The United StatesvsChina
アメリカと中国USCN
Seen from the United States: each line below describes China relative to the United States.
Culture Map: eight scales
Erin Meyer's eight scales, sorted by how far apart the United States and China sit, largest gap first.
Filled dot: the United States, where you are looking fromHollow ring: China
Where you will notice the difference6 scales
Communicating
China leaves more to be read between the lines than the United States (5 steps)
The United States −3, China +2, on a line from −3 (Low-context) to +3 (High-context).
Trusting
China builds trust through personal relationships more than the United States (5 steps)
The United States −3, China +2, on a line from −3 (Task-based) to +3 (Relationship-based).
Leading
China keeps more distance between boss and team than the United States (3 steps)
The United States −1, China +2, on a line from −3 (Egalitarian) to +3 (Hierarchical).
Disagreeing
China avoids open disagreement more than the United States (2 steps)
The United States 0, China +2, on a line from −3 (Confrontational) to +3 (Avoids confrontation).
Evaluating
China gives negative feedback more indirectly than the United States (1 step)
The United States 0, China +1, on a line from −3 (Direct negative feedback) to +3 (Indirect negative feedback).
Deciding
China leaves decisions to the person in charge more than the United States (1 step)
The United States +1, China +2, on a line from −3 (Consensual) to +3 (Top-down).
Not placed2 scales
These scales are left unmarked: either Meyer leaves a country off the scale or no source places it, and drawing it anyway would be guessing.
- PersuadingMeyer leaves China off this scale and describes its reasoning as holistic
- SchedulingNo source places China on this scale
Hofstede: six dimensions
Scores from 0 to 100, sorted by the gap between the United States and China. They describe national averages, not either country's character.
Indulgence
China scores 44 points lower than the United States (24 against 68)
The United States 68, China 24, on a line from 0 (Restrained) to 100 (Indulgent).
Power distance
China scores 40 points higher than the United States (80 against 40)
The United States 40, China 80, on a line from 0 (Low power distance) to 100 (High power distance).
Long-term orientation
China scores 27 points higher than the United States (77 against 50)
The United States 50, China 77, on a line from 0 (Short-term) to 100 (Long-term).
Individualism
China scores 17 points lower than the United States (43 against 60)
The United States 60, China 43, on a line from 0 (Collectivist) to 100 (Individualist).
Uncertainty avoidance
China scores 16 points lower than the United States (30 against 46)
The United States 46, China 30, on a line from 0 (Tolerant of ambiguity) to 100 (Avoids ambiguity).
Motivation towards achievement and success
China scores 4 points higher than the United States (66 against 62)
The United States 62, China 66, on a line from 0 (Consensus-oriented) to 100 (Decisive).
What the sources say, theme by theme
Entries for the United States and China, side by side on wide screens. Each keeps its own confidence label and citations.
Design & quality
United States3 claims
At Google, engineers write a relatively informal design doc before writing code. According to Malte Ubl (2020), the point is not an exhaustive specification but a record of the trade-offs and alternatives considered.
Thin1 source2020us-design-1
Ubl says a design doc should be as long as necessary and as short as possible, and distinguishes it from a heavyweight waterfall-style specification.
Thin1 source2015Datedus-design-2
Meyer places the United States on the applications-first side of the Persuading scale. A book summary describes this as starting from conclusions and examples and favoring the practical how over the theoretical why.
Thin1 sourceus-design-3
China3 claims
In AI Superpowers (2018), Kai-Fu Lee argued that a "gladiator" competition that puts speed first and accepts copying produced Chinese startups' rapid iteration. Critics say the book glorifies imitation.
Attested2 sources2019cn-design-1
From around 1998–99, Huawei adopted IBM's IPD (Integrated Product Development), required teams to follow the templates exactly, and enforced a heavy stage-gate process.
Attested2 sourcescn-design-2
In November 2023, Alibaba Cloud had its second major outage in a month, and in the same month Didi apologized for a service breakdown it blamed on a failure in underlying software.
Attested2 sources2023cn-design-3
Failure & risk
United States2 claims
The Google SRE Book (2016) codifies the blameless postmortem. It identifies contributing causes without blaming individuals or teams and assumes that everyone involved acted with good intentions.
Well attested1 source2016us-failure-1
At F8 in 2014, Zuckerberg changed Facebook's motto from "Move fast and break things" to "Move fast with stable infra." His reason was that at Facebook's scale, the time spent fixing breakage outweighed the gain in speed.
Attested1 source2014Datedus-failure-2
China2 claims
Fupan, a review method named after replaying a game of Go move by move, is used in Chinese companies. A former Lenovo executive calls it a pillar of the company's culture and cites founder Liu Chuanzhi's instruction to think things through without sparing yourself.
Thin2 sourcescn-failure-1
Meyer gives the example of Chinese managers learning not to criticize colleagues in public.
Attested1 sourcecn-failure-2
Feedback & code review
United States3 claims
According to Meyer, Americans are often taught to wrap negative messages in positive ones (the feedback sandwich). For this reason she places the United States in the middle of the scale for delivering negative feedback.
Attested1 source2014Datedus-feedback-1
A blog explainer on Meyer's evaluating scale notes a common mismatch: Dutch and German colleagues take American praise at face value, while Americans find Dutch and German criticism too harsh.
Thin1 source2016us-feedback-2
A study of more than 70,000 GitHub pull requests from 17 countries (Rastogi et al., 2018) found that pull requests were more likely to be accepted when the reviewer and the submitter were in the same country.
Well attested1 source2018us-feedback-3
China3 claims
Explainers of Meyer's Culture Map place China on the high-context side and describe negative feedback as tending to be indirect, especially when it could cost someone face.
Thin2 sources2026cn-feedback-1
Empirical studies of Chinese workplaces find that employees stay silent more when they perceive their supervisor's coercive power as strong and when they work under authoritarian leaders. Face (mianzi), guanxi and the doctrine of the mean (zhongyong) are discussed as factors that suppress speaking up.
Well attested3 sources2025cn-feedback-2
In Rastogi et al. (ESEM 2018), which analyzed GitHub pull request acceptance by country, pull requests from China fell in the lower-acceptance group. The cause of the gap was not identified; nationality bias and English proficiency are possible factors.
Attested1 source2019cn-feedback-3
Hierarchy & decisions
United States2 claims
Meyer classifies the United States as egalitarian but top-down (HBR, 2017). People use first names and are encouraged to speak up, but the boss decides quickly, and the decision can be revisited when new arguments appear.
Attested1 source2017us-hierarchy-1
In the same article, Meyer reports that to Japanese managers an American boss can look flat on the surface yet highly autocratic in how decisions are made.
Attested1 source2017us-hierarchy-2
China2 claims
Meyer's 2017 HBR article places China in the top-down, hierarchical quadrant. In the case of a US company that expanded to China, Chinese staff saw American managers who did not give detailed instructions as "not just incompetent but arrogant".
Attested1 source2017cn-hierarchy-1
ByteDance is reported to have adopted Zhang Yiming's "Context, not Control", making internal documents open by default, running OKRs on a two-month cycle and sharing information through Feishu (Lark).
Attested2 sourcescn-hierarchy-2
Communication & docs
United States4 claims
Meyer places the United States at the most low-context end of the Communicating scale. A book summary describes a preference for saying things explicitly and for repeating and summarizing key points.
Thin1 sourceus-communication-1
According to Bezos's 2017 shareholder letter, Amazon does not use PowerPoint. Meetings start with everyone silently reading a six-page narrative memo, and memos carry no author's name because they come from the whole team.
Well attested1 source2018us-communication-2
According to CNBC (2018), the practice began with a 2004 email from Bezos. He explained that a good four-page memo is harder to write than a 20-page slide deck because the narrative structure forces better thinking.
Attested1 source2018us-communication-3
According to a blog post by Slab, Stripe also rarely uses slides. Meetings begin with silent reading of a memo, followed by comments on the document.
Thin1 sourceus-communication-4
China4 claims
In 2022, the Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People's Court ruled that handling work on WeChat outside working hours counted as overtime and ordered the former employer to pay 30,000 yuan. In January 2024, the Supreme People's Court and other bodies published a similar case as a model case.
Attested2 sources2024cn-communication-1
ByteDance's Feishu (Lark) combines documents, meetings, chat and OKRs in one tool and is sold to outside companies as an "organizational operating system".
Attested1 sourcecn-communication-2
In the EF EPI 2024, China ranked 91st of 116 countries and regions (score 455), but city scores such as Beijing (518) and Shanghai (511) are far above the national figure.
Attested1 source2024cn-communication-3
A 2021 study of open source projects at Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent found that providing an English README was the most common internationalization measure.
Attested1 source2021cn-communication-4
Work & careers
United States5 claims
According to the BLS, median employee tenure in January 2024 was 3.9 years overall, the lowest since January 2002. In the private sector it was 3.5 years.
Well attested1 source2024us-work-1
- BLS: Employee Tenure in 2024 (2024)
At-will employment is the default in every state except Montana. Unless the reason is illegal, either the employer or the employee can end the employment relationship at any time.
Well attested1 sourceus-work-2
According to layoffs.fyi figures cited by TechCrunch, tech layoffs in 2024 exceeded 150,000 people at 549 companies. The peak was 2023, with about 260,000.
Attested1 source2024us-work-3
In the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, 45% of US respondents work fully remote, the highest share among the top responding countries. Median salaries were $200k for engineering managers, $175k for back-end developers, and $138k for full-stack developers.
Well attested1 source2025us-work-4
In Staff Engineer (2021), Will Larson sorts Staff+ individual-contributor roles, which do not require becoming a manager, into four archetypes: Tech Lead, Architect, Solver, and Right Hand.
Attested1 source2021us-work-5
- Will Larson: Staff Engineer (2021)
China4 claims
In March 2019, the GitHub repository 996.ICU went up in protest against overwork and passed 1,000 stars within its first hour. In August 2021, the Supreme People's Court and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security published typical cases stating that the 996 schedule is illegal.
Attested3 sources2021cn-work-1
In 2021, Kuaishou and ByteDance ended the alternating six-day week (daxiaozhou). At ByteDance the loss of overtime pay cut take-home pay by 17% on average, and an internal poll reportedly found about 30% wanted to keep the old schedule.
Attested2 sources2021cn-work-2
News reports describe a "curse of 35" in which people over 35 are disadvantaged in layoffs and hiring. In a recruitment platform's survey, 87% of programmers were worried about losing their job or finding a new one after 35. Chinese labor law does not explicitly ban age discrimination.
Attested3 sources2025cn-work-3
As a reaction to neijuan (involution), reports describe tangping (lying flat), people leaving high-paying jobs for a 10-to-6, five-day schedule, and runxue (emigrating). Layoffs at big tech firms are also said to be pushing new graduates toward civil service jobs.
Attested3 sources2025cn-work-4
Open source & community
United States2 claims
According to Octoverse 2025, the number of US developers on GitHub grew from 10.2 million in 2020 to 28 million in 2025, the most of any country. The US ranks second to India in open source contributors and first in total contributions.
Well attested1 source2025us-oss-1
- GitHub Octoverse 2025 (2025)
The same Octoverse 2025 report says the US, UK, and Canada more than doubled their developer counts from 2020 to 2025, while India and Brazil more than quadrupled. Its 2030 projection puts India ahead of the United States.
Well attested1 source2025us-oss-2
- GitHub Octoverse 2025 (2025)
China5 claims
OSS Compass estimates that China has more than 2.2 million active open source developers, the most of any country (India has about 2 million).
Attested1 source2025cn-oss-1
In 2020, MIIT contracted a consortium of companies and universities led by Gitee to build a Chinese independent open source hosting platform. In May 2022, Gitee began reviewing all public code before publication and hid large numbers of repositories without notice.
Attested2 sources2022cn-oss-2
A CUHK study found that commits on Gitee dropped sharply after the platform introduced pre-publication review of public code.
Well attested1 source2025cn-oss-3
Ten of 28 projects in the ASF incubator came from Chinese companies. TiDB, from PingCAP (founded in Beijing in 2015), has about 40,000 GitHub stars and more than 1,200 contributors.
Attested3 sources2023cn-oss-4
OpenHarmony is based on code Huawei donated to the OpenAtom Foundation in 2020–21. As of January 2025 it had 401 ecosystem partners, but its leading contributors are concentrated in Huawei and its affiliates.
Attested2 sources2025cn-oss-5