Adopting an audience-centred approach in business writing is considered fundamental to successful business communication and is widely advocated by leading textbooks of the field targeted at both university students and professionals. Thill and Bovee (2013) explain this approach embraces a ‘you' attitude whereby the emphasis of the message is placed on the reader rather than the writer. Although a large pool of literature on writer-reader interaction has developed under concepts such as metadiscourse, appraisal, stance, and evaluation; these generally place a focus on writer as opposed to reader-orientated aspects of language. Moreover, the attention from linguists have overwhelmingly been directed towards academic writing. This study uses corpus analysis to explore features of audience involvement in the letter to shareholders of Chinese and U.S. companies. Utilising the engagement framework (Hyland, 2005), I examine how corporate leaders attempt to explicitly recognise the presence of their readers and construct relationships with this complex and diverse set of stakeholders. The results reveal engagement features are an integral element of both Chinese and U.S letter to shareholders; however the density was noticeably lower in the Chinese sample. While this does not necessarily render the Chinese discourse less audience-centred, it does represent a cultural divergence that has implications for the learning and teaching of business communication and ESP. Currently, U.S.-centric textbooks and guides dominate but with China's prominent commercial position entrenched there is a need to develop a greater understanding of Chinese business communication styles so that students and professionals globally can benefit from such insights.