widely accepted that understanding cultural differences is vital to Sino-American business negotiations. This paper also emphasizes that in business negotiations people must be familiar with the other cultures, enhance sensitivity to cultural differences and reduce instability caused by the cultural differences. Only in this way can people increase the predictability of the other negotiation's behavior and develop appropriate negotiation strategy, thus become more active in the negotiating process.