Abstract：Based on the naturally occurring data of the Chinese and American political apology speech acts and a comprehensive analysis of the definition, properties and felicity conditions of political apologies, the current study explores the similarities and differences of the Chinese and American political apology speech acts in terms of the illocutionary force indicating devices and strategies of political apology within the framework of cultural pragmatic theories. The research results demonstrate that the illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs) of the Chinese political apologies can be divided into three categories: “apologize/apology”, “deep remorse/guilty” and “sorry”. Whereas, the American political apologies mainly involve four types of IFIDs: “apologize/apology”, “regret”, “sorry” and others. Two different inclinations of delivering political apologies appear in the contrastive analysis of the two nations’ apology strategies. That is, the Chinese statesmen tend to establish an image of committing misbehaviors bravely, taking responsibilities boldly and making restitutions actively. However, although the American statesmen extend admission of mistakes and willingness to render compensation, to a large extent, they are apt to give detailed accounts and explanations for the offense and make inadequate commitment for their faults, lacking the quality of accepting responsibilities. This study probes into the socio-cultural causes of the above discrepancies from the connotation of political apology in Chinese and American cultures, individualism and collectivism and cultural context, reveals the in-depth causes of political apology diversities and undertakes a brief discussion on the significance of the current study on enhancing political mutual trust and improving international relations.