Read the case below and answer the two questions appended.

In this specific case, a piece of technical equipment was to be prepared in a European firm and sent to China where it would be installed at the customer premises. This first phase of the project itself provides a perfect insight into some of the major differences as to how western and Chinese culture conduct business transactions.

The expectation from a western enterprise is that a set of detailed specifications would be provided by the customer and the equipment would then be built to this specification. The Chinese customer, however, expects that the equipment provider is competent enough to know what should be provided and therefore did not provide any specifications. When the European sales manager was requested to ask the Chinese customer for specific information, some reasons were provided as to why this could not be done, although an actual refusal to do so was never offered. The western engineers failed to understand that for the sales manager to ask such questions would demonstrate to the Chinese customer that the European company is incompetent.