A Contrastive Study Of Nonverbal Communication In Business Negotiations Between China And The United States

With the rapid development of economy and its entrance into WTO, China has become one of the decisive factors in world economy. The trade between countries cannot take place without business negotiations. As far as the international business negotiations are concerned, great importance should be attached to those between China and the United States because Sino-US economic cooperation is now an important force in pushing forward the globalization process. China is the world's largest developing country and the United States is the world's most developed country. The two-way trade has increased dramatically in the past few years. With the further opening up of China's economy, the Chinese managers and executives are expected to expand their business activities far beyond the local markets in order to reach out to foreign lands. China has adopted new methods to clarify its laws, rules and regulations in order to provide a stable environment for foreign investors. These measures also inspire the Chinese interest in investing the United States. The result is that the two countries have built a sound foundation for future commercial and financial ties. And we have every reason to be optimistic and expect that the commercial and financial relationships between the two countries will grow more in the future.As long as international business negotiations take place across national boundaries, it is very important to understand the different cultural environments among nations and consider cultural differences in all facets of business. Transcending cultural limits is a formidable but essential task if negotiations with foreign parties are to succeed. The unprecedented growth of international business has resulted in an increased volume of face-to-face negotiations between parties of different culture. Great achievements of the importance of cross-cultural business negotiations in today's business environment are reflected in the growing body of negotiation literature. However, there remains much to be done in negotiation research regarding the impact of culturally divergent modes of communication. Nonverbal communication, as an important part of cross cultural communication, is attracting more and more scholars. Nonverbal communication, like verbal communication, is an essential part of the overall human communication process. Nonverbal communication involves all those nonverbal stimuli in a communication setting that are generated by both the source and his or her use of the environment and that have potential message value for the source or receiver. Focusing on Chinese and American cultures, this thesis attempts to study business negotiations from a special perspective, i.e., from the angle of nonverbal communication in business negotiations, and to explore the differences of nonverbal codes in terms of the different cultures between these two countries.In this thesis, the author conducted some comprehensive study on nonverbal communication, including its definition, classification, function, and the historical studies done in this field. Nonverbal communication serves multiple functions in international interaction. While verbal messages convey content meaning, nonverbal behaviors carry strong identity and relational meaning. Nonverbal communication can help to repeat, complement, substitute, regulate, and even contradict the meaning of the verbal messages. Business negotiation is the key to the success of business relationship between China and the United States. With the increasing interactions between these two countries, it is necessary to examine the process of business negotiation clearly to find out how the process is influenced by cultural factors concerning nonverbal aspects, in order to figure out the way to gain win-win success for both parties.Culture has always been the most active element that can exert great influence on the process of negotiation. Collective culture emphasizes on collectivity, harmony, cooperation, interdependency, and it tries to be harmonious with the whole circumstance. While in individualistic culture, the individual is the single most important unit in any social setting, regardless of the size of that unit, and the uniqueness of each individual is of paramount value.A High-Context communication or message is one which most of the information is either in the physical context or internalized in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message. It means that people who are in High-Context communication culture are sensitive to the subtle circumstance hint. A Low-Context communication is just on the opposition, the mass of the information is vested in the explicit code. It means that people who are in Low-Context communication culture prefer to communicate with the power of language itself.The thesis presents a comprehensive way of theories on culture, and business negotiation. These theories aim to provide a solid theoretical foundation for a further study.