Face Considerations In China And The US And Its Implications For Cross-Cultural Business Negotiations

With the rapid development of China's economy and China's entry into the WTO, Sino-US trade and economic cooperation has increased significantly, becoming an important force that pushes forward the development of the economies of the two countries and influences the process of the world economy. Sino-US business negotiations, as indispensable activities for promoting economic exchanges to realize cooperation and mutual benefit, are becoming more and more important.China and the United States both have its unique culture. Face considerations are an important aspect of culture. The differences between China and the United States in their perspectives of face, degrees of concern with face and ways of dealing with face issues often bring about difficulties in understanding or even misunderstandings in Sino-US business negotiations, becoming obstacles to negotiation. How to conduct cross-cultural business negotiations better is a question that needs to be resolved for negotiators of China and the US. Although many scholars have conducted researches on this issue, there have been very few researches on the influence of face considerations on negotiations. This thesis makes a relatively detailed study of the influence of different face considerations in China and the US on business negotiations and proposes some new views. This study is a new application of cross-cultural communication theories and face theories in business negotiations, and is also an enrichment of the previous cross-cultural theories.This thesis makes a comprehensive review of the theories about culture by Samovar, Hofstede etc., the theories about face by Brown, Scollon, Ting-Toomey, Hu Sien-chin etc. and the theories about negotiation by Chinese and Western scholars. Based on these theories, the thesis proposes its main hypotheses from five aspects including the degree of concern with face, face and status, face and relationship, face and modesty and face and implicitness. The author investigated through questionnaires the perspectives of face and ways of dealing with face issues of 60 Chinese negotiators and 51 American negotiators.Questionnaire results basically verify the five hypotheses, pointing to some fundamental differences between Chinese and American negotiators in their perspectives of face and ways of dealing with face issues. Firstly, Chinese negotiators are more concerned with face thanAmerican negotiators. Between collective face and individual face, other face and self face, Chinese negotiators pay more attention to collective face and other face while American negotiators pay more attention to individual face and self face. Secondly, Chinese negotiators often link face to status. The higher one's status, the more face he can claim. American negotiators try to eliminate the differences in status between people, making everyone feel casual. Thirdly, Chinese negotiators pay more attention to the relationship and cooperative spirit between the two sides while American negotiators pay more attention to contract clauses and the safeguard of law. Fourthly, Chinese negotiators show more modesty in negotiation for the sake of face while American negotiators show more confidence. Fifthly, Chinese negotiators often express themselves tactfully and implicitly while American negotiators usually make clear their attitudes straightforwardly.Through questionnaire analysis, the author also obtained some new discoveries. Firstly, although Chinese highly value face in daily lives, their degree of concern with face in business negotiations is less than that in daily lives. Business negotiations involve many economic interests. When economic interests and face contradict with each other, many people put face in a secondary place. Secondly, among Chinese negotiators, those with high status and those with lower status have different degrees of concern with face. The higher the status of the negotiator, the more particular he is about face. Thirdly, China and the US also have some similarities in their views of face and ways of dealing with face issues. A great portion of Chinese negotiators accept and actively face conflicts in negotiation. Many negotiators in the US also value face, pay attention to upholding relationships and advocate cooperative spirit. The edges of face issues are rather fuzzy.Finally, the thesis gives suggestions for Chinese and American negotiators based on the research results.