2。 Literature Review

As the proportion of American’s direct investments in China is becoming more and more heavy, many scholars have studied the current condition of American’s direct investments in China。 And some of them noticed the cultural differences’ effects。 Gu Guoda and Zhang Zhengrong found that cultural differences will result in different senses of identity, and this will affect the investors’ decisions。 Johanson and Vahlne found that when foreign countries come into other countries, the psychic distance would affect their entry to foreign markets, and countries with the similar cultural background will do more business than with total different cultures。 (Johanson。 J 10)

For a country’s development, FDI is really important, so cultural differences’ effects in FDI can’t be ignored。 Stephen Herbert Hymer thinks that when make FDI, people should consider weather they could adapt the local culture, and from this sentence, we can find it’s really important to figure out the cultural differences between countries and then try to solve the problems that caused by the differences。 America and China have really different cultures, we should clear these differences and their effects to make further cooperation between US and China。 Combined with the previous researches, this paper will analyze the cultural differences in American’s direct investment in China。 

3。 The Definitions 

To analyze concrete cultural differences’ effects in American’s direct investments in China, we should clear the meanings of culture and foreign direct investment first。 And then make specific analysis according to cultural differences。 Here are the definitions of culture and FDI。文献综述

3。1 The definition of culture

What’s culture, culture may mean very many things and is hard to define because people have different opinions。 There are 164 different definitions of culture between 1881 and 1957。 Some people conceptualize culture as ethnic identity or nationality, some conceptualize culture in terms of the events, celebrations, foods, and music of a group of people。 

According to the University of Minnesota’s Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition: culture can be defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that is learned through a process of socialization。 These shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group。 (许勤华 4) Another definition is proposed by David Brown, he thinks that culture is to give answers to the issues raised in daily life, such as what to eat, what to wear, how to greet friends, how to deal with works, and so on。

The easiest definition of culture is that culture is the total accumulation of beliefs, customs, values, behaviors, institutions and communication patterns that are shared, learned and passed down through the generation in an identifiable group of people, and many Chinese scholars agree with this definition。 The most famous and often cited work for classifying culture patterns is the research by the Dutch organizational anthropologist Hofstede。 In his original work, he thinks the culture is defined as: a completed system including knowledge, faith, law, morality, custom, and all the abilities and habits from which asocial member would acquire。 ( Edward Burnett Tylor, 2)。 来,自,优.尔:论;文*网www.chuibin.com +QQ752018766-

Culture is a kind of special resource in the social economic development, and has great impacts in the international trade。 It’s meaningful to make researches on the cultural differences’ effects in economic activities。