Exploratory discussion on economic and cultural comparison between China and America

在全球化背景下，各国在经济和文化活动中都有着大量的交流。由于社会制度的不同，即使中国和美国从多个方面都有频繁的接触，在经济和文化方面仍有一些显著差异。本文通过对中国与美国的经济文化比较，给予了明显的现象和以往的研究，并对影响因素进行了探讨。

I.Introduction

Under the background of globalization different countries have communicated a lot in economic and cultural activities. Due to the difference of social institution, even China and America have frequent contacts from many aspects, there are still some significant difference between them, especially in economy and culture. In this thesis, the economic and cultural comparison between China and America will be given by the support of significant phenomenon and previous study, and the influence factors  also will be discussed.

II.Difference in Economy Aspect

In nowadays, the United States as the typical developed countries, it has the great economic strength and far ahead of other countries in the world. China, as the biggest developing country, also has a high rate of economic growth. Although between these two economies, they have totally different situations.

A.Economic Stocks and Economic Flows

Firstly, there are two critical economic index we should pay attention to, one is economic stocks and the other is economic flows. They both are used to assess one country’s economic situation. Economic stocks means the value of economic variables in a certain point of time. Economic flows refers to  the amount of economic activity scales during a period of time.

On the one hand, when it comes to the investment rate or savings rate in a specific year, for instance,  in any one of the last thirty years China has more than 40 percent on investment rate or savings rate and America only has no more than 10 percent on theses two index. Therefore, if people focus on the economic flows, then China has a better performance in economic activities than America.

On the other hand, from the view of economic stocks, which is the accumulate result of product and other economic activities. Due to America has the biggest economic scale all over the world at a very early time, even China has a high economic growth rate today, China still fall behind America in economic stocks in a long term. Therefore, if people focus on the long term of economic stocks, then America has a better performance in economic activities than China.

In conclusion, China has a high speed of economic growth, therefore, it has a better performance in economic activities than America if we focus on the economic flows of recent years. Due to America has a substantial savings in a long term, it has a better performance in economic activities than China if we focus on the economic stocks of a very long term. In other words, there are some obvious difference between Chinese and American economic performance when people observe them from different perspective.

B. Online Marketing

The internet is playing an increasingly important role in today’s business marketing in every country of the world. Especially for China and America, online marketing is a great chance to increase their national economic development speed and expand their overseas marketing share rate. However, even the online marketing develop trending are similar in China and America, they still have a lot of difference in business strategies and other detailed situations. This paper will discuss them according to the marketing rules and typical successful company in China and America, to explore the current diversity of online marketing in major destinations of the America and China.

Due to online marketing is no longer a new business form, some people already did some studies to finding the difference between China and the USA. For example, there is a research aims to compare the destination marketing organization (DMO) websites in the USA and China (Morrison et al. 43-56). By applying a modified balanced scorecard approach, few factors including website marketing strategies, web page designs, marketing information and technical qualities are evaluated. It’s main purpose is to determine similarities and differences among the official destination marketing organization websites in the USA and China. The study start from four tiers of DMO websites: the state tourism offices and convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs) in the United States, and some provincial and city tourism administrations in China. At that time, they found that the destination marketing organization websites in America are superior to those in China in terms of marketing strategies and information, and America’s CVB sites received the highest evaluations.

The study I mentioned before gave us some useful information and research directions. Due to the E-commerce becomes increasingly popular all over the world, I would like to compare the online marketing situations in America and China by comparing their typical successful companies. In America, Amazon is the most famous company for E-business, and in China, it would be Alibaba which is growing rapidly during last few years.

From the statistic results, Amazon is the world’s 9th most-visited website, while TaoBao, an online shopping portal owned by Alibaba, is the world’s 10th most-visited website. Besides, in 2013, Amazon had earned almost ten times as much as Alibaba did, with $74.45 billion in revenue, while Alibaba had earned $7.95 billion in this year. However, Amazon ended the 4th quarter of 2013 with 0.94 percent margins, while Alibaba’s margin in that year were closer to 50 percent. Specifically, Amazon reached a same-day sales record on Cyber Monday 2013, when customers ordered at a rate of 426 items per second for a grand total of more than 36.8 million items, however, Amazon didn’t disclose its revenue figures. As for Alibaba, it also reached its same-day sales record in 2013 on November 11th. On that day, a student-created holiday known as “Single Day”, TaoBao vendors sold over $5.75 billion (￥32.019 billion) worth of product(Peterson).

Apart from that, Amazon went public in 1997 at a valuation of $438 million. Now it has a market cap of $157.52 billion. Alibaba Group went to IPO in New York in late 2014 at a valuation that put its market cap at $168 billion. Theses facts reflected the economic situations in China and America. China has a young and broad market, where increasingly filled with great power of consumption and many ambitious enterprises. In China, E-commerce activities are very frequent so that whole market is quiet lively. While in America, due to its E-business start earlier and already becomes a mature and stable market, its market activities may not as active as Chinese, and it need more stimulation to improve its development rate if America market want to maintain its leading position.

C. Economic Policy

As for America, taxation system is a reflection of its advanced economic policy, since congress provided the original edition it has been modified a lot and it becomes a mature system. According some literature, the capital cost and the marginal effective tax rate in America are calculated with the estimates of substitution possibilities by enterprise and households in analyzing tax and spending programs. The economic impaction on America tax policies have taken two ways. The first one is that the cost of capital has been integrated into investment functions in macroeconomic models, which are used to assess the responses to tax policy changes in a short term. Secondly, the capital cost approach has been incorporated into applied general-equilibrium models used in evaluating the economic effects of tax reforms in a long term(Jorgenson 3).

Therefore, it would retain the income tax foundation of the existing America taxation system, but it could also equalize tax burdens on all forms of assets, mean and marginal tax rates on labor income. Besides, it would regard consumption for income as a basis taxation, while equating mean and marginal tax rates on the income of  labor.

In China, things are different. China is a country where to the economic laws and institutions are still under developing, and the growth of economic activities are always influenced by them. In other words, although it has one of the fastest growing economies, neither its legal nor taxation system is well developed. Therefore, the typical economic policy problem in China is about the relationship between the State Section, Listed Sector, and the Private Section.

While the law–finance–growth nexus applies to the State Sector and the Listed Sector, with arguably poorer applicable legal and financial mechanisms, the Private Sector grows much faster than the others and provides most of the economy's growth. The imbalance among the three sectors suggests that alternative financing channels and governance mechanisms, such as those based on reputation and relationships, support the growth of the Private Sector (Allen 57-116).

As the result, although the Private Section like private company and foreign company may grows fast and earn more profits, it also shows that the Chinese government can control the market through modify the economic policies. Therefore, the Private Section believe that their business would be influenced a lot by government’s economic policy, and in most cases, the economic policy is used to protect the benefit of the State Sector and the Listed Sector. In other words, private company and foreign company can only get the development opportunities when the government gives chance to them.

III. Difference in Culture Aspect

There are many cultural difference between China and America. These differences do not means any culture better or worse than the other one.  It just shows the cultural differences which has been created by their own centuries of history and development during a quite long time. China can trace its traditions and histories for thousands of years.  America is still a young nation comparatively and has had very few traditions which owned by itself, but it has become such a melting pot of cultures.  Although there is almost no specific American culture, America can accept so many cultures from other countries and integrate them very well, so that these cultures can be applied across the board.  All these things make China and America cultures unique and worthy of study and respect.

A. Communication Style

As far as I am concerned, I think this is the most significant cultural difference between China and America. With the influence of  Confucianism for thousands years, Chinese people are more implicit to express their emotions. While in America, people advocate the new thoughts which encourage people to use effusive ways or words to express their feelings freely.

The examples are everywhere in daily life. In China, even people are affectionate to their friends and relatives, they always show their affection in public less than other peoples. For instance, the whole family and some friends are going to the railway station or the airport to see a person off, no matter whether he or she goes to another country to study or to another province for work. This should be a very moving situation when the time comes for saying goodbye to their best friend or family, but there are nobody will hug or kiss even they do not want that person leave them. Friends may shake hands with the person who is leaving and his or her parents may hold his or her hand for a long time with tears in their eyes, but with no other physical contact. In fact hugging and kissing are seldom seen in public in China, no matter what the occasion it is, people prefer to express their emotions privately. While if this situation has happened in America, hugs and kisses are essential to express their love and dismay for this person’s leaving.

The other example is about the performance when people get some gift from others. In China, normally Chinese people think that if you open the gift as soon as you have received it, you might embarrass the person who gives the gift and you might be thought greedy. Therefore, Chinese people prefer to open the gifts after the visitors have left. Apart from that, many Chinese people wouldn’t wrapping the gifts when they send them, and if they wrap them, they would tell the receivers what is inside, and the receiver will thank the sender and put the gift aside without unwrapping them until the person who gives the gift have left. However, when America people have received gifts from other western people, they prefer to open the gifts in front of the person who gives the gift to them, as soon as they received the gift and express their thanks. There is no good or bad between two different attitude, but it is a typical cultural difference of their custom.

B. Racial Differences

Race is the other obvious difference between China and America. China has 56 nationalities and at least 90 percent are the Han nationality, besides, all the nationalities are yellow race. Besides, when it comes to spiritual culture, Confucianism is the main spiritual culture in ancient China and exist for thousands of years, it always reigns the dominant position to influence Chinese people’s thoughts and behaviors. For nowadays, China is also accept other faiths but most people in China are believe in atheism. Therefore, it can be said that China is a country with single species and single culture.

Although America only have hundreds of years history, it is an immigration country. Its population structure is very complex and it has many different races of people, and almost every race of people has a variety of nationalities in here. Apart from that, all kinds of culture reflect on some religion, Catholicism, Christianism, and Judaism are the major religions and all of them have a variety of subsystem. Therefore, America is the melting pot of different religions and cultures, and it with a strong flavor of era.

C. Education Pattern

The way students are educated in China and America are also quite different. Comparing the elementary education between China and America, a general view is that Chinese element education mainly aims to build the foundation of further education but all these education levels are with  more book study and less thought. While America’s aims to build an education to train the creativity with less book study and more thought. As the result, the Chinese student study more book knowledge but pay little attention to the practice, and cannot handle the practical problems. American students are raised to pay more attention to their self-confidence, independence, spirit of supporting oneself, therefore, they are more confident when they face some practical problems.

Even in higher education, China students have less specialty to choose and it always be intervened by parents and other social views. Once they have chosen their specialty, change the specialty will always not easy and transformation for school is almost impossible.

There is an interesting study on Chinese and American university students who study marketing, from a specific perspective. They want to find the different attitude  to academic dishonesty of two countries’ students, by comparing them from cross-cultural way. Chinese as well as American business colleges are trying to improve morality of their students due to recent scandals. This research investigates several factors and certain demographic variables that might contribute to the academic dishonesty of American and Chinese marketing students.

This study found that American marketing students who are young, relativistic, less religious, opportunistic, tolerant, detached, and negative tend to believe that academic dishonesty is more acceptable than do their counterparts exhibiting the opposite characteristics. Chinese marketing students who are male, detached, relativistic, less religious, opportunistic, and behaviorist oriented tend to perceive that academic dishonesty is more acceptable than do their counterparts. The results also reveal that the Chinese marketing students are more tolerant and detached than are the American marketing students, and they are less sensitive to the acceptance of academic dishonesty than are the American students. (Rawwas 89-100)

Due to the different education methods lead to the various results, and make students from different perspectives to judging on one thing, eventually, they may have different attitude on one thing. Therefore, the research thesis I just mentioned is also a good evidence to describe the detailed education difference between China and America.

IV. Conclusion

According to all the economic and cultural difference between China and America, the typical phenomenon and the possible reasons have been discussed. No matter whether the influence factors can be verified by academic methodologies, there is no doubt that all these difference are created by the different social institution and historical activities.

However, these difference also give us some useful information for the development of  both China and America. They can learn something good for its country  from each other's strengths, and these communications also will contribute to build a friendly relationship between China and America. In fact, America has built several Confucius Institutes in recent years, it helps to let America people know more about Chinese traditional cultures. At the same time, in China, the number of people who choose to start their highly educations in America is continuously increases in the past few years. Apart from that, the international trading activities between China and America are also become more frequent than before. Therefore, all these facts means that China and America have increasingly economic and cultural communications, and these communications will help two countries achieve a win-win situation.

Bibliography
Alastair M. Morrison, Feng, Ruomei, and Joseph A. Ismail. "East versus West: A comparison of online destination marketing in China and the USA."Journal of Vacation Marketing 10.1 (2004): 43-56.
Allen, Franklin, Jun Qian, and Meijun Qian. "Law, finance, and economic growth in China." Journal of financial economics 77.1 (2005): 57-116.
Hayley Peterson. “The Key Differences Between Alibaba And Amazon In One Chart”   19, SEP., 2014, Retrieved 26 June, 2015
Jorgenson, Dale W., and Kun-Young Yun. "Investment, Volume 3: Lifting the Burden: Tax Reform, the Cost of Capital, and US Economic Growth." MIT Press Books 3 (2002).
Rawwas, Mohammed YA, Jamal A. Al-Khatib, and Scott J. Vitell. "Academic dishonesty: A cross-cultural comparison of US and Chinese marketing students." Journal of Marketing Education 26.1 (2004): 89-100.


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