Arbitration & Mediation

Cross-Cultural Negotiation: Chinese Masks for Losing Face

By Victoria Pynchon

Maximize your recession-era negotiations by understanding the folkways of your negotiation partners.  There's lots of useful information on the internet, including the following piece on negotiating with the Chinese

Masks for losing face

By Ron Cune 

The Chinese are much less direct in their communication than Westerners. Indirect signals, avoiding confrontations; to Western entrepreneurs the experience is comparable continuously walking on eggshells.

Situations such as price negotiations, an evaluation talk or the discussion of a problem with a Chinese partner seem like an impossible task. In the West we are used to freely expressing our opinion or giving our own interpretation of things. In China, however, it is customary to refer to existing rules or external factors.

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Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on February 14, 2009 (boomark / email).