When Collectivism Encountering Individualism in Legal Settings: An Analysis of the CAS Public Hearing Regarding Sun Yang’s Case

People’s interactions with others are usually reflections of their value, at both individual level and cultural level. In international legal settings where there are designed and professional questions, this is reflected distinctly in the confrontations between two parties. Drawing on the second dimension of Hofstede’s value system, namely individualism and collectivism, and taking the first hearing in the CAS arbitration between WADA, Sun Yang and FINA which was held in Switzerland in November 2019 as an example, this paper aims at elaborating on the collectivism-orientated or individualism-orientated values that are reflected in intercultural legal settings. To be more specific, collectivism-orientated value such as “We” Consciousness, Confrontation Avoidance, Facts/Rules Neglecting, High-context Communication and individualism-orientated value like Facts/Rules Focusing were all revealed in the testimony of Chinese witnesses by Sun Yang’s party. These values may have led to either negative or positive influence on the efficiency of Chinese witnesses’ defence in varying degrees. Analysis in this paper is based on the transcript of the video file of CAS public hearing on Sun’s case. I hope that the finding of the research may provide a reference to researchers on cultural values and communications in professional contexts such as international companies, schools, governmental organizations and tribunals.