Abstract During the last three decades, China has changed its political policies to open itself to foreign With many foreign investors’ helps, China has made great economic progress and has been emerging fast in the global Since more and more foreign enterprisers join the Chinese markets, many questions and problems regarding to the issue of cross-cultural negotiation have been Cross-cultural negotiation has never been an easy A cross-cultural negotiation requires a mutual understanding of culture differences and the practices of applied negotiation This study is to help Western business negotiators better understand Chinese negotiation strategies and techniques, so they can develop appropriate strategies when negotiating in C I INTRODUCTION After China and Taiwan both became the members of World Trade Organization (WTO) in year 2002, the importance of business transaction with Chinese has drawn a huge attention to most businessmen in the As Zhao (2000, 209-237) said, during the last three decades, China has changed its political policies to open itself to foreign With many foreign investors’ helps, China has made great economic progress and has been emerging fast in the global Since more and more foreign enterprisers join the Chinese markets, many questions and problems regarding to the issue of cross-cultural negotiation have been Cross-cultural negotiation has never been an easy As Mintu-Wimsatt and Gassenheimer (2000, 1-15) indicate “Cultural differences, in contrast, increase the complexity of the relationship and the negotiation encounter, potentially jeopardizing the business relationship’s ” Thus, it is important to explore the cultural difference between west and east, and to study different communication II LITERATURE REVIEW By presenting a fruitful literature review, this article explores a greater insight on how western businessmen can establish a long-term relationship with Chinese business A Cultural Differences between West and East Western countries such as US and Canada are called low culture context countries which rely on verbally expressed (Mintu-Wimsatt and Gassenheimer 2000, 1-15) They tend to communicate directly to For example, when an American businessman tries to make a deal, not only a lots of oral presentations will be held but also will place directly on confirming the On the other hands, in highcontext cultures such as Chinese and Japanese cultures provide less information in verbal They prefer an indirect communication style (Mintu-Wimsatt and Gassenheimer 2000, 1-15) For example, when a Chinese negotiator delivers a message no matter in verbal or writing, many variables would need to be considered and decoded in order to fully comprehend the The variables can be individual backgrounds, associations, values, gender, position in company and status in Because of the cultural differences, some factors which affect the effectiveness of successful negotiation would need to be They are: “ differences in decision making, status protocol, social aspects of negotiation, how time is viewed, and personal relationships” (Herbig and Kramer 1992, 287-299) Based on those factors,