A Study Of Business Presentation Styles Between Chinese And German From A Cross-cultural Perspective

China and Germany are among world's largest economic entities and have remarkabletrade volume each year. However, little attention has been paid to the complexities ofcommunications between Chinese and Germans. The thesis aimed to demonstrate howboth countries can communicate most effectively and efficiently during the biculturalbusiness presentation.This author proposed four hypotheses first and then used a questionnairemethodology to collect opinions on 20 related questions from both Chinese and Germans.Edward T. Hall's high-context and low-context and Geert Hofstede's individualism versuscollectivism dimension, uncertainty avoidance dimension, power distance dimension andtime orientation dimension were implemented as the analysis basis. In-class interviews andin-depth data analysis were also conducted to understanding the survey results.The thesis demonstrated that during the whole bicultural business presentation,Chinese have individualism tendency and Germans have strong individualismcharacteristics (basically confirm hypothesis 1)Chinese have high uncertainty avoidance tendency and Germans have stronguncertainty avoidance characteristics (basically confirm hypothesis 2)Chinese have high power distance tendency while Germans have low power distancetendency, which completely confirmed the author's hypothesis (confirm hypothesis 3)Chinese have strong long-term orientation characteristic while Germans have strongshort-term orientation characteristic (partly confirm hypothesis 4)This is the first time that business presentation styles between Chinese and Germansare studied from a cross-cultural perspective. By understanding the differentiation of othercountry's cultures, it is possible for both countries to better prepare the meeting, avoid themisunderstanding and unnecessary conflict, and further enhance the future cooperation.