Cultural Differences In Time Perspective Between China And The United States

Following China's entry to the World Trade Organization, the nation further opens up to the outside World. As a significant area of nonverbal communication, chronemics does contribute a lot to the understanding of culture differences. This paper attempts to make a comparative study between China and the United States in terms of chronemics behaviors. The author investigates the relation between time and culture, and the relation between time and nonverbal communication. As a time system, informal time is closely related to intercultural communication. The paper puts more emphasis on punctuality and the pace of life across cultures which are important concepts of informal time. The paper lists 3 psychological time orientation; past, present, future. China is a typical example of past-oriented societies. Whereas Americans are highly future-oriented . The paper also gives an account of 2 ways cultures organize time : Monocnronic-Time and Polychronic-Time(Hall). Americans fall into the M-time category. Chinese are highly on polychrome scale. Americans view time linearly. Some Chinese view time cyclically. Some Chinese view time linearly. At last the paper discusses the relation between American time(M-time) and individualism, and the relation between Chinese time(P-time) and collectivism.