In order to achieve success in global business, it’s critical to know cultural differences between target countries and our native country. National culture is the set of shared values and beliefs that affects the perceptions, decisions, and behavior of the people from a particular country. Even two countries whose geographic distance is close, their cultural differences may vary a lot, for example, China and Japan.
From the graph I get on the website, the biggest cultural difference between China and Japan is on uncertainty avoidance, which is the degree to which people in a country are uncomfortable with unstructured, ambiguous, unpredictable situations. The fact that China has a comparatively low score on this dimension reflects that Chinese are adaptable and entrepreneurial, and comfortable with ambiguity. On the contrary, at 92 Japan is one of the most uncertainty avoiding countries on earth. Japanese learned to prepare themselves for any uncertain situation. This goes not only for the emergency plan and precautions for sudden natural disasters but also for every other aspects of society.
On long term orientation, both China and Japan have relatively high scores. This dimension describes how every society has to maintain some links with its own past while dealing with the challenges of the present and future. Therefore, these two countries show an ability to adapt traditions easily to changed conditions, a strong propensity to save and invest, thriftiness, and perseverance in achieving results.
Both on individualism and indulgence, China has very low scores and Japan has moderate scores. Low scores on these two dimensions show that Chinese people act in the interests of the group and not necessarily of themselves, and that China is a restrained society that have a tendency to cynicism and pessimism. Japanese scores show that people put harmony of group above