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Negotiation - Understanding the Differences

September 22, 2006

Can an American ever negotiate a deal with a Chinese?

No, never.

Negotiation, in American culture, means a process leading to a deal. It a closed process with a specific goal in mind.

Negotiation, in Chinese, hmmmmmmm…….well actually we don’t really have a word for it in Chinese. “Negotiation” is often translated as 协商 or 谈判 (tan pan). It is the closest Chinese words we can get because “negotiation”, in Chinese culture, is an open-ended process with no definite goal in mind. “Negotiation” (谈判) to a Chinese is nothing more than a dialogue for building a relationship (guanxi).

They say “What?”; we say “Please repeat as we don’t understand”. They ask “Do you understand?”; we ask “Are we being clear?”. They say “We cannot do that”; we say “That may be difficult for us to do”. They ask “What’s the problem? You said you Fedex’d us the papers but we didn’t get them”; we say “There must be a problem with the courier because we don’t get the papers”.

An American negotiator will be good to create a win-win situation in order to close a deal. A Chinese negotiator will be good to give face in order to foster a relationship.

How are we going to sucessfully “negotiate” if “negotiation” doesn’t mean the same thing to an American and a Chinese?

Terry Hird, UC Berkeley, has shed some light on the cross-cultural confusion in his presentation to Google TechTalk.

Posted to General at September 22, 2006 10:40 AM :    Furl It!    del.icio.us

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