Compliment response is one of the most studied speech strategies in modern pragmatics research. Early work on the speech behavior of the Chinese found that Chinese speakers in most cases reject the compliment. Researchers believe that this is due to the norm of modesty and respect for other people, as well as self-deprecation. Most researchers of Russian speech behavior note that in Russian communicative behavior a compliment often causes a feeling of self-consciousness, which can be explained by the modesty of Russian people, and entails either a negative reaction or an absence of any reaction whatsoever. The last years of work on the study of the speech behavior do not lose their relevance, especially since they give different results. However, there has not been a comparative study of Russian and Chinese speech tactics of compliment response. This study aims to answer the following main questions: What tactics of compliment response do native Russian and Chinese speakers favor in symmetrical communicative situations? And what are the main differences and similarities between Russian and Chinese speech behaviors in terms of tactics of compliment response? As part of this study, we conducted a semi-closed survey with the participation of 300 Russian and 300 Chinese students. The results showed that Russian and Chinese youth overwhelmingly accept compliments from other people, and do so mostly verbally. At the same time, Chinese people reject compliments almost twice as often as Russians, especially in the aforementioned situations, and Chinese men do it more often than women.